The question echoes for generations, filled with curiosity and a touch of magic. Does Santa Claus, that kind old man with a white beard and red suit, really exist? Perhaps the answer is not as simple as it seems. The figure of Santa Claus has its roots in the story of Saint Nicholas, a Christian bishop who lived in the 4th century in the region of present-day Türkiye. Saint Nicholas was known for his generosity and kindness, helping the poor and needy. One of the most famous stories about him tells that he secretly gifted three sisters with dowries so they could get married by throwing bags of gold through the open windows. This reputation for generosity made Saint Nicholas a highly revered saint, especially in Europe. Over time, their stories and legends were combined with local traditions, transforming them into the joyful and magical figure we know as Santa Claus today. The image of Santa Claus has changed over the centuries. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Dutch immigrants brought to North America the tradition of "Sinterklaas", a celebration of Saint Nicholas that eventually merged with other European traditions. In the 19th century, the modern image of Santa Claus began to consolidate with the help of writers and artists. Clement Clarke Moore, with his poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (also known as "The Night Before Christmas"), described Santa Claus as a jolly, chubby man who traveled in a sleigh pulled by reindeer. Thomas Nast's illustrations at the end of the 19th century also played an important role, solidifying the image of the old man with the white beard and red clothes. In the 1930s, Coca-Cola's advertising campaign, featuring illustrations by Haddon Sundblom, helped further popularize the image of Santa Claus as we know him today. These campaigns featured a warm, friendly Santa wearing the signature red costume that has become iconic. Believing in Santa Claus or not is a personal decision, a reflection of what each person carries in their heart. Children see him with shining eyes, believing in his arrival through chimneys or open windows. Adults, on the other hand, may see it as a metaphor for the spirit of giving and sharing. In every gift left under the tree, in every act of kindness, he lives. Santa Claus exists to the extent that we allow the magic of Christmas to flourish within us. We can all be a little bit of Santa Claus in the lives of our brothers and sisters. The spirit of Santa Claus is in every gesture of generosity, every act of kindness, and every opportunity we create to help others thrive. Being a Santa Claus is not just about giving gifts, but about offering support and creating opportunities for people to achieve a better life. Teaching, supporting and providing ways for someone to escape poverty is a true form of help. Help is welcome to give you a boost, but living off help doesn't make anyone progress. True help is that which empowers, which offers conditions so that each person can stand up and walk with their own strength. It's about giving opportunities and inspiring the search for a better future. But Christmas isn't about Santa Claus. At the heart of this celebration is the birth of Jesus Christ. For Christian homes, Christmas is a time of reflection, gratitude and celebration for the coming of the Savior. It is a time of family unity, of remembering the unconditional love and sacrifice that Jesus represents. The beauty of Christmas lies in its ability to unite different beliefs and traditions, celebrating peace, love and hope. Christ must always be born in our lives. He was so important that we count our years based on his birth and life. The Christian spirit invites us to be light and hope for others, exactly as Jesus taught us. So when you question the existence of Santa Claus, perhaps the real answer lies in the magic we feel when sharing love and kindness. It is an invitation to believe in the impossible, to allow the spirit of Christmas to touch our hearts and remind us of the true reason for this special season: Jesus. Have a great Christmas and a great 2025! Article published in Revista Conhecimento & Cidadania   Vol. IV No. 49 – December 2024 Edition - ISSN 2764-3867

The ideological battles on social media, the new battlefield of contemporary times, have very clearly shown the flaws in the strategy of what we understand as the “conservative movement”. We are possibly experiencing a guerrilla war, where the opponent launches incendiary bombs every day, forcing the brave soldiers to act as firefighters. The consequence of this is that advances are less consistent than we might expect. Even in the face of the overwhelming motorbikes, the significant number of followers of right-wing influencers, the excitement caused by Jair Bolsonaro's speeches in the “fenced playpen”, in general we watched each “fire” being put out and we sighed with relief at each narrative and false news overturned. We have been reactive, just like our representatives in the legislative houses, who need to employ human material from their offices and a lot of useful time in defenses, which despite resulting in the victory of truth, force