I think you’re underestimating the effect that culture has even on very little ones. I don’t ever remember telling WhyKid the story of Santa for the first time. He saw it on TV, heard about it at day care, he saw Santa in the mall, and I just sort of went along with it. I never lied to him and told him about Santa, but I did tell him we could put out some cookies on Christmas Eve, and I did label a few toys from Santa (in our family, the big, unwieldly and hard-to-wrap presents stay unwrapped and are from Santa. I never knew why until I was faced with the task of wrapping a train.) I colluded with the story, certainly, but he really learned about it from outside sources. And when he came to me with questions, I’d ask him what he thought. He was much better at convincing himself than I could ever be:
“Mom, how does Santa get into our house when we don’t have a chimney?”
“Hmm…that’s a good question. What do you think?”
“I think he has a magic key that lets him in the front door of all the houses that don’t have chimneys!”
“What a neat idea! You could be right.”
When he finally did ask straight out, I told him the same thing my mom told me: Santa’s not a person, but The Christmas Spirit, that strange thing that happens to us in late December when we suddenly feel like giving presents to people and getting together with our family and friends and singing sappy songs.
You and others keep saying this, that there’s no “need”. But I think several posters have come up with some very good reasons, if not “needs” as in food and water needs. Namely, it’s fun. Furthermore, it gives you new insights into your kids’ imagination, storytelling abilities and growing intellect and reasoning skills. It teaches kids to ultimately trust their own reasoning process as they gain more data on a topic. It gives us, as a culture, a shared story and experience (this is especially difficult to achieve in a multi-cultural culture like ours. We don’t have common relgiious stories, so we make up common secular stories.) Historians, sociologists, anthropologists and psychologists all see the value in shared experiences to bind us together as a culture and a country.
I think it’s perfectly possible to enable our kids to share in a wonderful story without making it all about us.
I consider an “honesty above all else!” policy to be idiotic, yes. Taking a moral “stand” against Santa Claus to the point where a 4 year-old has to learn to deal with the teasing (or, conversely, learn not to spoil the fun for everybody else) is taking the principle of “honesty” and rendering it idiotic in its application.
My fiance grew up in a house without Santa and has always been quite sad about it. I think it was the feeling that other children got to have this rather fun and delightful little game and his family didn’t want to play the game with him. And they really weren’t very careful about not trampling on other people’s fun with it either. They really are quite grumpy old codgers.
I don’t believe that make-believe, to include Dr. Seuss, the imaginary friends, Dora, mild but flattering comments on artwork, Big Bird, AND Santa Claus, is lying. Certainly taking some traditions or myths a little far is at least questionable and at most potentially hurtful.
I understand about the difference between protecting our children from things that may be hurtful or damaging and actually telling blatant lies, so don’t bust me on what I’m going to say… but I wonder about the people who wish to be completely honest with their children to the point of excluding untruths like harmless make-believe…
3-year-old: Mommy, why is the lady on the news crying?
Mommy: Because her daughter was raped and murdered.
3YR: What does that mean?
M: It means that a man knocked her head into a brick wall, ripped off her clothes and forced his penis into her vagina. [Can I say that here?] He spit on her and repeatedly slammed a rock into her face. Then he took a gun and fired a bullet into her brain.
3YR: … [Wow…I can’t even begin to think of a possible response…]
M: Hey, let’s take a field trip to the coroner’s office!
You can’t necessarily argue that it’s different. A situation such as this and the decision to not tell the Santa story are both attempts to avoid untruths. If you must argue that you want to leave Santa out of the growing up experience to avoid the appearance that you may be lying to your child then you must also be prepared to tell the whole truth about everything… EVERYTHING.
For our kids’ sakes, I certainly hope that we are not completely and exclusively honest 100% of the time… It may end up biting you in the ass and sending your kids to therapy.
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Cool, where’s your family from? I’ve heard of the “rabbit in the moon” tradition as Indian (South Asian, I mean).
