I was probably only four or five years old when my older brother provoked my first psychological crisis. He informed me that Santa didn’t really visit every child in the world. Kids in Africa didn’t get their stockings stuffed. Children in Southeast Asia didn’t wake up to piles of presents under their Christmas trees. In fact, most kids in the world didn’t even have a Christmas tree! And it didn’t really matter whether you had been “naughty or nice.” What really mattered was where you were born and how rich your parents were.

If what my brother was telling me was true, then Santa was a fraud and a big snob, too. He favored the rich and snubbed the poor. This was probably the first time I contemplated the injustice of our world.

In the winter of 1984, nearly twenty Christmases later, I was in college when a bunch of British and Irish pop stars organized something called Band Aid and recorded the hit, “Do they know it’s Christmas?” The seriously sappy song played to the same concern I’d had as a child. Christmas cheer wasn't being distributed equitably in our world. Not only were African children starving, but they didn't even know that it was Christmas.

Sales from the recording raised several million dollars for famine relief in Africa. Lives were saved, but by all reports, Santa continued to almost completely avoid the entire continent. This Christmas marks the twentieth anniversary of the original release of the song, and Band Aid has been revived, with a mix of the original and new rock stars, and they've recorded the song again to raise money for other famine victims in Africa.

Their efforts are to be applauded. However, no matter how successful the new recording is, Santa's relationship with the poor of our world will remain frosty. Santa will continue to favor the privileged kids of our world.

How did Santa's heart grow so cold? He seems so jolly and good. His prejudice against poor kids is especially perplexing when you consider the good stock he came from. Santa Claus can trace his ancestor back to St. Nicholas, the fourth century bishop of Myra (now Turkey).

Bishop Nicholas was a champion of the needy. Out of his devotion to Christ, he gave away his considerable inheritance to the poor and spent the rest of his life serving them. He gained his fame by being especially sensitive to the needs of poor children.

Perhaps the most famous story has him saving three young sisters from being sold as slaves into domestic servitude. It is told that he dropped three gold coins down their chimney so that their poor father could not only feed them but provide them with a dowry so that they could marry. One or more of the coins ended up landing in the stocking(s) hanging to dry above the fireplace. (This is where the tradition of stuffing stockings with gifts got its start.)

Of course, Santa is creation of our culture, a relatively new creation, in fact. St. Nicholas, however, was a real person, someone who demonstrated the true essence of this holiday. By giving gifts to those who Jesus was especially close to, St. Nicholas was giving to Jesus.

In this respect, St. Nicholas was much more like another bishop whose love of children and of the poor was known widely. Oscar Romero served as the Archbishop of El Salvador until one March day in 1980 when he was gunned down while saying Mass.

Oscar Romero had much to say about the real meaning of Christmas. He had the prophet's gift of cutting through the fluff that had enveloped and muffled God's Word. It was the truth he spoke and his courageous defense of his people that provoked his audacious high-profile public execution. Romero offended the powerful by speaking against the atrocities committed by the U.S.-supported Salvadoran government. His assassins, we later learned, were graduates of the U.S. military training program at the School of the Americas, now in Fort Benning, Georgia.

The Gospel he preached was indeed “good news to the poor” but not such good news to the rich and powerful who were oppressing the poor. Here, for example, is what he said about celebrating Christmas:

With these words it is as if Oscar Romero had pulled Santa's beard off and showed us that he is really an imposter. If what Romero says is true, then all the stuff that our culture identifies with Christmas--the trees, the lights, the shopping, and Santa himself--may be just a diversion for us. The Christmas trappings are not bad in themselves. But they may distract us from the uncomfortable truth that Christmas isn't a celebration that the rich and comfortable can fully celebrate.

Christmas for the poor and humiliated of our world is the beginning of a revolution that lifts them up. Romero only echoed what Jesus’ mother had already said about why God sent the child she bore: “[God] has brought down the rulers from their thrones, and has exalted those who were humble. [God] has filled the hungry with good things; but sent away the rich empty handed.” (Luke 1:52-3)

If what Romero and Mary say is true, then the hungry kids in Africa have more to celebrate than we do. Santa won't be sliding down their chimneys, but he has no real substance anyway. The poor can rejoice because God so identifies with them, that in Christ God entered the world as one of them. We who are rich and powerful in the world can acknowledge Christmas intellectually, but it isn't good news for us in the same way.

Our celebration of Christmas can grow richer and more genuine as we identify and accept in ourselves our points of poverty and humiliation. The place of our greatest weakness is the humble stable where Christ can appear in our lives. Christmas shows us that our pain and humiliation are not things to reject but are windows (or chimney's, if you will) through which God's love and grace can enter.

Christmas is also good news for us who are rich and powerful because we find in Christ's incarnation the courage to give up our riches and power so that we can identify more easily with the neediness and powerlessness of others in our world. By doing what Oscar Romero did, humbling ourselves and siding with the poor, we can be counted among them and join in a genuine celebration of Christmas.

Click here to read more Advent and Christmas reflections from Oscar Romero. We offer his words with the prayer that they help draw you deeper into a genuine celebration of Christ’s birth this year.