them to postpone the presentation of new proposals and efficiently articulate a basis more compact and proactive parliament. The 2018 numbers still haunt some minds: Bolsonaro had 39% of the votes of qualified voters, Haddad had 32%, whites, nulls and abstentions totaled 29%. Even though there are suspicions regarding the number of votes received from side to side, which could have given Bolsonaro victory in the first round, non-voters are too visible to be ignored. Approximately 62 million voters said no to both sides or were so disillusioned that they didn't even leave their homes to vote. 62 million is such a significant number that any thought of “already won” would be considered something like electoral suicide. It's about the waste of time involved in defenses on social networks (some of them passionate), which paralyze our march towards the 62 million undecided people we want to reflect on. But after all, where do we want to get to? We are not saying that defending what is fair and right are wrong attitudes, but the waste of time with the left-wing electorate can be useless, as apparently they have not changed and will not change sides, even in the face of the truth. These are diametrically opposed world views, which produce electoral stillbirths. Professor Olavo de Carvalho already warned, referring to the issue of debates and was precise when he said: “This debate situation is defined above all by the person of the opponent, that is, what he is looking for in the debate, what his objective is and how you should treat him. Aristotle already recommended it, that is, he was the guy who best defined the rules for comparing evidence. He said that one should never argue with anyone who does not know or respect the rules of the test. So this becomes a universal precept.” In relation to those who are undecided or disillusioned, these should interest us, but not with memes or 'counter-memes', but with education, information and strategy. So, let's go back to the beginning of the 5th century BC to learn something about a particular war and its paradigm. Field battle strategies generally consisted of man-to-man confrontation in an almost chaotic manner. Victory and glory on a battlefield were possible for the army with the largest number of soldiers, so the coldness of numbers mattered a lot when it was necessary to decide between fighting or accepting a dishonorable surrender. On the other hand, the individual valor of some soldiers was also important. Bravery, physical strength, and a good sword or spear could tip the scales of fate favorably in favor of a smaller army. The paradigm of wars definitely changed at the end of that century and influenced the minds of many generals from then on. The Medical Wars brought into conflict two adversaries with expansionist characteristics: Greece and the Persian or Medo-Persian empire (the latter in the region where Iran is today located). Control of Ionia, a region currently belonging to Turkey, and in particular the city of Miletus, would give the victors control of important land trade routes and open the door to control of trade via the Aegean Sea, the Bosphorus Strait and finally the Black Sea. More than a question of military expansionism, it was above all a struggle for the subsistence of the people of Greece and Persia. The powerful Persian kingdom of King Darius I, under the command of General Mardonius, advanced towards Ionia, having recovered Thrace and Macedonia where several rebellions had put the strategic control of those regions at risk. In 490 BC, a second campaign, across the Aegean Sea, already under the command of Datis and Artaphernes, the Persian empire continued to regain control and aimed to attack Athens. The defense against this attack prevented, albeit temporarily, the Persian victory over Athens. In the famous Battle of Marathon, the Greek army commanded by General Milciades managed to defeat the Persians, who had a wide advantage. According to some historians, the Greek forces numbered 10 to 15 thousand men while the Persians numbered more than 20 thousand men when they disembarked in the Bay of Marathon. Some sources even indicate the Persians with forces that would reach 50 thousand men. The disproportion between the Greek and Persian forces made it obvious that, in hand-to-hand combat, man to man, the Persians would win easily. However, a new strategy was used and completely changed the scenario: the infantry formed in phalanxes. With a compact organization, surrounded and protected by shields interspersed with long spears, the Persian soldiers were unable to use their cavalry, they had no chance of approaching due to the long spears, their short swords were unviable and so, they were forced to retreat to the beach where they disembarked. The Persians were defeated, but in a completely unexpected way. The compact, trained, disciplined and persistent organization was the new thing. After the battle was won, Miltiades sent Pheidippides back to Athens to announce the victory. Approximately 42 kilometers away, in a heroic and at the same time dramatic race. According to reports, Phidippides fulfills his mission by informing: “rejoice, Athenians, we have won!” and collapses dead from the effort. True, romanticized myth? We don't know. The fact is that Pheidippides' supposed effort inspired one of the most difficult Olympic events, the marathon. At this point the stories come together. Among Bolsonaro's convinced voters and the 62 million undecided voters, there is an angry mob of activists who, as we said, use a guerrilla strategy with fake news, distortions, memes and derogatory videos that take focus and attention away from the “conservative movement”. . How can we call “movement” something that still resembles the hand-to-hand combat of antiquity, dispersed and chaotic? We are attacked individually with each piece of news and memes received, we often lose our emotional balance, we waste energy responding, trying to convince those who don't want to be convinced. Many times we slip into news planted among us that, however absurd they may seem, sound like music to our ears. We share and then we are labeled as fake news publishers by fact-checking agencies (agencies that are impossible to check). While all this is happening, time passes, the elections are approaching and we are still celebrating the more than 57 million votes received. May God grant that the words now addressed to the Bolsonarista electorate are just excessive zeal. However, it never hurts to encourage the creation of serious groups to study the activities of deputies and senators, listing their proposals, their votes and associations. Candidates for new seats in the “house of the people” must also be the target of our attention, to avoid the errors and mistakes made in 2018. As important as re-electing Bolsonaro is forming a solid and armored majority in Congress, which frees us from the need to govern supported by the so-called 'centrão', mercenary politicians who, as a rule, support themselves while giving support to those who occupy power. Phalanges formed in chambers at the Federal level, in states and municipalities, in addition to the Senate and the Supreme Court, added to an informed, conscious and participatory voter base, will provide the instruments that Bolsonaro currently does not have to govern within the four lines of the Constitution, as per he always defends. Legislative elections are the foundation for a successful Conservative government. To truly win our marathon, our infantry needs to gain strength and form compact phalanxes. Education, based on classical principles and values, is our shield, our daily example of what we defend is our longest spear, the truth hurts more than a thousand enemy arrows. Even though death is the laurel of victory for those who rush to announce the victory of a people, freedom is our most desired final prize. Article published in Knowledge & Citizenship Magazine  Vol. I No. 09 – April 2022 Edition - ISSN 2764-3867

There is, in people in general, a very great difficulty in understanding the world, the things that happen around them, and even what is said to them, or what is written. The representation of reality, for the vast majority of individuals, is completely different from what exists. Those who cannot understand things as they really are may have this difficulty due to a lack of knowledge (such as young children and illiterate people), mental disabilities or, finally, due to functional illiteracy. Let's deal here with this third group of individuals. Anyone who, despite being in full possession of their mental faculties, accepts everything they read, see and hear without reasoning, absorbs stories, ideas, news, narratives, knowledge and comments, without evaluating their veracity, their context in reality and their true objective , seeing one thing and understanding another, can be considered functionally illiterate. Monteiro Lobato immortalized his famous phrase: “a country is made with men and books.” Because only through reading, we can expand our spectrum of vision and understand reality as it is, and not as it is told to us. Only reading can rescue us from functional illiteracy. Reading the classics, traditional writers, literature that has spanned the centuries, will give us a broad understanding of reality and will allow us to identify the fallacies that are shoved down our throats. Blunting intelligence and preventing logical thinking is a powerful weapon of domination, as taught by Antonio Gramsci, an Italian communist, who wrote his Prison Notebooks, teaching how a society implodes, dominating her from the inside out: undermining her structures of knowledge, family and religion. If we understand that stupefying people is a natural way to control them, we will realize the importance of study for the formation of the intellect, and we will understand why real literature disappeared from the shelves of bookstores and school/university education. It is because of this that we see fewer and fewer people capable of developing reasoning, ordered thinking, intellectuality: because for fifty years now, Brazil has found itself in this process of deconstruction of inside out. All the left that returned from exile took up residence in Universities (as professors), in politics, in the media and in the