7 ms·

I don't see what the big deal is. If you've been a good little boy or girl, then you have nothing to hide, right?

BuildTheRobots 11y ago
I've never managed to work out of Santa keeps a list of _everyone_ on earth and then indexes them as either Nice or Naughty, or if I manage to get added to one of the two for doing something particulally noteworthy over the last year. Or to put it another way, if _only_ the nice list gets leaked and I'm _not_ on it, does that mean I'm really naughty, or does it just mean I'm one of the 60% of people on earth who aren't Christian?
- buro9 11y ago
  I'm not sure that the whole Santa Claus thing is in the bible or part of Christianity.
  - drdeca 11y ago
    It is not. At all. It may have some influence from "Saint Nicholas" but that was, I'm pretty sure, after like, 1000 AD. So, uh, yeah. Some people want to take Santa out of Christmas to focus more on Christ, and I would generally agree.
    - stinkytaco 11y ago
      Well, I think there's a pretty solid argument for Santa being a stand-in Jesus, at least in our current conception of him. You're punished for evil and rewarded for nice and he's watching you all the time? My understanding from listening to some guy on the radio, almost certainly on NPR, is that's a fairly modern conception. It's like they couldn't put the Christ back into Christmas, so they shoehorned St. Nick into Christ instead.
      - drdeca 11y ago
        If so, not a very good stand-in imo. "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.". John 3:17 Christ didn't come to reward the people already doing good, and punish those doing evil. Rather, "[...]for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, [...]" People are not justified by being "good enough" by themselves, but rather, are "[...]justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, [...]". Your description of "You're punished for evil and rewarded for nice and he's watching you all the time?" is, I think, a very misleading and simplistic idea of Christ.
        upquark 11y ago
        Yeah, the algorithm needs its viral hook: being good enough is not enough, you need to spam 10 people with this message to achieve full redemption.
        drdeca 11y ago
        Not sure how you're getting that from what I said. I didn't mention evangelism at all? Why would you not include that in the "being good enough" part? I wasn't just saying that "being good enough" isn't enough. I was saying that no one (except Christ) is good enough. That one cannot, of oneself, earn or achieve justification, but that one is given justification, that one cannot deserve, as a gift.
  - BuildTheRobots 11y ago
    I was hoping to say "or I'm one of the x% of people in the world that doesn't believe in Santa" -but I entirely failed to work out what percentage of the populus that actually is; Christianity was my fallback stat. Whilst googling for that nonsense I did find a buzzfeed article [1] claiming that 43% of Americans believe in Santa and that 32% agree that "it's a verifiable fact that Santa Claus was white". Wowzer... well, seems like it's time for me to get my coat, fill the pockets with bricks and try and imitate Jesus on a large body of water... [1] http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/war-on-christmas-poll http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/war-on-christmas-pol...
  - aidos 11y ago
    Interestingly, I've discovered over the last few days that Christianity in the uk doesn't seem big in to Santa. The few openly Christian people I know have all told their kids (4yo) that Santa isn't real. That's kinda ruined it for our kids. Not judging, but I find it astoundingly hypocritical to dismiss one made up figure while religiously worshiping another!
    - mercer 11y ago
      It's not hypocritical if you believe the other is not made up. Much as I'm not a believer in a higher power, I really dislike these kinds of easy swipes at something that others (including people very dear to me) consider the foundation of their entire lives. It feels cheap and condescending.
      - jessaustin 11y ago
        You see this again and again on HN. Apparently it's some sort of signalling, although what it signals besides "I'm an asshole!" remains unclear.
        krapp 11y ago
        Mocking obvious logical fallacies and contradictions is an easy way to condemn religion as a farce, and religious people as being hypocrites at best, or imbeciles at worst. It signals intellectual superiority on the part of the skeptical in-group.
      - aidos 11y ago
        My comment about it being hypocritical was meant to be somewhat tounge in cheek (as vaguely hinted at by the exclamation mark), though I can see how it could be offensive (and wasn't obvious). Apologies. There is a deeper interesting conversation to be had around this topic though. Unfortunately I'm not in the position to engage in it at the moment and I suspect the tone might already be set in the wrong way (given that a sibling comment here has already called me an asshole).
