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Comment by mintplant | Hacker News Reader

I'm eagerly awaiting the HN comments telling us why we shouldn't be coddling our kids with the illusion of Santa Claus.

(Since you're stirring up the pot) Is it really rare and absurd to tell kids about Santa without trying to make them believe he's real?

I'm not a parent so please do enlighten me as to why kids should believe in a made-up entity, up until some arbitrary age at which point they should be told the truth. Is this some perverse initiation to getting your heart broken or something?

I was raised with the whole santa bells & whistles without ever being told "by the way, he's real". As far as childhoods go it was pretty uneventful and christmas was always fun. Did I miss some crucial childhood enlightenment?

> getting your heart broken

I did the whole Santa Clause bit with my two daughters. Part of it was reliving my own childhood and wanting them to have the same fond memories I did. I don't recall a heart break moment for myself when I realized it was all a ruse. My parents never formally told me. It came on as a sneaking suspicion that eventually became obvious as I grew more aware of how the world really works. And I don't ever recall being pissed off at my folks for leading me on like that. There were still presents under the tree, so what did it really matter?

I'll ask my younger daughter in a few years how she sees it. It's especially interesting in her case, because she cracked the code on Santa, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny all at the same moment, when she recognized that the notes she'd been receiving from them were all in the same handwriting, and that didn't add up for her.

I figured out santa when I found some hidden receipts for gifts that he'd given to some siblings.

Same here, my parents never told me, it was just a growing suspicion that slowly came together. At the same time, I never recall being angry with them, it was just a fact of life that parents pretend Santa exists.

It is strange that we lie to children, but at the same time, kids have interesting minds, and they seem to really appreciate fantasies, creativity and adventures. This is the one time in their life when they can honestly believe a magic fairy leaves money for their teeth, or that the treasure map they discovered for lost candy in their backyard is real, and left by a pirate 500 years ago. As adults, we lose that magic as we get a better understanding of the world, and we try to relive some of it through movies or games, but for kids, it can exist in reality.

So, yes, we lie to them, but in return they live years in what feels like a more fantastical world, and I think they appreciate those memories when they grow up.

Yes, you missed that adults lie. A truth needed to be learned the hard way. Also: learning that Santa is not real allows you to question religion. A turning point in many peoples lives.

I never had to question religion because I was not forced into a religion.

Basically what I'm getting from your post is you want to force parents' hands in telling their kids santa is real, so that the kids learn to mistrust their own parents. Wouldn't it be "simpler" to tell parents to be less awful at parenting and, say, for example, not choose their kids' religion for them?

As for "people lie", I learned that long before I knew how to multiply. I'm not sure how you can miss out on that lesson at all.

In Mexico the ones that bring the gifts are the three wise man. I would be told that certain three stars in a row were actually them in their journey to get to earth. It was magical. One night before gift day I always tried to stay awake at night trying to take a peak at them and their camels. But every time I would fall asleep and would wake up to see gifts already there. Eventually I realized it was all not true (first step towards rationality). I was not heart broken, it was gradual really. And I'm left with very fond memories of that time.

You only get to experience that magic once. I'm glad I did.

If your kids are going to public school, you won't be in control of the Santa or Tooth Fairy narrative. You also increasingly won't be in control of religious narrative either.

Some child is going to say that they saw their parents sneak presents and such. Some child is going to naively regurgitate, "after you die, you just get reborn again", which will start a discussion with other children who will retort with their regurgitation, "No, after you die you go to heaven to live forever with your grandma and grandpa."

I'm pretty sure that's that case regardless of which school you go to, even if you send them to a catholic school that will happen since many people send their kids to specific private schools for educational or traditional/dynastical rather than for religious or theological reasons.

Not to mention that kids have access to the Internet these days, It will surprise me if there are many kids over the age of 4-5 that actually still believe in Santa unless they really have convinced themselves to do so.

As someone who grew up in a household without religion, we still enjoyed christmastide. Still got a yule tree and wrapped presents and all that.

It's more a shared personal tradition than religiously based one, though it can be tied to religion and many people enjoy it that way, though many enjoy it without such tie-ins.

I was more reacting to the general HN zeitgeist and the current front page thread about safe spaces than I was the issue of religion. But I do appreciate the discussion of the topic that this has generated.

We should, but only because it teaches children to doubt religion and religious authority.

I don't disagree, but curious - is Santa Claus considered religion?

No, but he is directly associated with a (or the) major Christian holiday.

Is it possible to celebrate Santa and the holiday with no attachment to religion? Sure, we do it with Valentine's day and St. Patrick.

Of course it is. In fact, some of the hard evangelicals usually scoff at Christmas because of its pagan origins and syncretism.

There actually have been Wars on Christmas... waged by Christians themselves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_in_Puritan_New_Engla...

Yes, just call him Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost) like we do in Russia. No religious connotations at all!

He's a supernatural being children are assured is real and encouraged to believe in, and give offerings to like a household god, and who is supposedly rewarding or punishing their behavior based on his infallible moral authority and omniscience.

It's probably not religion in the sense that anyone actually worships Santa, but he does qualify as a religious figure.

The concept has definitely been affected by religions, even having some roots there, but nowadays it's as religious as Easter Bunny. Saint Nicholas is God's earthly avatar: rewarding those who live by his rules and punishing the rest.

I would watch a movie featuring scenes of Santa smiting evil-doers.

Not quite, but close: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1401143/ (Rare Exports)

'Santa' is just another way of saying 'Saint'.

Isn't black Pete the toy guy over there rather than sinterklaas... And afaik, he's not religious? Maybe he is, you know better...

In NL the tradition has it that Saint Nicholas hails from Spain (he didn't he was originally from Turkey) and the 'Black Pete's' that you refer to are his helpers (can't have a Saint that's black now, can we...). There is a ton of hypocrisy at work there and there has recently been quite a bit of backlash. Predictably the anti-Europe sentimentalists seized on this to tell the rest of the world they shouldn't mess with our perfectly racist traditions.

The Moors (which the Black Petes represent) are an interesting chapter in the history of mankind in their own right, and were Muslims rather than associated with the Christian faith, to see them as helpers of a Christian entity must have seemed like a good idea at the time, but in the present it is less so.

This is likely also the reason why 'St Nicholas' hails from Spain for the Dutch because the Moors did in fact inhabit a chunk of Spain at some point rather than from Turkey where he actually was from, a country that the Dutch kids probably had trouble relating to before 1960, but Spain was a lot more visible.

The typical threat parents used to use to get their kids to behave was to threaten them with beatings by the Black Petes and if that didn't work out to be stuffed in burlap bags and taken to Spain...

No, but I think the suggestion of the post you replied to is that one fanciful being that people convinced you existed, might encourage you to think critically about other beings instead of simply accepting their existence because people tell you they are there.

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