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I think that analogy’s quite a stretch, to say the least. You can quite honestly and truthfully tell your 3-year-old that “raped and murdered” means “someone hurt her and killed her” without going into the gory details.
There’s a big difference between feeling you have to make your child confront every last bit of factual reality right from day one, and feeling that you don’t want to deliberately try to convince your child to believe something that you don’t believe yourself.
Mind you, I have no personal objection if parents want to play along with the Santa myth. But I don’t think it holds water to argue that those who don’t want to are somehow advocating a position equivalent to the idea that a three-year-old should be informed in graphic detail about how rapes are committed.
I don’t have children, but in entertaining nieces and nephews, I’ve found that they really enjoy when I make something up and tell it to them straight up and they get to catch me out on it. Silly things like “I can wave my hands and make the lights go dim. Watch!”
Kids love to marvel. They love magic. They seem to love to be deceived, to investigate, to learn, to reason things out, to reveal the truth, and to giggle about it. Then, they love being in on the joke, demonstrating the magic to someone else.
Kids get exposed to Santa early. They also get exposed to the idea there is no Santa early. The same TV that tells them there is a Santa tells them there isn’t one.
And I might have to borrow the line about the dog on the business trip.
Not believing in the self-indulgent and wasteful collective fictions was something that still gives me pleasure. I would not dream of denying my child the same opportunity.
Would I go out of my way to crush my child’s joy? No. Would I answer honestly if my child asked me? Yes. Would Santa visit my house? No.
For what it’s worth, I grew up Jewish. We had no Santa fiction, sure, but Jews are asked to swallow some real whoppers nevertheless. I cannot ever remember believing in the Exodus, for example, even when I was very young. It is a polite lie that justifies a decent meal with extended family. I always find it a little shocking every year that people do actually believe it.
I was always the Wicked Son, anyway.
Not so wicked that I compare children fighting ignorance to children ratting out their parents in 1984. That was a real winner.
You do know, don’t you, that 1984 was fiction ('m assuming you meant the book and not the year) and Santa Claus does not exist (and is therefore not actually taking names of unbelievers).
As long as we feel comfortable teaching our children there is a God…based on faith and not fact, why not let the kids believe as a child about Santa Claus and the like…I don’t feel my parents put one over on me…Belief in Santa was fun until I knew better.
Some of us don’t feel comfortable about that because we don’t believe in gods either. My kids are going to learn bible stories along with the other mythologies of the world, but I’m not going to try to convince them that those are any more real than any other stories. I personally think that it’s just as childish to believe in gods as it is to believe in Santa Claus.
I love fantasy and science fiction, and I’m going to have lots of imaginative activities and story time with my kids whenever I have them, but I’m not going to go out of my way to make them believe in Santa Claus et al. I figured out Santa when I was about 5, partly because Santa used the same wrapping paper as us and because his handwriting looked exactly like mom’s. My parents didn’t go to great lengths to convince me, which is probably why I’m not bitter. I think that an earlier poster was probably right in thinking that the people who are most intense about the lying part of the Santa thing are probably the ones whose parents went to the greatest lengths to convince them of the “reality.”
I strongly disagree with the attitude that some people in this thread have, equating honesty to trashing imagination and saying that not lying is like telling kids the graphic details of a violent crime. No, it’s just refusing to lie. You’re not taking the magic out of the child’s world if you have a Christmas tradition that doesn’t include Santa Claus. I’m not going to give my kids “Santa” presents, but I am going to tell them the stories. If they ask if he’s real, I’ll probably ask them what they think and we’ll have a discussion about it. If they want to believe for a while, that’s up to them; I’m just not going to actively deceive them. I think that it can be cruel, it is unquestionably patronizing, and it’s not really necessary. You can have fun and encourage kids to use their imaginations without tricking them.
Most healty kids will feel smart when they decide they don’t believe the myth. It’s good for their self-esteem to understand that based on their own knowledge, Santa Claus couldn’t possibly be real.
