More generally, religion is inherently about exercising control. It’s always a political ideology on a state level, because that’s what religion was always about. There’s a reason heads of state were usually with a church’s blessing, and said blessing could be taken away.

Christianity is no better in this regard as an example, and while on a microscopic level each individual religion can be more or less a problem in each particular situation, it’d do well for us as a species to grow up and get past our need for Santa Claus in general.