| Ask most any American five-year-old, and the answer is likely to be yes. Santa, he'll tell you, is an overweight white guy who lives at the North Pole, dresses in fire-engine red, and consumes nothing but cookies and milk. On Christmas Eve, Santa hitches up his team of reindeer and flies through the skies to bring elf-made toys to good little girls and boys.
Well, every American child is wrong, and it's high time we stopped deceiving kids and told them the truth.
For starters, Santa is Black. He lives in Europe, not the North Pole. He does wear red at Christmas, but he's slim, not bowl-full-of-jelly fat. He does have a lot of little helpers, but his head elf, Bill, is REALLY big: well over 6 feet tall and built like a football player.
Like the original St. Nicholas — the 4th century saint who gave gifts to children — this Santa is a bishop: He's Macram Max Gassis, of the El Obeid diocese in Sudan. Because he combines elements of both Kris Kringle and Christ, let's call him Father Christmas.
Father Christmas makes only one stop every Christmas, and it's always the same place: Southern Sudan. Last year, Father Christmas flew into Sudan's Nuba Mountains, bringing Christmas to hundreds of children. He must travel secretly in order to avoid being detected by real-life (and very well-armed) grinches: Sudan's radical Muslim leaders.
These thugs don't care much for Father Christmas because he's spent the last few years telling the West about the atrocities Sudan's government — which wants to impose Islamic law on all of its citizens — commits against the Christian population of Southern Sudan. For this crime, Father Christmas has been put on a government hit list.
A contract on Santa! Ho! Ho Ho!
These government grinches steal a lot more from Sudanese Christians than their presents and roast beast. They steal land, crops and children.
On Christmas morning last year, they sent Antonov bombers searching for human targets. They didn't find them, because bombs had already reduced the village church (and everything else) to rubble. As the jets buzzed overhead, Bishop Gassis led a Christmas service in an "open-air cathedral" where 1,000 worshippers were hidden among huge sycamore trees. Hearing the jets, they stood silently and prayed; no one was harmed.
Tragically, that's usually not the case. At least 132 times last year, the government bombed schools, churches and hospitals in Southern Sudan. Their favorite targets are children. After killing 14 school children one day last May, a government spokesman announced, "The bombs landed where they were supposed to land." To get an idea of what this is like, think Columbine High School. And then imagine Columbine High School becoming routine.
The daily bombings are part of a campaign to drive the Christians off their land — land that sits over valuable oil reserves. Other tactics include poisoning wells, burning crops and kidnapping women and children, who are then sold into slavery in Arabic Northern Sudan.
The campaign is working: In recent years, four and a half million Sudanese Christians have been forced from their land. Two million have been killed outright or starved through government-sponsored famines. Tens of thousands live as slaves, forced to convert to Islam.
Some of the children manage to escape and make their way home. It's these children that Bishop Gassis comes to visit at Christmas, bringing his planeload of gifts.
The children are not unaware of the risks Father Christmas, the outlaw bishop, is taking to visit them this Christmas. While Santa's only worry is getting stuck in chimneys, Father Christmas must worry about getting shot down. Santa brings toys and candy; Father Christmas brings seeds and salt, clothing and plows.
Santa delivers his gifts in secret, while safely sleeping children dream of sugar plums; Father Christmas can't wait to see his children, and they can't wait to see him. Their faces light up when they catch sight of him, and they run joyfully into his arms. Father Christmas embraces them, and tenderly runs his fingers over the scars on their faces — scars created where their former masters branded them.
Father Christmas then passes out his gifts with the help of his head elf: Bill Saunders, a human rights attorney who set up a foundation to help the Christians of Sudan.
Sadly, Father Christmas can't give these kids what they want most for Christmas: Mothers, living far away in bondage. Fathers and brothers, killed by marauding soldiers.
As he did last year, Father Christmas will lead a Christmas service for his flock in hiding. The children will sing carols they have prepared for him: Songs like Go Tell It On the Mountain. Father Christmas will then baptize the hundreds of babies born since his last visit, marry hundreds of couples, and confirm many others into the Church.
Father Christmas cannot stay long, because agents of the Khartoum regime will be searching for him. But, God willing, he will be back next year.
Does Santa Claus really exist?
Perhaps not the overweight guy in the red suit who travels in a sleigh. Maybe the real Santa is anyone who reconciles the ancient gospel accounts with the needs of the modern world.
That seems to be what the original St. Nick did — a bishop who (according to
tradition) once slugged a man for mocking the divinity of Christ, but who
brought gifts to needy children. Nicholas in turn was following the example
of three kings who brought valuable gifts to the infant Christ — gifts He
would desperately need as His parents took flight into Egypt to avoid Herod's
soldiers.
Perhaps, then, the "real" Santa is anyone who believes that Christmas is, in
part, about continuing the tradition of helping those whom Christ called "the
least of these:" The hungry, the sick, the stranger, the prisoner and the
persecuted. By this definition, the "real" Santa is Bishop Gassis. Garbed, not in
fur-trimmed red velvet, but in scarlet robes symbolizing the blood of
martyrs, this brave and holy man brings hope to those whose only crime is
following their Lord.
Every true Santa follows the example of the first and greatest Gift Giver,
who offered His own Son to us as a Christmas present, 2,000 years ago: "For
unto us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government will be
upon his shoulder" (Isaiah 9:6). Evil governments are still on the shoulders of those who follow Him. No one knows that better than the Christians of Sudan. But the children who live in hiding in the Nuba Mountains know, as well, that they have a Gift no soldiers
or tyrants can take away.
Which is why, on Christmas morning, they will once again joyfully sing to
their beloved bishop:
Go tell it on the mountain,
Over the hills and everywhere,
Go tell it on the mountain
That Jesus Christ is born. 
(For more information on about Bishop Gassis and the Christians of Sudan, see http://www.petersvoice.com/gassis/index.html.)
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