Actually, I said it just like this: “Most healty kids will feel smart when they decide they don’t believe the myth. It’s good for their self-esteem to understand that based on their own knowledge, Santa Claus couldn’t possibly be real.” That hardly rules out other ways of giving a kid self-esteem. It just happens to be one of them.
So do those of us who did/do wish to indulge in the santa fantasy. Several of us have stated that we believe that it is those that go overboard in trying to “make” the child believe long past santa’s shelf life, are likely what cause those who do feel anger and betrayal to feel that way.
I don’t know you, so I won’t pretend that you do, or don’t feel irritated or whatever by grownups who behave(d) that way toward children. But what came through in your previous posts, at least to me, was a current, at the very least, irritation with them, if not outright bitterness.
And I was speaking to your explanation of the “silly uncle” types with their dogs on business trips and the audacity to proclaim you a talented artist. In your previous posts, you have consistantly assigned parents and adults who do silly teasing things, or who indulge in santa like fantasies to be doing so for unpleasant self-serving purposes.
That is what I meant by bitter and cynical. I wasn’t referring only to the santa myth.
Derrrr, I should have read this line first. Yes, yes you did. I don’t know that you meant to, or if it were true feelings surfacing, but I’m glad you can see where that type, and amount of emphasis on people’s “bad” motives could possibly get folks up in arms.
Again, I don’t think you’ll find anyone in this thread who disagrees with that point, (including all that I snipped). In fact, you’ll find many of us who have been saying EXACTLY the same thing all along. But there is a far cry from indulging in the santa legend, and “making” one’s child believe in santa. No one here is for the latter. Once again, I think most of us in the thread believe, or at least suspect, that for those who do look back on the “reveal” as traumatic, and a betrayal, likely had parents who went overboard into the Full On Stage Production Santa.
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I don’t know if you’re the poster that stated that it was lying, betrayal and tricking a child or not. But those of us on the “santa side” so to speak, weren’t singling you out. There are others who did use those words, not just you. Just because another poster counters points you also have made, it doesn’t mean they’re singling you out. As in my post, I stated specifically “some in this thread”. Others who’ve replied to the “lying/tricking/betraying” idea have also not just singled out one poster, but talked to that idea (lying, tricking…) instead. It’s not always all about you. Whatever you may think, and you have a full right to your opinions, others have a right to debate those ideas. It doesn’t mean they’re attacking you.
Sorry I’m a bit late in catching up on the thread, I don’t know about others, but I don’t think you “sound” any way at all. I felt sorry for you, not angry at you. And only about that one point. I’ve seen you participate in many other threads and I think you’re an intelligent, sometimes very funny person.
Babies have no idea what/who anything is. This may be a surprise to you, but ADULTS, the parents, have little idea (other than innate knowledge of protecting and so on) of what a baby, young person to be molded, is.
Most of us “normal ones” do the best we can. Some people do a HELL of a job being June Cleaver. Some of us are more the career track, teach kids to be responsible…all of us have such a varied way of teaching and raising little ones. And for the most part. NONE of it is wrong. (and again, I’m speaking of normal parents, not abusive ones, or neglectful ones etc).
Kids are damned resilient beings, they can be happy and grow up well adjusted in a variety of home settings. Some kids have to go through things that flat out ARE lies, and the malicious sort at that (bullying older brothers “You were ADOPTED”, divorce “No, mommy and daddy aren’t getting a divorce” and so on), and they still manage to grow up happy and well adjusted.
Bottom line, any lesson a child learns in a supportive loving home, whether a hard lesson, or a mild one such as the non-existance of santa, is giong to be “ink that does stick”. We are the sum of our experiences, whether they are true or not. It is how we LEARN from those experiences, and what sort of place we had to fall back on,and how we apply them to our lives that is what is important.
I find it disheartening that this is discussed as a debate. We are only granted a few years of innocence in each of our lives. If parents cannot fill those years with a little wonderment and magic then we’ve lost something in the greater scheme of things.