In this article, we give a Galois-theoretic characterization of the canonical theta structure. The Galois property of the canonical theta structure translates into certain p-adic theta relations which are satisfied by the canonical theta null point of the canonical lift. As an application, we prove some 2-adic theta identities which describe the set of canonical theta null points of the canonical lifts of ordinary abelian varieties in characteristic 2. The latter theta relations are suitable for explicit canonical lifting. Using the theory of canonical theta null points, we are able to give a theoretical foundation to Mestre's point counting algorithm which is based on the computation of the generalized arithmetic geometric mean sequence.