arts. And obediently, he began the process taught by Gramsci. Aristotle said that a society is known by the music that is produced there. We are in a bad place... the musical genres and singers that are renowned and spread throughout the world, currently, do not even deserve to be commented on... young people don't know what classical music is, they have never heard of Bach, they have no idea what an opera is. And receive, through your ears, this cultural rubbish that is played out there. This process of idiotization of society, domination of thought and annihilation of intellectual authority is seen all over the world, and was very well explained by Flavio Gordon in his book, The Corruption of Intelligence . There he describes, step by step, the attempt to destroy conservatism, the pillars of society, and the implementation of a new era of thought. If we look at the current discourses on gender neutrality in language, this is easily evident. In Hitler's Germany, language was being modified, giving different meanings to certain expressions and words, so that the population was convinced about the correctness of the strategies applied by Nazism, and their necessity, to protect the common good. Changing language and its scope is a very important step in dominating society. After all, what is more powerful than transforming thoughts? When we analyze the brainwashing that communism and Nazism implemented in places where these government regimes were fully applied, the corruption of the population's intelligence becomes clear, through lying narratives , which were absorbed by the community. For this reason, and the possibility of learning from past mistakes, present in history, our best defense is attack. We need to invest everything in quality education, in intelligence organized for integral knowledge and in the search for truth. Only in this way can we ward off evil, pursue good and see things as they are. Knowledge is power. Whoever masters strategies and knows the right time to attack wins the war, as Sun Tzu said in The Art of War . We live in a war against Intelligence, which affects the entire world. Entire generations are being deprived of learning the moral and spiritual values that matter and order society. No wonder, emptiness and depression settled among us. Let's start? It's past time, but there's still time!!!! We can use our year-end promises, including this one: I want to become smarter !

Philosophy is abundant in helping us with concepts, so that we understand reality with greater clarity. In fact, its name itself has an etymological origin in the Greek phylos – love and sofia – wisdom. Love for knowledge. Well then. Classical philosophy studies brought us the view that man is a universe in himself. After all, if God made man in his image and likeness, he wanted to reproduce the macrocosm in the figure of each individual, with each one of us being a microcosm, which reproduces the Universe. The problem is when each of these men, when invested with legal power, decides to transform themselves into an island of wisdom, interpreting the laws and the constitution in their own way… To that end , we call it judicial activism. Imagine, then, that today, a fierce Law student, fighting to pass a public exam, serve society, studies the authors praised by the exam examiners , devours laws and jurisprudence, leaving aside your personal value judgment, in order to assimilate as much information as possible, to be approved… Result: approval in a judicial exam! But... once sworn in, this judge begins to understand things differently... now, when it would be possible to act with a certain functional independence and autonomy, he decides to make his own interpretations of the law and the constitution... Within the limits of what the legislator meant when he made the law – and this is called respecting the originalism of laws and their textuality, according to the great Antonin Scalia: no innovate, but extract the meaning of what the legislator meant – the magistrate could even interpret the law, applying it to the specific case at hand. However, by extending the scope of the law, extracting from it whatever you wish, adapting it to your understandings and making it elastic, given what you understand the legislator failed to do , it is precisely at this time that judicial activism is born. But let's go, explaining better what I mean: if our legislator, for example, in the Federal Constitution, that is, the Constituent Assembly, created to form the content of CF, said, in the fifth article, that the right to life is guaranteed, and that it is unavailable. Allied to this right, we have the penal code, punishing in its articles 124 to 127 the crime of abortion, that is, the pregnant woman herself, or whoever helps the pregnant woman to carry out an abortion abortion. It's clear to all of us that abortion is a crime, right? So much so that it is punished by the CP, and there is the fundamental right to life, preserved there by article 5. However, that person who became a magistrate the day before yesterday began to consider himself, as Thomas Sowell says, an intellectual anointed by God, practically an