Santa Clause Myth

Yep. It’s a myth I thought Cecil had debunked, but I guess not. See this Snopes page: http://198.64.129.160/holidays/christmas/suicide.htm

To the OP…

I beleived in Santa Claus for much longer than many kids. I skipped a grade, so I was younger than the grade, but still it was 5th grade, so i must have been 9.

Within 3 years after that, I was an atheist. I don’t necessarily credit the Santa myth’s decomposition, more I would credit my introduction to reason and science through “Brief History of Time” by Hawking. That book gave me ideas on causality that I gradually came to believe God could not be a part of. Still, it’s possible I was more open to rejecting my parents other beliefs since this one had been ripped from under me. Skepticism has since become a big plank in my thinking (in the casual sense, not the metaphysical one.)

I read an excellent book on this by a Tom Flynn.
Its kindof old, but I recommend it.
I forgot the title

A huge percentage of children’s worlds are make believe: imaginary friends, monsters in the cupboard, the tooth fairy, bogey men… Part of the joy of being a child is the ability to believe in things that logical, cynical adults dismiss. I don’t view Santa et al as damaging to children, if anything, imaginary worlds are vital to youngsters. The decline of religion can’t be attributed to Santa Claus.

Thankyou, Cadaverous, for eloquently explaining my POV.

I would REALLY like to hear from anyone who was emotionally destroyed by finding out that Santa wasn’t real.

A good point Cadaverous; we might just as easily object to the depiction of rabbits and mice in little waistcoats.

My daughter had an imaginary friend who lived down the plughole in the bath; it would have been entirely logical to have told her she was talking nonsense, but it was fascinating to watch her exercising her creativity, a year later she acknowledged that it wasn’t real and was reluctant to talk about such silly things and then another year on she started pretending that the imaginary friend was there again, but now, we give each other a knowing look when the conversation begins.
It’s tremendous fun and I wouldn’t deny her any of it.

Not emotionally destroyed, but I did go through a bit of a trauma when I pieced together enough information to realize that Santa was not real, at age 6 or so.

Santa was a very comforting idea, and in that sense not far removed from God (or even the benevolent spirits of ancestors for that matter) but rather distinct and removed from the comfort of parents. I remember clearly that the first thing that ran through my head at the time was “so why the heck has everyone been telling me about Santa if he doesn’t exist?? I am being lied to!” It was a disappointing experience to say the least.

Santa may be regarded as a quasi-religious figure not simply because of the links and similarities with religion, which others have pointed out, but also because in some cultures Santa and Jesus are somewhat conflated.

For example in Italy, which is overwhelmingly Catholic, the presents that arrive for children on Christmas presumably get there because they are delivered by the equivalent of Santa OR baby Jesus. It has become a common expression to say that baby Jesus rewarded a child for being good. Baby Jesus seems to have taken over part of Santa’s job, which is delivering presents. Yet the prevalence of Santa is in no way threatened, and he remains a powerful and pervasive character at Christmas time, one whose primary function is to deliver presents.

The two concepts seem to co-exist peacefully, almost like the pagan symbol of the Christmas tree and the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ.

And we all know who that being is - the Tooth Fairy :smiley:

Ah, well, I was always a light sleeper, and I actually saw my mother sneaking in to slip the quarter under my pillow. I played along. Isn’t there anyone I can believe in?

I played along with my parents on the Santa thing for several years because (naive and young as I was) I was under the impression that they would be crestfallen if they discovered the truth (yes, I know it doesn’t make complete sense; I was only 5 at the time).

Read Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett. He does an excellent job of pointing out the similarities between Santa (Hogfather) and a god.

—If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone say “I believe in Capitalism”, well, I’d have a lot of nickels. —

You godamn money grubbing capitalist: always trying to make a quick nickel off a poor sod!

Seriously though: I think finding out that Big Bird is just some chick in a suit is way more traumatic. Or that the real Kermit is DEAD, but Kermit lives on anyway.

Santa Claus could well have some effects on kids in the sense that he usually involves adults stamp-of-approval on the failure to think through a belief: putting the celebration of and relation to the character ahead of and prior to even considering his existence or the claims made about him. But that’s probably a little silly: more likely its much more simple: kids have wild imaginations, and it’s fun to spark them.

—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.—

This seems a little difficult to nail down: how do you decide which filling of what need is “erroneous” if we have no real commonly agreed to guage of what the “correct” fulfillment of the need is in the first place?

—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.—

Or perhaps a religious desire to acquire, as with Weberian Protestants? You’re coming a little too close to saying that people without religion are necessarily left in a moral vacuum, as if morality and religion went hand in hand, never one without the other.