Back again for another highly opinionated — some might even say downright cranky — look at some element of the fantasy genre. You’ve been warned!
NO, VIRGINIA, THERE IS NO SANTA CLAUS
Okay, I’m going to confess something that’s sure to make me very unpopular with many readers.
If my kid asked me if Santa Claus was real, I’d absolutely say no. I feel that if a kid is old enough to ask, he or she is old enough to know the truth.
Yes, I realize this is making me sound like Ebeneezer Scrooge, but hear me out.
I’ve heard all the arguments about how believing in Santa Claus makes Christmas “magical,” and how innocence is a fragile thing that must be maintained at all costs.
But is that really true? Is Christmas really any less magical when a gift is given not by some mythical being who is watching over you and granting the gift as a reward for your “good” behavior, but by someone you love, carefully chosen to express that love?
As for preserving innocence, is there anyone among us who would deliberately want important information withheld from us, so we stay happier? Maybe so, but not me. Anyway, when someone specifically asks a trusted adult for the truth, there’s an expectation that that adult will actually give him or her the truth.
Sure, use age-appropriate language! But to lie outright? That seems to me to just invite either simple-mindedness (”The lesson here is it’s better to not ask questions in order to maintain your illusions”) or cynicism (”They lied to me about that — what else are they lying about?”). And don’t tell me a five-year-old isn’t aware enough to pick this up.
For the record, I’m (mostly) completely serious about this.
“But Santa Claus isn’t a lie!” you might be saying, citing that famous 1897 editorial in the New York Sun.
“Yes,Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,” the editorial states. “He exists as certainly as love and devotion and generosity exist.”
Sure, love and devotion and generosity exist — along with the human imagination, which the essay also pays homage to (”You might as well not believe in fairies!”).
But whether love and devotion and imagination exist is not what Virginia is asking, now, is it?
She’s asking: is there a literal Santa Claus, a man in red suit with a bushy beard who comes down my chimney on Christmas Eve?
And the answer to that, of course, is no.
So why not say to a kid: “Santa Claus is an entertaining story we tell around the holidays. So he’s ‘real’ in the sense that the imagination is real — and what exactly is ‘reality’ anyway? But no, he doesn’t literally exist, not any more than Mickey Mouse or Bilbo the Hobbit exist.”
A kid won’t understand this? The thing is, all my life, people have been telling me what kids won’t or can’t understand. And most of the time, these people have been wrong. But in any event, why in the world would you deliberately want to dumb something down for your kid? Isn’t the point of being a parent to get your kid to aspire to be smarter and more sophisticated than he or she was the day before? Wouldn’t you want to reward your kid for being skeptical of those in authority and questioning the status quo?
Why do things have to be literally true for them to be beautiful and magical and meaningful anyway? We don’t insist that Dr. Seuss or Where the Wild Things Are are literally true — and they’re still pretty wonderful.
And I haven’t even touched upon the idea of the kind of moral framework the whole “Santa” thing is developing: be a good person not because of an empathetic awareness of other people and realization that humanity is all in this together, but because … well, you’ll get lots and lots presents!
Which brings me to the part of this essay where I lose even the few readers who are still with me (and yes, I realize I’m burying the lead!).
Part of what bugs me about teaching kids about Santa Claus is that it seems like a precursor to — an important building block in– a particularly immature brand of morality in general and religious belief in particular: the idea of God as an all-powerful magical being, watching and judging everything, and granting special favors to those who follow a set of existing black-and-white “rules.”
Whenever I hear a parent insisting to a child that Santa Claus is literally “real,” I always feel like the next step will be to replace The Man in the Red Suit with The Man with White Snowy Beard.
What’s wrong with that exactly? I guess I’m one of those who thinks that that immature kind of religious belief is the source of a very large percentage of the world’s problems — either inspiring misguided and often hateful zealots, or creating an equally scary group of people who, having rejected simple-minded religion, have no moral framework to replace it with and end up being evil in other ways.