enthroned absolute monarch, and decided that the right to freedom, to “my body, my rules”, is absolute and superior to the right to life. In this way, if such a case of article 124 crime falls into his hands, this judge understands that there is no crime to punish, as the pregnant woman does what she wants with her own body. But what about the right to life of that little baby in the womb? Well, this will be relativized by the right to freedom. Like this? Well, because the judge understands that the fundamental rights to life and freedom are equivalent! But... this judicial activism does not begin at the first level of jurisdiction. It comes from the higher courts, and in a cascade effect, it begins to dominate all other judging bodies. When interpreting laws, in defense of their own points of view, without evaluating the will of the legislator, the judge begins to be an activist, acting in favor of their own causes and opinions, disfiguring the Law and the laws. Ah, but the judge is filling gaps in the law, adapting it to modernity. It will be? If the legislator wanted gay marriage, wouldn't it be provided for in an amendment to the federal constitution? If you wanted to allow abortion or the legalization of drugs, wouldn't you either? This is not a loophole in the law. It was not the legislator's will to regulate this. And judges need to accept this. All over the world, we have seen the advance of neoconstitutionalism. But what would that be? It would be an interpretation of the constitution in the light of principles, which in countries that call themselves democratic, especially, are in profusion in their constitutions. Raising these principles to the category of superior to laws, judges create a plasticity, an elasticity for their interpretation, that nothing will be left out. No law will have the power to block the advancement of decisions based on constitutional principles. However, the constitutional principle does not have this superpower... it needs to be interpreted in light of the legislator's will, and not overriding it. But why? For a very simple reason: The legislator was elected by the people, to legislate. He was given a mandate to create laws that regulate life in society. The judge was not elected. He either took the exam, or was appointed to his position, which is normally for life, and did not receive a power of attorney from the population to legislate in his name. Therefore, it is absolutely illegal and kills the tripartition of powers, this unbridled activism that has been seen around. And what would JURISTOCRACY be? Well, juristocracy is an offshoot of activism. Every time the Judiciary, through its decisions and interpretations, based on the free conviction of members of the judicial courts, the tendency is for this power to, little by little, become preponderant over the other powers, generating an imbalance between the three. Because if the legislative function does not belong to it, but its members insist on exercising it, this Power will soon swallow the others. This is called Juristocracy: a country governed by judicial decisions, and no longer by executive and legislative laws. In dictatorships, such as Venezuela and Cuba, as well as in Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy, this procedure was quickly established, with court judges deciding, in accordance with the desire of the dictators in power, under penalty of being removed from their positions. By bowing to the desire of the rulers, adapting the interpretation of laws to what pleases the regime, these magistrates created a predominance of the judiciary over the other powers, causing an imbalance so evident that Hitler's judges were called Reich Judges, many of them having been arrested and convicted after the fall of the regime, and even declaring, in their trials, that they were unaware of the existence of concentration camps in their country. This is a typical example of juristocracy. But can't the legislature and the executive do anything? Obviously yes. The constitutional legislator provided the three powers with effective constitutional remedies, so that abuses can be curbed. Unfortunately, it is clear, observing the dynamics of countries in which juristocracy has established itself, that it is comfortable for the other powers for the Judiciary to call the shots. Often, there is a veiled agreement between the heads of the 3 powers, who admit this predominance of the judiciary, in exchange for other advantages, be it corruption cases archived, appointments of dubious people to higher courts, with the approval of the top judiciary, revocation of mandates of personas non gratas for them… Where shamelessness prevails, criminal activity takes hold. And that is why we have seen a dizzying growth of this neoconstitutionalism, which serves the interests of powerful people. As long as universities are a hotbed of ideologies and positions favorable to neoconstitutionalism, we will not be able to create legal practitioners committed to law, order, the essence of the Constitution (which, by the way, By the way, ours was also born compromised). Article published in Knowledge & Citizenship Vol. II No. 35