    - triangleman 11y ago
  - lostlogin 11y ago
    I can't reply to BuildTheRobots below, but the white Santa thing begins to get a little dark if you dive in. Black Peter and Saint Nicholas are where you start. Edit: I may be too harsh on the racism thing, but I'm not certain. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinterklaas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinterklaas
    - tripzilch 11y ago
      (disclaimer: I'm Dutch, where Sinterklaas is a real big thing) We're working on it. I agree that Zwarte Piet (Black Peter) is indeed racist, although (mostly) not intentionally so. I never gave the tradition a second thought either, until some years back I read the English Wikipedia on Zwarte Piet. I was a bit confused at first (happy childhood memories were suddenly badwrong) but then I read further into it and, yes it's racist (IMO). One of the problems is that over here we're not really taught a lot about the whole minstrel/blackface traditions. The Dutch did do slavery, but unlike the US, we didn't bring them home (instead exploited them in Indonesia and South Africa), therefore the cultural impact of that is very different over here. The people with a history of that exploitation for a large part do not live here. But when I did read about blackface/minstrel traditions, it's impossible to deny that yes, it's not just that his face is "black like soot" (an excuse we came up with in the second half of the 20th century--see we don't want Zwarte Piet to be a racist character), because also Zwarte Piet's costume is exactly like those blackface minstrels. Most Dutch people don't know that bit. The difference today, however, is globalisation. For a bunch of decades already, people from all over the world came to live here. And some (perhaps a lot, even) of those people have that history (in their families, etc). Those people have lived here for a long time now, started families in NL, etc. And for them, to see that image of Zwarte Piet, it hurts. And they have just as much right to have an opinion about what should and should not be "Dutch culture". Just like others would have a real bad feeling if there was a festive holiday about people parading around swastikas and putting naughty children on trains (sorry for the Godwin, but I think it's a useful analogy in this case, and otherwise just ignore it). The problem, however, is that I don't know what the right solution is either. It's a tradition that nearly everybody has extremely happy (and not racist) childhood memories about. It's hard (as a culture) to let that go. You can't have Sinterklaas without Pieten, just like Santa needs his elven helpers. Sinterklaas is played as a really old man, slightly forgetful etc, he needs them, it's part of the play. But, say, if you paint Piet's face a different neutral colour (blue or yellow or whatever, kids don't care, we know this), he (or she, Piet has been multi-gender for quite a while--even though it's a male name, it's used as a title, like Smurfs) still wears that costume. But if you also change the costume, then Piet is no longer Piet, because those were their defining characteristics. At least that's how it seems right now. So it's hard, no obvious solution. But the positive thing, what I'm seeing is, there is a growing awareness. There is also (loud) resistance, of course, but the cat is out of the bag now. We probably won't fix it next year. But maybe the year after that. I really believe that, in a few years, we will figure out some variation on the Sinterklaas theme that is not hurtful to parts of the Dutch people. And the kids will love it regardless, so that's good. edit/afterthought : Sinterklaas keeps his naughty/nice list in a physical book which he carries around everywhere he goes. Santa's mistake for going digital :-P
  - Canada 11y ago
    True. He's the one we truly worship now. We have for decades. God bless our favored corporations that enable consumerism. Merry Christmas! And to all, a good night!
- chris_wot 11y ago
  Naughty or nice makes for a crappy index. I'd imagine he'd use some sort of weighted distribution to determine niceness and naughtiness. I'd think it's not just the NSA that wants to see this dataset. Can you imagine the gold-mine that would be for demographers? I mean, this isn't a sample of data, this is the entire population! Amazon and Target ain't got nothing on Santa Claus. Actually, now that I think of it, that kind of makes him a bit creepy.
  - lostlogin 11y ago
    I'd bet that the Facebook database (et al) would have a better dataset that the Santa one, and without a doubt it's creepy.
    - kuschku 11y ago
      This leads to an interesting discussion: We are okay with Santa knowing if everyone was nice or naughty because we get something in return. Maybe if the government gave out christmas gifts based on if people were nice or naughty we’d be more okay to accept their spying?
      - chris_wot 11y ago
        Well, we kind of aren't, given Santa doesn't exist. If he did exist, then I'd be quite concerned that a strange man was compiling dossiers of information about my children and breaking into my house to leave gifts for my kids!
- downandout 11y ago
  If you don't appear on the nice list this year, it's probably because you used an HN comment thread about the NSA hacking Santa's database to start a religious discussion.
