For many children the Santa Claus myth is their first meaningful religious experience. It is also the first great practical joke played over and over on every generation. For many the revelation that Santa is not real is a traumatic experience but it is also an initiation (hazing?) into the real world. The child is immediately asked to join into the mass conspiracy and to keep the secret from other children.
The child not only suffers from the loss of a cherished belief but this is accompanied by the feeling of betrayal. The child has been lied to by parents and older siblings,the entire society, TV stations, shopping malls, have all conspired to play a trick (how ever benevolent the intentions) on each succeeding generation of children. We tend to dismiss as trivial the traumas of childhood and to see as harmless the Santa Claus fantasy.
My question is this. How does the Santa Claus experience affect our later religious development? Does it instill skepticism? Does it teach us to pretend to believe things that we really don’t believe? Does it create a kind of mental separation in which many are able to believe the unbelievable? Is the Santa Class myth a BS inoculation?
Seriously, I’ve been trying to remember when I found out there is no Santa, and I can’t. I think it happened at a young enough age where it had no effect on me, so really, no trauma. And I’ve never viewed Santa as a religious figure. He was just some jolly fat guy in a red suit that brought me presents once a year. And as long as the presents kept coming, I really didn’t care if he was real or not. Maybe that’s why it didn’t matter that much. Kids love presents.
I have no idea how Santa fits into a religious experience, so I suspect that it has little bearing on that.
As to the other contention:
It is quite likely that the revelation of the Santa myth is actually a productive event. It is one of a child’s first entries into the world of grown-ups. Going to school is a milestone, but only children whose parents are professional students are going to see that as something related to growing up. However, as child comes to realize that Santa is not really going to deliver presents, the child gets his or her first experience of sharing something that is reserved to adults. Only children believe in Santa (I hope Ranger Jeff doesn’t read this.), so entering the fraternity of those who do not believe is a clear sign that one has begun to enter the adult world.
I doubt that it is necessary, (as other beliefs of childhood are available), but it is not harmful.
It can be harmful, of course, if the parents go to some extreme lengths to keep the children in the dark. I think threatening children with the withholding of presents (or, worse, claiming that they did not receive a present (that they would never have received, anyway)) because Santa was mad at them is rather cruel.
I never engaged in the “Santa is real” business, myself. My kids picked up the Santa legend from other kids and adults. As they got older, they each began to figure out the reality on their own. At that point, I did not go out of my way to confirm their doubts, either. Each had the fun of working out what really happened on Chrsitmas Eve, themselves, and expressed great delight in having “broken into” an adult secret.
All three of my kids, when they got to be about 4 years old, asked me, “Is Santa Claus real?” and I answered, “No”, and that was the end of it.
I haven’t noticed that any of them were terribly traumatized by the experience.
What you’re talking about, Chekmate, is where the parents spend years deliberately building up the whole “Santa” thing for their kids, because they think it’s “cute”, or because they themselves “never had a real Christmas”, or heck, I dunno, maybe just because they like having an excuse to go down to Kay-Bee Toys and max out the credit card.
And this goes on for years, and then the kids finally find out, from their peer group, that there’s no such thing. Then it’s “you lied to me!” Kids handle this in varying ways, I suppose. Some of them may be “traumatized”, some of them may shrug it off.
As for how it affects a person’s religious development in later life, I have no idea.
I feel a Jerry Springer moment comin’ on–“My Parents Lied to Me About Santa Claus and Now I Can Never Trust Them Again!”
Somehow I don’t think that happens very often–how many people do you know who really do have Jerry Springer Show-type problems?
I believed that Jesus Child (on Dec. 25) and the Magi (Jan. 6) gave me presents…but it was no big deal when I found out…I think I knew or had my suspicions…or decided that real or not, it is a happy celebration…so now instead of Jesus Child or the Magi, my family and I exchange gifts remembering the time when Jesus was a baby and three Magi followed a star to see him.
I would have to agree that Santa Claus serves as a quasi-religious figure in Western culture. He stands as a testament to the materialism (read MONETARY, not SCIENTIFIC) of the capitalist system. “Be good, and you will be rewarded with goods” is the message portrayed by this religion. It’s incidious to be sure, not many think about it at this level. The hard, cold fact of the matter is that you will not necessarily be rewarded with goods if you are good. The whims of the market based economy are such that often the “bad” kids get the most rewarded. This only works because we have the implicit assumption that their are ethical standards by which most in the society live.
It is straight Machiavelli or Tom Sawyer whitewashing the fence. Santa Claus is a myth that instills a commitment to the capitalist society and the cleverest of children are those that realize that Santa Claus isn’t real, but milk the system for the presents anyway. The naive child continues to be rewarded but either is taken for a ride by his peers or becomes jaded upon finding out the “truth” (that everything is contrived).
I think the Santa thing should be something that we as a society should phase out. My mother (a liberal who grew up in California) never told me such stories as a kid. But growing up in God-fearing Arkansas (USA) in the '70’s and early '80’s, I found that my only friends in elementary was a Jehova’s Witness and some kid from Iran. We were all considered some sorts of pariahs every year around holiday time. Nothing too traumatic, but I did feel slightly left out.
I think Christmas would be a very minor holiday were it not for merchants and their incessant ad campaigns. I remember when I first got out of the Army. I had very little money and it was December. All of the ads on television seem to say "show them how much you love them by buying them [fill-in-the-blank].
But I could not afford to show them such things and was grateful that I was single with no kids. No wonder the suicide rate goes up during the holiday season-mainly lower income parents I’m sure. It is a time of wealth and prosperity for a few (corporations and, to an extent, kids) and a time of indebtedness and stress for most. I am sure that it is no stretch to say that millions feel a sense of desperation and loneliness near the end of the calendar year.
