My Santa Claus= Copernicus’s Revolving Sun?

Apart from the fact that they shared the same name i.e. Nicholas (albeit with different spellings), both Copernicus and Santa Claus seemed to evoke quite a few similar ideas. It might seem amazing to some, how two such different people would have something in common, yet a pattern can be identified relating the two men.

When I was younger, I believed in Santa Claus, a jolly old man living at the North Pole, leaving the comforts of his fantastic workshop only once a year, on Christmas, to bring all us children gifts that had been craftily made by his elves at his workshop. Every morning on the 25th of December, I would get out my bed and walk over to the Christmas tree to search for my presents. Three things confirmed my belief in Santa Claus. The first was that my parents had told me, and read me stories about him, exemplifying knowledge through authority, or people who I trusted. The second was the disappearance of the cookies and milk I always left out for Santa, believing he must be tired and hungry after his journey. Whenever I woke up, they were gone, suggesting that someone had eaten them. My belief, that Santa was too powerful for someone else to eat his food, provided the base for my reasoning, leaving no space for doubts. Finally, Santa always got me what I asked for, regardless of what it may have been. Looking back, this might have been because my demands were too modest, and easy to satisfy, maybe because my parents always ‘advised’ me on what I should ask for, Santa not liking greedy children.

The first traces of doubt appeared in my mind when one year the gifts were wrapped in paper from a local store. This was furthered when I saw my driver carrying the presents up into my parents’ room. My brother fuelled my speculation, by telling me Santa did not exist, prompting me to stage a ‘stake out’ to catch the imposter in the act. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t as shocked as one might’ve imagined when I caught my mom tiptoeing down the stairs to begin placing the gifts under the tree. One quick confrontation later, I knew the truth and all my doubts about Santa Clause (or his existence) had been dispelled. Unwilling to let go of the idea that his entire existence had been fabricated, I started to do research about him, trying to trace his roots. My findings were most interesting, as I came to know of the existence of a Saint Nicholas, who used to give money to the poor. The tradition stemmed from his existence, and I found that further reports of a Sinter Klaas (the Dutch version of Santa Claus), actually existed, a thin man who visited orphanages and children’s homes, giving each child some fruit or food. With the amalgamation of these two stories Santa Claus was born, along with the stories of Christmas candies and Christmas being a special day for children specifically, without its religious connotations.

Copernicus found himself in a similar situation, well before I existed. While the rest of the world proclaimed that the earth was the centre of the universe, and that all the celestial bodies revolved around the sun, Copernicus used his naked eye and observed the orbital of the other planets. Like the Santa Claus theory, people had observed the sun rising and setting on two different sides of the earth prompting them to believe that the sun revolved around the earth. Like me believing my parents when they told me about the existence of Santa Claus, people believed the Pope and the Church when they said that it is in fact the sun that revolves around the earth. Despite the Church’s obvious dismissal of his ideas, Copernicus persevered to prove his theory, and continued countering Aristotle’s.

Years later, when Galileo used his telescope to prove the same, the Church once again rejected the proposal, misleading the masses. Despite several threats from the Church, Galileo continued to further this research, until he finally succeeded against all odds, having the support of enough empirical evidence, as well as reason and logic, thus making Copernicus’s theory hard to disprove, until the Church, again like my parents, finally had to declare that they had, in fact, been wrong and succeeded in misleading so many people. We can therefore see between the two situations, a common thread on the basis of which a belief was first formed, and then shattered by the truth tests, namely coherence and correspondence. Knowing what I knew about the wrapping paper, and the existence of the local department store I was able to judge the red herring in the situation. Similarly, knowing what Copernicus knew about the planets’ movement, and by his careful observation, he was able to recognize the Church’s error, and find a way of rectifying it. The two parallels drawn between these situations indicate the necessity of one to be a thinking and logical individual, whether we set out to prove the existence of Santa Claus, or shake the fundamentals of astronomy.