He knows when you're awake
He knows when you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake!
Oh, you'd better watch out...
[Spoiler Alert]
Am I the only one who thought the whole idea of Santa Claus is kind of creepy... and who was glad when he had it confirmed by his older cousin Larry that the all-survelliance-all-the-time saint was actually a creation of "The Man" intended to extort good behavior from children by blackmailing them with threats of coal versus toys???
(and some day you should have a Dutch person explain about St. Nicholas and Black Pete and the six to eight Black men and the switch and the sack... too gruesome to even begin to talk about here!)
But this entry isn't about Santa Claus, or even about Christmas. It is about tutelary spirits.
When I was a child, I wondered how one elf/saint (and what's with that... which is he... earth spirit or dead bishop???), no matter how magical and spritely, could maintain a survelliance network that would make Dick Cheney blush, on every child in the world?!
Being a bright child, I applied outside knowledge to solve the problem. I went to Catholic school. I knew the score. It was simple. Santa Claus was in league with the guardian angels.
For those not familiar with angelic tradition, many cultures believe in tutelary spirits. These are spirits that teach or protect humans. The ancient Greeks wrote about them. Many shamanistic cultures believe we have familiar spirits, often taking the form of animals, that are with us in life. The Hebraic tradition formulates some of these spirits as angels, the creatures that God uses as intermediaries when working in the world.
Along about the fourth century, Christian scholars formulated a hierarchy of angels. St. Jerome, an important Christian scholar, put a popular tradition into the formal belief system. He said that each soul, when placed into a human body, was also assigned an angel whose assignment it was to try to keep the person from falling into sin.
Over the centuries, the role of this angel, our "guardian angel" varied depending on local tradition. Sometimes the guardian angel not only encouraged the person not to sin, it also provided physical protection... like pulling a child out of a river or pushing a man out of the way of a charging animal. Sometimes the guardian angel was imagined as a teacher, providing wise guidance at crucial moments in life.
But at age six or so, I recognized the truth. The guardian angels were narcs for Santa Claus! No way one guy could keep all those lists up-to-date... but my guardian angel only had me to watch. It was easy to see the pervasive nature of the conspiracy... my parents, Santa Claus, and my supposedly-helpful guardian angel, all watching my every move and recording every inevitable failure.
No wonder it was a relief to find out it was really my dad who delivered the toboggan!
The past couple of decades have seen a resurgence in belief in angels, generating a long-running television show that was either inspirational or gag-worthy, depending on ones take on the whole subject, and many movies, books, web sites, and shelves full of angelic items in gift shops across the country.
No reason hosta producers should miss out on this gravy train! Though it may not really make any practical sense, giving hostas an angel name makes them easier to sell.
Blue Angel is probably the biggest selling large blue hosta. Angel fans tend to ignore the fact that the title "Blue Angel" became famous through a 1930 Marlene Dietrich movie which tells the tale of a professor who falls for a dancehall floozie - the ironic "blue angel" - and watches his life fall into ruin.
Blue Angel is a gorgeous big blue. It also has sports - lots of sports. There are light-margined sports... most notably, Earth Angel, which has been chosen Hosta of the Year for 2009. It has light-centered sports. Beckoning gets some rave reviews, though I just added it last year and can't say how well it will grow.
But so far, the most attention has been paid to an oddball angel... Guardian Angel. It has a light center with spots and color changes and the leaves have some distortion and it never seems to develop the big full clump of its parent. Still, it has its own odd beauty that keeps bringing us back to it. And it continues to sport, so we've got things like Angel Eyes and Fallen Angel. My FA didn't survive its first winter, and I don't have AE, which is sometimes billed as an "improved Guardian Angel."
I don't know how the rest of these will be viewed in gardens ten or twenty years from now... I do know that when people discover my Guardian Angel tucked away deep in my gardens, it is all they want to talk about.
I still can recall some of the looks on the "naughtier" kids when he started reading off his list of "Crimes" 
A fond holiday tradition of the teaching nuns 
