The cost of Santa is so much higher than we realise

As December looms and we find ourselves enveloped in the Season of Spending, there seems to me to be an ever darker tinge to the 'Cult of Santa' that has been growing alarmingly since it's true birth in 1940s Coca Cola marketing office .

Having been brought up in a church-going family, I was under no illusions about the fat man from the start, and I certainly don't feel that I lost out in any way from not believing in a jolly chap who rushes down chimneys depositing toys for kids who were good. I learnt about Christmas as the commemoration of the appearing in the flesh of light, truth and love, Mind you, I also loved the presents, the decorations, the mince pies and the rest. There's a lot to love about Christmas/Yule.

The Santa thing was just a bit of a laugh and a nice easy image to draw and colour-in around December-time. Nothing more than another fun thing to do together with watching Mary Poppins and singing a few carols.

Now, though, the cult of the chuckling one really seems to have reached fever pitch - and I fervently hope that that means the bubble is about to burst. I am totally sick of the hypocrisy surrounding parents' insistence that their children believe in such a creature while poo-pooing the idea of Christ or any other manifestation of pure goodness as an actual, provable reality.

Santas little haters

About three years ago I was reviewing the papers on Sky Sunrise one morning, around this time of year. and there was a story about Father Christmas that interested me. I mentioned that I was astounded that parents who are very keen to tell their children that the Bible is full of 'fairy stories', will insist on keeping the fiction of Father Christmas going for them "because they have to have something good to believe in".

I said that these parents were storing up problems for themselves later on when the children realise the truth. Something in the back of their minds will ask "if mum and dad can lie to me so convincingly about that...what else have they said that wasn't true? Will they carry on lying to me?"

Oh boy, what a furious backlash I got! Producers came down to the Green Room telling me that they had had angry parents ringing up the station complaining that I was speaking on a breakfast show and that their kids had heard me saying that Father Christmas was a lie. They ordered me not to mention it again and that it had caused them a lot of problems up in the Gallery. They didn't have me reviewing the papers again.

Now, had I been on that programme saying that Jesus had not existed (even though there is independent historical evidence that he did) and that everything in the Bible and any other religious book was quite clearly a work of fiction, no one would have batted an eyelid. Maybe there would have been a mild complaint from one or two vicars, but otherwise, nothing.

But diss the Fat Man?? Ooh no. That's the one thing you cannot do!

The fight before Christmas

Now, though, this commercial construct seems to be nearing its poisonous zenith. It's the case of the unbelievably overpriced Santa's Grotto.

It seems that the average cost of visiting Santa Claus this year has jumped from ￡9.39 in 2016 to ￡12.63, according to analysis by The Sunday Times. So that's a 35% rise, compared with a roughly 8% increase in the price of goods and services.

How come? What sort of madness is this in our penny-pinching, Brexit era?

The spending at Christmas is always upsetting to me as I know that many, many people (particularly parents) will overspend and find themselves in miserable debt in January - a particularly dark month to be short of cash.

But when you see the prices for visiting Santa in the local department store grotto, yet again you realise how obscene this whole Yuletide Festival of Commercialism is.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for people making money to support themselves. In my website, MoneyMagpie.com, we have a very popular article around this time of the year on how to make money as a Santa or an elf (it's about ￡250 a day). We also offer a free eBook on how to make money for Christmas (all part of our attempt to get people to stop borrowing for the season).

And I do feel sorry for the shops. They're having an increasingly tough time of it - thanks to the internet and greedy landlords - but it's just horrible to see them squeezing as much money as they can from desperate parents at this time. I know from friends who have kids that these visits are so popular they have to be booked weeks in advance. Why wouldn't the shops cash-in? That's what Yuletide is all about, after all...pulling in as much cash as your possibly can in the time allotted.

Certainly horrible Harrods are doing it in their own inimitable way by restricting grotto access to the big spenders...the really big spenders. Shoppers have been told that they have to splash ￡2,000 in the shop before their child would be allowed to sit on Santa’s knee — and that's on top of the ￡20 ticket price, which has itself doubled since 2016.

Ugh. See what I mean? The whole Santa clause is tying us up in deeply uncomfortable knots.

Jingle tills, jingle tills

The Santa orthodoxy is that in a dark and dangerous world, only the fat man can bring joy and happiness...and that for a very short time.

In fact though, he's part of the cruel, heartless obeisance to Mammon that the Christmas season has turned into.That's why increasingly I'm calling it Yuletide - the original celebration around this time, as it's much closer to the materialist, 'things-obsessed' experience we are currently undergoing.

We say that the real spirit of Christmas is one of peace on earth, goodwill to man, but in effect, we have been gulled into thinking that it is about spending on everything both for others and for ourselves by the Yuletide businessespeople. 'Giving' has turned into 'spending'. The magazines and supermarket ads tell us we can and must have the 'perfect' Christmas, even though there is no such thing.

Scratch the surface of this season and the harsh reality of it all bites.

Domestic abuse cases rocket at this season. See some examples in this article from The New Statesman - such as Humberside Police where they report that 54 per cent of calls around Christmas are for domestic violence.

Suicides are at their peak around then too. Deaths and injuries related to alcohol are also at an insane level at the end of December, especially around New Year. And children in impoverished families tend to get the brunt of their parents' misery at this time.

The most wonderful time of the year? Increasingly not, I think. And I blame the creeping commercialism that we have all accepted and - quite literally - bought into. The cult of Santa is a central part of this and I'd like it to stop please.

Sadly I suspect it will have to get even worse before people, finally, begin to question the whole business (as it is a business) of Yule and ask themselves more deeply what they want from life and what they want for their children.

A good start to reducing the madness, I think, is to begin with the children. If you're a parent please don't teach them the fiction of Santa in the mistaken belief that it will make them happy. It won't. It will make things worse for them later on. Open their eyes to how ads are manipulating all of us, and 'manage their expectations' for presents. The less we equate happiness with things, the more happiness we tend to get.

Let's have actual 'Christmas' for a change and really, really, strive to live that peace, genuine goodwill to men and unselfishness that break the mesmerism of a 'perfect' materialistic season of spending.

Jasmine Birtles is a financial expert, best-selling author, TV and Radio presenter and keynote speaker. Find out more at www.JasmineBirtles.com