If you don’t think that capitalism is treated quasi-religiously in the Western world, your head is buried in the sand. If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone say “I believe in Capitalism”, well, I’d have a lot of nickels.
The point is not that Capitalism itself is a religion but that it is TREATED as one by many in Western society. The marketplace itself has no dogma, institution, or sacred scriptures, but you better believe that plenty of people treat it as though it does. Maybe you are enlightened and do not treat it as a religion, but I’ve met many an atheist who acted just as foolish around monetary possessions as religious folk do around their various symbols of security. The parallels are obviously there. I don’t know if it’s that you don’t see it, or if it’s you have too narrow a conception of what consitutes the approximation of religious practice in today’s modern world.
Seriously, Santa is an interesting cultural phenomenon. And I do believe that it teaches the all-important lesson, “Do not believe everything that you hear.” Innocence = gullible = a mark.
I happen to remember when I first broached my doubts about Mr. Claus. Over lunch, my elder brother patiently explained to me that while I was correct that reindeer don’t typically fly through the air (that’s a story for kids), Santa did indeed exist and delivered his products via a system of automated helicopters.
I added that the whole scheme must be a promotional vehicle for the toy companies. My brother nods, blandly.
One or two days hence, I began to have doubts. Which I kept to myself until the following year. Don’t want to kill the golden goose, you know.
Later, I declared that my brother lied to me. Not so, it was explained. You see, that’s a white lie. Those are different. My Mom backed him up on this.
My mother is a born-again Christian When I was a child she told me there was no Santa for the reasons cited in the OP ie. she was worried it would later make me question my belief in Jesus/Christianity. Well, guess what? I turned out not to be a Christian. Further, I ended up being the ‘bad kid’ who told all the other kids there was no Santa.
I also bring it up EVERY year when I go visit for Christmas…oh, my lost childhood…
I think you are parsing too thinly here. We’re talking about Santa Claus for chrissakes. The guy has religious implications by the very fact that he is mythic, that he is elfish, that he is modelled after a Roman Catholic Saint, that he appears on a Christian holiday co-opted by the pagans. Do I have to connect the dots? Clearly there is something religious about Santa Claus. There is also something religious about the way many Westerners treat Capitalism, and it so happens that the two coincide.
If you wish to confine religions to institutions that’s fine, but you must admit that there are plenty of people who do not. One of the myriad of definitions for religion is a philosophy of life. The way people treat the Santa Claus myth can be seen as indicative of the way they live their lives, especially with the fact that Santa Claus brings material goods to his “followers”.
I may be going out on a limb, but I’ll use an analogy. There was a practice in the Soviet Union of party officials or representatives coming into classrooms to attempt to break the religious resolve of the younguns. They would ask how many kids believed in God. A lot would raise their hands. Then they would ask the kids to pray as hard as they could to God to give them some chocolate (or something similar). In vein, these children attempted to will the Almighty to bless them with the chocolate. Then they would ask the children to ask of the party. Upon request of the class, the representatives would pass out chocolates to all the younguns. Who will provide for you? was the question.
Now, there are those that argue that there was nothing implicitly religious about the Communist’s demonstration… that it was strictly secular. I tend to disagree. I think rather what was being done was trying to get the children to switch allegiance from their ineffectual God to a new religion. That’s a strong statement about a group that decries religion as the opiate of the masses, but nevertheless, I contend that the analogy stands.
I submit that Santa Claus is similarly wolf-in-sheep’s clothing secular myth that contains religious baggage. You may not want to call it a religion… I say the evidence is there that it might just be.
If I invoke the “Santa Clause”, does that mean I can tell a white lie?
JS Princeton,
Careful there. You might find yourself defending an idea larger than you meant to.
My own take on this is that religion fills many emotional needs of humans that we don’t have an anologue yet to replace. Sometimes people fill these needs erroneously. An excessive need to aquire goods and the resulting social stature could be a result of insecurity arising from one’s own mortality or perhaps from the moral vacuum left by an absence of religion.
That’s a fine take, perspective. Equally valid to mine, I’m sure… but if someone is “filling a need” that can be filled by religion, certainly it’s not too far out of line to suggest there are religious qualities and connotations to anything with which you fill that need.
If a thing sounds like a duck it may not be a duck, but if people treat it as a duck, in my eyes, that makes it a duck to them (if not to me). Yeah, most of us recognize that Santa Claus is a made-up story, but if people treat the story as though the precepts being upheld were true, then such people are acting pretty similar to a lot of post-modern religious apologists I’ve met.
Ah, but now it’s just epistemology, and who wants to relive the horrors of Introductory Philosophy?
I also don’t think it’s outrageous to equate Santa and religion, although it’s a bit of an exaggeration. Santa is apparently immortal and pretty much all-knowing; he rewards nice kids and withholds from naughty ones. He performs miracles, at least minor ones. He’s got that splendid white beard, like God in all those old paintings.
I wouldn’t preclude the possibility that the story sets kids up for believing in a more serious, more powerful being who knows all and rewards and punishes. Kids are eventually told that Santa isn’t real, but that God is. It’s as if the Santa story gets them in the frame of mind for accepting the idea of God. What’s odd to me is that so few people respond to the revelation that Santa is a myth by thinking, hey, they lied to me about Santa; what else have they lied to me about.
It’s possible that some people really need to believe in someone big and strong watching over them, and the one belief is pretty easily replace by another–especially when the other belief is taken so seriously by so many adults in society. This need may have roots partially in the Santa story. Sort of a god for children. After all, what does a 4-year-old care about eternal life? Now, getting presents–any kid can relate to that.
I’m not sure I ever believed in Santa. I remember being 5 and thinking that it seemed kind of unlikely to me. Not having a chimney might have had something to do with it.
) Santa Claus “myth” constitutes a religious experience until the latter is defined.