I believe lots of cross generational strife would be solved if parents would stop lying to their kids about Santa Claus.
I was torn at first, but myths and stories are important to humans, and myths like Santa that are very old and pervasive may be playing an adaptive or instructive role.
Also, my three year old loves Santa. It makes xmas more magical for her. I also have many fond memories from childhood of this myth. It’s hard for me to see the harm.
What's the difference between "mythology" and "lie" then?
You're right, but the distinction in this case is far less clear than you make it out to be. The santa claus story has a social engineering component to it. Specifically, that an omniscient entity is monitoring your behavior and will give you gifts if you behave well. Given that, it's arguably a case of intentional deception (ie. lies). Absent christmas/santa claus being a cultural phenomena, telling your kids that they should behave well because there's an omniscient entity monitoring them, would be clearly a lie.
For example, our culture loves re-telling the story of Lord of the Rings. Why? We want it to be true that even in a world with much hardship and fallibility, we humans will honor our alliances and face horrors for the sake of each other. If we believe this and if we see that other people around us believe this then you know what happens? People feel more willing to make sacrifices for the sake of standing by their allies than they otherwise would be. Concretely, US representatives are more willing to approve of spending money to station troops in Poland. They worry less that they'll be voted out for how they are spending taxpayer money.
This highlights an interesting property of myths: The re-telling of them makes them more true.
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Santa Claus does in fact exist as a role in society. My grandfather acted as him for many years.
But it backfired on me last Christmas when one of my children asked me point blank if Santa was real. I was in a hurry and just said "Yes, but he is dead" and then walked off.
You just proved POV from previous comment. Lie/myth of Santa beheads some more lie/myth about religion. And I do not think this is the last item in the train of lie.
I was certainly happier when I could still hold that faith.
I understand your happiness, but for me it was absolutely disaster to reveal the god is an illusion, because many ideas I have thought in my head was (not became but was all the time) just a useless crap. That was literally my first discovery after I had got an access to Internets. "Thank you" my parents and society for pumping up my head with lies.
For my part, none of the dogma did anything for me, but I felt as though it provides an imperative to be content with one's lot, i.e. if you know what's good for you, accept what may come, because x or y is in accordance with God's will etc. In contrast to eastern (or pseudo-eastern) thought which would short-hand to "accept what may come because that is the path to happiness".
I think some people need more comfort, and need to be told what to do and what will be in absolute terms, so religion can tickle the wires just right. Among the paths to peace of mind however, I also think it comes with the most potential consequences.
Having said that I'm not going to be the parent who gets in shit bc his kid tells all the other kids he isn't real.
says who?
You probably say that because you have seen religion playing a major role in people's lives.
"NO, IT'S BETTER THAN REAL - IT'S PRETEND!"
Kids immerse themselves in fantasy. It's healthy, and they often don't care at all about the boundary between that and reality. There's a sharp distinction between telling children babies are delivered by storks because you're too repressed to answer their questions properly and taking part in the Santa Claus myth to bring some magic into the home at Christmas. You don't need to go and prick your kids' Christmas bubble in the name of "honesty".
My son is old enough to have figured it out for himself. My response is, and always will be, "you'll never get me say he's not real, and don't you go telling your sister that."
He understands perfectly (with a wink), and it's brought the exact opposite of cross-generational strife to our house.
If we actually did make a habit of lying to them I'm sure it would be a different story. We're very open and honest about real stuff (death, sex, money, etc - and where the boundaries of our own knowledge lie).
Santa Claus is a legend. Sometimes we "act out" these legends in a fake display to honor some distant past truth buried under millenia of broken telephone.
The moral of the story is, lying is OK, so long as you're honest about doing it.
1. All fantasy is not history.
2. All deception is not history.
It does not follow that all fantasy is deception.
Fantasy comes from imagination. For the audience who reads a story intending to be fictional and known to be by both author and audience, there is no deception.
The family was vindicated in court, several years later, but it really struck me how much trouble that caused. There are some people that really strongly believe in the importance of that fantasy.
https://www.jccf.ca/court_cases/derek-and-frances-baars-v-ha...
Where are these adults who never tried to lie?
For example, don't try to come up with explanations for inconsistencies or impossibilities, but just ask the kid what they think. Eventually it'll be like, "Well, obviously Santa can't actually come to all the houses, so I think the other Santas help him." "I know you and Mom put our presents under our tree, but I think Santa gives them to you." Etc. They basically explicitly tell you how much Santa they want to believe at any given point.
Once they directly ask you if Santa is real, you can ask them if they really want you to answer. (The first time mine quickly said, "No, I know he's real!" and then dropped it for a year. :D ) But if they persist, you can tell them a nice version of the truth, like that the idea of Santa is definitely real, because why else would kids get presents from Santa every year. As they guessed, you help out by actually getting the presents and putting them under the tree, but it's because of this great spirit of giving that so many people feel around Christmas that we have this tradition.
So we do Santa with our son and daughter and there was never a discussion not to do it.
I think telling my kids things for their enjoyment is ok. I don't believe me or my siblings were hurt by our parents given us the santa myth and I also feel it was an important life lesson to discover santa didn't exist.
How would you feel if you did have a suprise party? / No, but would you like me too? / No, but would that be ok for a future birthday?
What do you think I would tell you if you asked me that and I was planning a surprise party? Or if I wasn't?
You don't have to answer all their questions. Personally, I'd say, no, I don't like surprise parties, so I'm not going to plan one for someone, but for the sake of argument, I'll pretend I might.
The truth is that not every lie is a problem.
If you don't make a big deal about Santa, it won't be a big deal to them, and when they ask about him, you can say 'some people believe Santa is a nice guy that's totally not creepy and somehow delivers presents to all the children' or whatever. And you may likely have already had similar conversations about religion and how it's respectful to let people believe what they want about things like that.
Of course, if you push Santa hard, and they're a fact oriented kid, when they find out the facts, it's going to be a big deal, and they're going to want to tell their friends about it. You won't know if they're fact oriented before you decide to push Santa though.
And you know kids... "My mom said your mom is A LIAR"
It made the whole thing amazing for me. I always knew where gifts from Santa came from, but we could all have fun pretending.
Also, consequences for ruining the magic would be equally mythological. ;)
I didn’t think anything about finding out that Santa wasn’t real, but it seems to make a VERY strong impression on some people. The contrast is interesting.
The phenomenon is interesting but I can’t say I understand it either.
On the other hand, it can also be bad if the parent decides it's time for the child to know and tells them before they're ready. (That was what I got from a well-meaning but misguided parent, and it certainly wasn't fun.) Really it's like most 'adult' topics: you can broach the topic and then let the kid show you what level of detail they're ready for with the questions they ask.
My dad used to have Santa visit (a friend of his who volunteered in public and came by as a favor to my dad). I didn't notice who it was. It didn't bother me at all when 2-3 years later I figured it out.
I know of zero kids that were traumatized by this. Not saying there are none but not going to recommend people don't do it. If we stopped doing things because some kid somewhere in the world freaked out we'd do absolutely nothing.
The real hat trick is to lie to the adults about still believing in Santa so the presents keep on coming. A con so deep the marks think they're the ones pulling the con.
It's a good exercise in critical thinking. Our teenager keeps on trying to get us to say Santa isn't real. Not going to happen.
I believed in Father Christmas
I looked to the sky with excited eyes
then I woke with a yawn in the first light of dawn
and I saw him
and through his disguise
(My take, though, is that Santa Claus is small potatoes compared to the song's larger themes of disillusionment that come with growing up.)
I don’t think he actually believed it — I think the kids books are pretty clear on this topic.