We all know that Santa Claus possesses the most advanced intelligence apparatus the world has ever seen — an omnipresent surveillance network rivaling anything the National Security Agency (NSA) itself could assemble. He sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He can get into your house under cover of darkness. He monitors moral behavior with unnerving precision, sorts humanity into lists and executes judgment at a global scale. Yet, as concerning as Santa’s intelligence operation is, there is something far more worrisome for reformed Christians: his theology.

One of the cheeriest Christmas songs on the radio hides a significant doctrinal misstep. In the classic song Here Comes Santa Claus, we happily sing, “Santa knows we’re all God’s children, that makes everything right.” At first glance, that line reads like harmless holiday sentiment, but it contains a profound and twofold theological problem. The lyric incorrectly implies both that everyone is already one of God’s children and that that status — simply being God’s child — instantly makes everything right. Both claims are defective, and together they undercut the seriousness of the gospel. 

The first problem is a category error: we are not all God’s children. All people are creaturely and image-bearing, yes, but image-bearing is not identical to adoption into the Kingdom of God. John Calvin himself insisted that the title “child of God” belongs properly to those chosen by God before the creation of the world to be united to Him for eternity, commonly known as “the elect.” Calvin labels the act of God predetermining people in this way as “predestination.” As Paul writes in Romans 8:29-30 (ESV), “For those who He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom He predestined He also called, and those whom He called He also justified, and those whom He justified He also glorified.” Paul points to a sovereign act of God — to a gift conferred to a specific few, not a universal status. Adoption is an act of divine grace in Christ alone, not an automatic human attribute. For Santa to claim that adoption is the natural condition of every human being collapses the biblical distinction between creature and child and erases the necessity of receiving Christ. So no, Santa, we are not all “God’s children.”

The second problem is a mistake about the consequences of adoption. Even for those who are God’s children (the Elect), being adopted does not mean that “everything is right” in the sense of moral perfection or final sanctification. The Christian life is not an instant teleport from total depravity to flawless holiness; it is a process of being transformed. Calvin’s doctrine of sanctification insists on the ongoing nature of growth in holiness, a lifetime of mortification and vivification, of repentance and renewal — inseparable from justification and by grace alone. To suggest that adoption itself makes everything right falsely minimizes the reality of remaining in sin, the need for continual and intentional conformity to Christ, and the disciplining work of the Spirit. The gospel promises final restoration in Christ, but it also promises present struggle — and that struggle, I would suggest, matters.

Put together, Santa is dangerous because he both universalizes belonging and totally brushes off the hard process of sanctification. Universal belonging without redemption is mere sentiment; instantaneous perfection without sanctification is simply illusion. The gospel refuses both shortcuts, declaring that not all are God’s children by nature, and that those who are must live a life of sanctifying grace to be conformed by the Holy Spirit to the image of Christ. 

This is where it becomes necessary to contrast heretical Santa with the historical St. Nicholas. The real Nicholas — the fourth-century bishop of Myra — was not a dispenser of catch-all consolation; he was a defender of doctrine and a protector of the church’s truth. Traditional tales depict him confronting error with vigor, striking Arius at Nicaea for his attacks on Christ’s deity. That is a far cry from the modern, commercial Santa who borrows Nicholas’ name while flattening his theological convictions into happy, inclusive slogans. Nicholas’ fidelity to the particularities of Christ’s person, deity and work stands opposed to Santa’s casual flattening of gospel categories.

St. Nicholas safeguarded the gospel’s demands; Santa softens them into a world where everyone is assumed to belong and everything is assumed to be already right. The former insisted on the necessity of Christ alone and the church’s disciplining life; the latter suggests that belonging is automatic and that moral or spiritual growth is optional. The bishop of Myra would very likely have corrected the false comforts offered by Santa and his antics.

So, is Santa a universalist? In the theology his image tends to promote, yes: the modern Santa makes two heretical mistakes — universal adoption and instantaneous rectification — that together make for a comforting but theologically bankrupt creed. The church must resist Santa’s sentimental theology. The real gospel insists that not all are God’s children by nature, that adoption is a gracious gift received in Christ, and that even those who are children must be sanctified over a lifetime. Nothing “makes everything right” except the finished work of Christ and the Spirit’s patient work in us — and that work is both particular and continual, not universal and automatic.

So, as Santa prepares to break into your place of residence in the coming weeks, consider leaving out for him a copy of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, Philip Melanchthon’s Loci Communes, or simply the Bible — alongside the classic milk and cookies, of course.