  - BuildTheRobots 11y ago
    I honestly wasn't trying for a religious discussion (if I wanted one, then I probably wouldn't pick Christianity -I can speak about others with more depth. I was honestly amused by the idea of nice/naughty being X or Y and if !X==Y or not... this all kinda spiralled out of hand o_0

I've never managed to work out of Santa keeps a list of _everyone_ on earth and then indexes them as either Nice or Naughty, or if I manage to get added to one of the two for doing something particulally noteworthy over the last year. Or to put it another way, if _only_ the nice list gets leaked and I'm _not_ on it, does that mean I'm really naughty, or does it just mean I'm one of the 60% of people on earth who aren't Christian?

buro9 11y ago
I'm not sure that the whole Santa Claus thing is in the bible or part of Christianity.
- drdeca 11y ago
  It is not. At all. It may have some influence from "Saint Nicholas" but that was, I'm pretty sure, after like, 1000 AD. So, uh, yeah. Some people want to take Santa out of Christmas to focus more on Christ, and I would generally agree.
  - stinkytaco 11y ago
    Well, I think there's a pretty solid argument for Santa being a stand-in Jesus, at least in our current conception of him. You're punished for evil and rewarded for nice and he's watching you all the time? My understanding from listening to some guy on the radio, almost certainly on NPR, is that's a fairly modern conception. It's like they couldn't put the Christ back into Christmas, so they shoehorned St. Nick into Christ instead.
    - drdeca 11y ago
      If so, not a very good stand-in imo. "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.". John 3:17 Christ didn't come to reward the people already doing good, and punish those doing evil. Rather, "[...]for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, [...]" People are not justified by being "good enough" by themselves, but rather, are "[...]justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, [...]". Your description of "You're punished for evil and rewarded for nice and he's watching you all the time?" is, I think, a very misleading and simplistic idea of Christ.
      - upquark 11y ago
        Yeah, the algorithm needs its viral hook: being good enough is not enough, you need to spam 10 people with this message to achieve full redemption.
        drdeca 11y ago
        Not sure how you're getting that from what I said. I didn't mention evangelism at all? Why would you not include that in the "being good enough" part? I wasn't just saying that "being good enough" isn't enough. I was saying that no one (except Christ) is good enough. That one cannot, of oneself, earn or achieve justification, but that one is given justification, that one cannot deserve, as a gift.
- BuildTheRobots 11y ago
  I was hoping to say "or I'm one of the x% of people in the world that doesn't believe in Santa" -but I entirely failed to work out what percentage of the populus that actually is; Christianity was my fallback stat. Whilst googling for that nonsense I did find a buzzfeed article [1] claiming that 43% of Americans believe in Santa and that 32% agree that "it's a verifiable fact that Santa Claus was white". Wowzer... well, seems like it's time for me to get my coat, fill the pockets with bricks and try and imitate Jesus on a large body of water... [1] http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/war-on-christmas-poll http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/war-on-christmas-pol...
- aidos 11y ago
  Interestingly, I've discovered over the last few days that Christianity in the uk doesn't seem big in to Santa. The few openly Christian people I know have all told their kids (4yo) that Santa isn't real. That's kinda ruined it for our kids. Not judging, but I find it astoundingly hypocritical to dismiss one made up figure while religiously worshiping another!
  - mercer 11y ago
    It's not hypocritical if you believe the other is not made up. Much as I'm not a believer in a higher power, I really dislike these kinds of easy swipes at something that others (including people very dear to me) consider the foundation of their entire lives. It feels cheap and condescending.
    - jessaustin 11y ago
      You see this again and again on HN. Apparently it's some sort of signalling, although what it signals besides "I'm an asshole!" remains unclear.
      - krapp 11y ago
        Mocking obvious logical fallacies and contradictions is an easy way to condemn religion as a farce, and religious people as being hypocrites at best, or imbeciles at worst. It signals intellectual superiority on the part of the skeptical in-group.
    - aidos 11y ago
      My comment about it being hypocritical was meant to be somewhat tounge in cheek (as vaguely hinted at by the exclamation mark), though I can see how it could be offensive (and wasn't obvious). Apologies. There is a deeper interesting conversation to be had around this topic though. Unfortunately I'm not in the position to engage in it at the moment and I suspect the tone might already be set in the wrong way (given that a sibling comment here has already called me an asshole).