Is this all too much to lay on Santa’s jolly’s shoulders? Maybe. But it’s what I think of every time I hear a parent insisting that Santa is “real,” even over their kid’s skeptical — and, to my mind, absolutely wonderful — objections.
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All I’ll say is that in criticizing what you consider to be an immature brand of moralism & religious belief in general, you’re making broad over-generalizations & simplifications.
This debate is so much greater than just “Santa”. It raises some very philosophical points about human nature. Isn’t the entire concept of “Heaven” a God-that-rewards-goodness” tribute?
Yet- is the belief in some such system the only thing keeping many many people from pillaging and killing each other?
I am certainly no fan of lying to the general masses for the greater good- indeed it would be awesome to live in a world where everyone had the good sense to do right and let live just because it’s right- but that requires a higher level of reasoning that perhaps many humans never aspire to… Great post Brent!
Thanks, Julia. And yup, I agree that this has to do with a fundamental way people see the world. :-)
This is so strange. I had this very conversation at work yesterday. A woman told the story of her neighbor who told her children that Santa did not exist. My fellow workers all seemed upset by it. When I added that I would tell my children that Santa was a character that we celebrate at holiday time, people were really angry with me. I stated that lying to our children is not a good example, especially about something a trivial as this. They expressed that is wasn’t really a lie. I didn’t agree. A lie is a lie.
Growing up on the poor side of the world (my mom worked in textile mills), Santa was never much more than a delivery guy in our family mythology. It was always understood that there was nothing supernatural about the gifts — my mom had to pay for them, so we shouldn’t expect things we couldn’t afford. I don’t remember it killing the magic much at all, though I’d figured out by the time I was five or six that Mama was making midnight runs to the toy store and hiding the gifts in the closet.
My kids believed in Santa when they were young, and as they got older I followed the lead of their questions to provide the answers that they were ready to hear. I started with turning it back to them when they’d question how something happened - “what do you think?” When they asked if he was real, I asked what they thought and then when they pressed me, I knew they were ready for the answer. Actually, it’s kind of like sex questions from kids. They tend to ask at the level they are ready to hear and accept.
I have a real cynical streak, but I’m good with Santa. I like the idea of exposing kids to magic and possibilities and wonder. Today’s kids don’t get enough of that.
>a particularly immature brand of morality in general and religious belief in particular: the idea of God as an all-powerful magical being, watching and judging everything, and granting special favors to those who follow a set of existing black-and-white “rules.”<
Yes, this!! I’ve always had a huge problem with this “special favors” type of supreme being. Things like selling indulgences and being the “chosen people” or the “inner circle” really get my goat…probably why I had such a hard time in Catholic schools. ::g::
As an elementary teacher, I have to deal with kids asking me this quite often. It usually comes up because one child has told the other that Santa doesn’t exist. My response is neither a yes or a no. I guess I skirt the issue. Thinking back, I don’t think that I was ever told that Santa doesn’t exist, I just kinda figured it out–though even now, Santa is a part of the magic of Christmas. This time of year is filled with magic and joy, and Santa is just a part of that. Whether you believe or not…I do not think that someone, other than a child’s parent should ever kill that magic for a child–for to a child, it is magical.
I agree with you: because we don’t have a mutual, society-wide “Santa” ethic, it has to be up to the parents to decide. But this is what I’D decide…
Some parents take Santa waaaaaaaay too seriously. It’s a version of the “stage mother” syndrome, where they’re living out their fantasies through their kids.
You’re a total crank, but I completely agree. What did your parents tell you?
In our house, “Santa” was always a very, very casual game we played. I literally don’t ever remember “believing” in Santa — but I vividly remember our whole family never taking it literally. On the other hand, I come from a family of secular humanists. (They also taught me that Christmas wasn’t about presents or “things” — which was NOT something I appreciated as a kid, when I saw the mounds of toys my friends got, and I didn’t. On the other hand, I really, really, REALLY appreciate it now!)