Santa Claus is real, and Bernie Sanders is not.  He is a fiction that has been around as long as envy.  He is a tool for the unscrupulous to aggravate a population's misery while inflaming its most wicked impulses. 

Bernie Sanders has never lifted a beggar from poverty or enriched a child with education or empowered the voiceless with agency.  He has done none of these things because doing so would weaken his army.  He seeks legions of misguided and dangerous souls who will choose ignorance and vengeance rather than enlightenment and mercy.  He seeks those who would willfully ignore the lessons of history and those unwilling to forgive the trespasses behind them.  He is the stubbed toe that will never heal, reminding you with every step that you were once wronged in the world, wherever and however long ago that might have been.  To release that anger is to temper your usefulness to his aims, so he will press you to store your hate until the pressure bursts.  Bernie Sanders is there to remind you that someone out there has something, anything, that you don't yet possess and that by depriving that person of that something, you will somehow gain something, too.  To join his cause is to sacrifice your own conscience, to permit him to keep you aggrieved until the end of your days. 

What Santa understands, and no socialist ever will, is that Christmas arises from the individual heart, and not from the receiving of promises and "free" things.  True charity is always voluntary and never comes from the heavy-handed mandates of the IRS.  It springs from the soul, when a person comes honestly through reason and compassion to extend help to others and, by so doing, lifts their burdens.  Santa knows there is such a thing as society, and it has nothing to do with the State.  It exists apart from government and political party and statutory law.  It is the moment two people come together to create something beyond themselves, which is the very reason marriage and family provide society with its foundation. 

Santa Claus rejects socialism's siren song because he knows that society and socialism can never coexist.  The latter arises from its hatred of the former.  Socialism is government's promise to its disciples that it will punish or reward the individual until achieving collective perfection, while society is man's promise to his fellow man that through common purpose the individual can achieve more than when alone.  Socialism sees the individual as a part, government as the machine, and utopia as the finished product.  Society sees each individual as the finished product, government as a regrettable guard against our worst impulses, and civilization as our shared inheritance.  Socialism never asks; it demands.  It devours all meaning.  It strips away at the community and the family and finally the individual soul.  It accomplishes its aims not through compelling argument, but compelling force.  "It replaces society's promises to one another with the promises of the State to do what's best for one and all.  And because the personal must be made to be political, government for everyone must be made to be everywhere."

Socialism may promise perfect society, but it ends up leaving no society at all.  

Santa Claus may arrive each year with new presents and toys, but make no mistake which side he is on.  His message is forgiveness and love.  He brings blessings and good cheer and reunion.  He is the jovial expression of our common humanity and purpose.  He is the carolers on the corner, the warm smiles exchanged by strangers, the moment we pray to God and thank Him for all we have.  While Bernie Sanders is not real, Santa Claus very much is.  He is all around us this time of year, reminding us that when we help others, we find no greater reward.  He gives us what socialism never can: the means to find redemption among our fellow man.  Santa Claus quickly comes and goes, but the society he fosters lasts for as long as we cherish his message: that good acts, not good government, set us free.