  - triangleman 11y ago
- lostlogin 11y ago
  I can't reply to BuildTheRobots below, but the white Santa thing begins to get a little dark if you dive in. Black Peter and Saint Nicholas are where you start. Edit: I may be too harsh on the racism thing, but I'm not certain. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinterklaas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinterklaas
  - tripzilch 11y ago
    (disclaimer: I'm Dutch, where Sinterklaas is a real big thing) We're working on it. I agree that Zwarte Piet (Black Peter) is indeed racist, although (mostly) not intentionally so. I never gave the tradition a second thought either, until some years back I read the English Wikipedia on Zwarte Piet. I was a bit confused at first (happy childhood memories were suddenly badwrong) but then I read further into it and, yes it's racist (IMO). One of the problems is that over here we're not really taught a lot about the whole minstrel/blackface traditions. The Dutch did do slavery, but unlike the US, we didn't bring them home (instead exploited them in Indonesia and South Africa), therefore the cultural impact of that is very different over here. The people with a history of that exploitation for a large part do not live here. But when I did read about blackface/minstrel traditions, it's impossible to deny that yes, it's not just that his face is "black like soot" (an excuse we came up with in the second half of the 20th century--see we don't want Zwarte Piet to be a racist character), because also Zwarte Piet's costume is exactly like those blackface minstrels. Most Dutch people don't know that bit. The difference today, however, is globalisation. For a bunch of decades already, people from all over the world came to live here. And some (perhaps a lot, even) of those people have that history (in their families, etc). Those people have lived here for a long time now, started families in NL, etc. And for them, to see that image of Zwarte Piet, it hurts. And they have just as much right to have an opinion about what should and should not be "Dutch culture". Just like others would have a real bad feeling if there was a festive holiday about people parading around swastikas and putting naughty children on trains (sorry for the Godwin, but I think it's a useful analogy in this case, and otherwise just ignore it). The problem, however, is that I don't know what the right solution is either. It's a tradition that nearly everybody has extremely happy (and not racist) childhood memories about. It's hard (as a culture) to let that go. You can't have Sinterklaas without Pieten, just like Santa needs his elven helpers. Sinterklaas is played as a really old man, slightly forgetful etc, he needs them, it's part of the play. But, say, if you paint Piet's face a different neutral colour (blue or yellow or whatever, kids don't care, we know this), he (or she, Piet has been multi-gender for quite a while--even though it's a male name, it's used as a title, like Smurfs) still wears that costume. But if you also change the costume, then Piet is no longer Piet, because those were their defining characteristics. At least that's how it seems right now. So it's hard, no obvious solution. But the positive thing, what I'm seeing is, there is a growing awareness. There is also (loud) resistance, of course, but the cat is out of the bag now. We probably won't fix it next year. But maybe the year after that. I really believe that, in a few years, we will figure out some variation on the Sinterklaas theme that is not hurtful to parts of the Dutch people. And the kids will love it regardless, so that's good. edit/afterthought : Sinterklaas keeps his naughty/nice list in a physical book which he carries around everywhere he goes. Santa's mistake for going digital :-P
- Canada 11y ago
  True. He's the one we truly worship now. We have for decades. God bless our favored corporations that enable consumerism. Merry Christmas! And to all, a good night!
chris_wot 11y ago
Naughty or nice makes for a crappy index. I'd imagine he'd use some sort of weighted distribution to determine niceness and naughtiness. I'd think it's not just the NSA that wants to see this dataset. Can you imagine the gold-mine that would be for demographers? I mean, this isn't a sample of data, this is the entire population! Amazon and Target ain't got nothing on Santa Claus. Actually, now that I think of it, that kind of makes him a bit creepy.
- lostlogin 11y ago
  I'd bet that the Facebook database (et al) would have a better dataset that the Santa one, and without a doubt it's creepy.
  - kuschku 11y ago
    This leads to an interesting discussion: We are okay with Santa knowing if everyone was nice or naughty because we get something in return. Maybe if the government gave out christmas gifts based on if people were nice or naughty we’d be more okay to accept their spying?
    - chris_wot 11y ago
      Well, we kind of aren't, given Santa doesn't exist. If he did exist, then I'd be quite concerned that a strange man was compiling dossiers of information about my children and breaking into my house to leave gifts for my kids!
downandout 11y ago
If you don't appear on the nice list this year, it's probably because you used an HN comment thread about the NSA hacking Santa's database to start a religious discussion.
- BuildTheRobots 11y ago
  I honestly wasn't trying for a religious discussion (if I wanted one, then I probably wouldn't pick Christianity -I can speak about others with more depth. I was honestly amused by the idea of nice/naughty being X or Y and if !X==Y or not... this all kinda spiralled out of hand o_0