The idea of the “cult of Santa Claus” has been on my mind for a long time, long before I ever tried to articulate it publicly. It began years ago during a conversation with one of my state legislators. He had become fixated on sending out surveys and polls to his constituents, asking what their concerns were and what they “needed.” At first glance that seems harmless — even admirable — but something about it bothered me. It took a while before I finally said it out loud: “You’re not Santa Claus.”
I didn’t mean it as a joke. What I meant was that his job was not to collect wish lists and then dispense gifts from above. His job was to govern, deliberate, and uphold principles, not to manufacture dependency or give people the impression that their needs must be met by a political benefactor. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how deeply this mentality had permeated American life. The Santa Claus pattern is no longer just a children’s myth. It has quietly become a model for how people expect government to function.
Santa Claus is a benevolent watcher. He sees everything. He keeps track of who behaves properly. He rewards compliance with gifts that appear from an invisible workshop. He teaches children that goodness is something judged by an external authority, and that blessings come from above, not from one’s own effort or responsibility. Most people shed the literal belief in Santa, but they retain the psychology. And that psychology maps almost perfectly onto the modern administrative state.
The administrative state is unelected. It endures no matter who wins an election. It supervises, regulates, tracks, and evaluates. It rewards cooperation and punishes resistance. And like Santa’s workshop, its mechanisms are hidden from public view. The public sees only the “gift” — the grant, the program, the funding opportunity, the new initiative — without seeing what strings come attached. They see the wrapping paper, not the conditions behind it.
Children don’t see the cost of Santa’s gifts. Adults don’t see the cost of federal ones.
This pattern shapes the behavior of citizens in subtle ways. People begin to assume the government’s role is to solve personal and social problems the way Santa solves Christmas morning: magically, generously, and without visible sacrifice. They expect solutions to fall from the sky. And when those solutions come with regulatory strings, they hardly notice, because the gift itself captures their attention.
This is where surveys and “community input sessions” come in. Just as a child writes a letter to Santa because the ritual teaches him to, citizens are drawn into bureaucratic rituals that give the impression of participation while actually manufacturing demand. A town may not have thought it needed a program until the survey asked about it. A community may not have imagined a new initiative until it was presented as an option to consider. The need arises from the prompt, not from the people.
I saw this firsthand in that conversation with my legislator. His surveys weren’t simply measuring public sentiment; they were shaping it. They were encouraging people to think of government as the source of solutions — as the giver of gifts. And he, consciously or not, was stepping into the role of Santa Claus: the man who listens to everyone’s wishes and then descends with funded answers.
This mentality transforms the relationship between citizens and government. Instead of seeing themselves as responsible for their own communities, people start to look upward for relief. Issues that once would have been handled locally — through civic associations, churches, personal initiative, or neighborly cooperation — are now expected to be handled by programs, grants, and administrative directives. The moral framework shifts from responsibility to expectation.
And once people think this way, they naturally begin searching for leaders who can fulfill the Santa role. They want someone to “take care of it,” someone who promises solutions rather than discipline, and someone who carries the appearance of benevolence. This creates the environment for the modern cult of personality, where political figures are evaluated less on their principles and more on their ability to dispense benefits. The crowd wants a Barabbas — a figure of action — not a teacher of principles. This isn’t because Americans are bad people; it’s because they’ve been conditioned to want gifts rather than governance.
The administrative state reinforces this conditioning constantly. Every new initiative, every new grant, every new “free” program strengthens the belief that gifts come from above and must be accepted gratefully. But every gift carries a cost. Federal money reshapes local priorities. It transforms elected officials into middlemen for bureaucratic agendas. It binds towns and states to expectations they did not set. And all the while, citizens become less aware of what self-government actually is, because they rarely practice it.
The cult of Santa Claus isn’t real in a literal sense, but it is very real in our civic imagination. It trains people to look outside themselves for the solutions to their problems. It creates consumers of government rather than participants in community. And it blurs the line between civic duty and personal dependency.
If we want to recover real self-government, we cannot treat elected officials as Santa Claus or the administrative state as a magical workshop. We cannot build our political expectations around the hope that someone else will deliver the answers wrapped up in bright paper with a bow. Self-government demands maturity. It requires citizens who recognize costs, who accept responsibility, and who understand that freedom cannot survive in a culture that waits for gifts from above.
The day I told my legislator he wasn’t Santa Claus, I meant it as a simple correction. But over time, it has grown into a clearer insight: a free people cannot behave like children waiting for Christmas morning. If we want liberty, we have to grow up — and reclaim the responsibilities that come with governing ourselves.
Authors’ opinions are their own and may not represent those of Grok Media, LLC, GraniteGrok.com, its sponsors, readers, authors, or advertisers.
Got Something to Say, We Want to Hear It. Comment or submit Op-Eds to steve@granitegrok.com
