That’s quite advanced thinking - not all children are ready to process a false equivalence when they’re just at the stage of giving up believing in Santa.
You think kids often figure out the Tooth Fairy before losing teeth?
I think the balance of deception often shifts at some point during kindergarten or, at the latest, first grade. Someone tells. At that point, kids often sort of believe/don’t believe/understand it’s pretend but they don’t confront their parents: they continue to play along.
I stopped believing in Santa before the Tooth Fairy and, amazingly, the Easter Bunny.
All of these entities scared the bejesus out of me.
Speaking of which, I remember how God/Jesus and the Santa and Easter Bunny myths hybridized in my mind. Santa knows when you are sleeping and he knows when you’ve been bad or good. Hmm, that sounds a whole lot like God, right? I remember working it out in my head that God must contract with Santa to do surveillance on children. It was the only way I could reconcile the two.
There was one Easter when I woke up early expecting to find Jesus in the house, along with the Easter Bunny. Why? Because everyone knows Easter is when Jesus rose from the dead. I was terrified enough of a giant rabbit. Jesus in the house was too much.
If I were a religious parent (as my parents) were, I would be very wary of teaching my children these kinds of stories. Yeah, I know. The majority of people don’t lose their religious faith after they realize Santa doesn’t exist. But still. In some segment of children, the deception plants the seeds of the doubt. I would think, if I cared about my children’s “souls”, all the fun is not worth taking this risk.
I found out about Santa Clause in the most abrupt way. One year around Christmas time, I made mention of Santa Clause to my mother, she responded with “Shakes, there is no such thing as Santa Clause! You’re the oldest kid I know that still believes in Santa Clause!”
Talk about feeling betrayed, I was angry and felt like the stupidest kid on the planet. And to make matters worse, guess who visited our homeroom class the very next day at school? Yep, Santa Clause. Every kid in my class was so excited to see him and I felt like total shit. Also, so much for my mom’s theory about me being the oldest kid that believes in Santa Clause. :rolleyes:
So yeah, I didn’t do the SC thing with my two kids. That was a promise I made myself so many years ago when I was still just a kid.
What’s the point in telling any story? To amuse and entertain. Storytelling is what makes us humans, and it’s an important skill in adult life. If you don’t know how to tell stories – factual or not – you cannot interact socially, since you do it every day.
If you feel betrayed by learning Santa Claus isn’t real, you have a bigger problem with your relationships with your parents than you do with the story. Children with imagination have no problem with the concept, but, sadly, imagination is not as highly regarded as it used to be.
We told our daughter about Santa Claus and she was a firm believer when she was four. When she was five, she still talked about him (which surprised us; we figured she’d stop believing by then). Then, on Christmas Eve, as I put her into her bed, she got a worried look on her face and asked me, “Is is OK to pretend to believe in Santa Claus?” I smiled and told her it was fine.
You know, people are wired differently. I agree that the vast majority of kids handle the whole Santa Claus thing just fine, but I think it’s kind of crappy to tell a 6 year old who is feeling terribly betrayed that their feelings must be the result of a dysfunctional relationship with their parents and a severe lack of imagination on their own part.
It’s really not about imagination, it’s about trust. Some kids do not trust easily. They are born wary. For kids like that, finding out your *parents *–the only people you don’t question–were lying to you is hard to take, and it can be hard to understand why this one thing is different.
I’m not saying people shouldn’t do the whole Santa Claus thing. But I have known a few highly imaginative, perfectly functional people who remembered the big reveal as traumatic. With some kids, especially high-strung ones, nervous ones, I think you want to make sure they understand it’s pretend earlier rather than later.
I can think of three possible answers.
(1) If you have the attitude which you express here (albeit tongue-in-cheek, I assume) that you need to “get credit” for everything you give to, and do for, your children, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. Conversely, you’ll be happier if you have the ability to give gifts anonymously and to do nice things for people without always expecting recognition and reward from them.
(2) There’s probably a case to be made that Santa Claus, though a mythical being, is a symbol or personification of something that really does exist (i.e. a spirit of benevolence and generosity, or something like that); and that, by letting your small children believe in Santa, you’re helping them to have an abiding in what he stands for, which will make them happier and healthier throughout their lives.
(3) As others have pointed out, it’s fun.
Especially since some parents use the myth to control their children. It’s not just wonder and delight, but it’s used to scare their kids into being “good”. And not being good for goodness sake (despite what the song says), but so that they can get the toy they really want.
That’s not “imagination”. That’s manipulation. And in that way, it’s exactly like religion. I don’t understand how believers in religion can’t see the conflict in expecting their kids to be good-natured and jovial when one myth they’ve been taught stops making sense. But if another myth stops making sense, there must be something wrong with them morally and spiritually.
I mean, if my parents had said, “You know all that stuff about Jesus and God we taught you to believe in? All that was just ‘imagination’ as well. Just so you know!” I would have been all kinds of pissed off. “Fun” or not, no one likes to be played a fool.
Because if they know you have that kind of money they will expect presents all the time.
Fine, a question for the EVIL LYING SANTA APOLOGISTS (yes, that’s your official title now): if your children believed earnestly in some other fiction that’s not part of the social norm… wouldn’t you disabuse them?
I mean, if your five year old wants to grow up to go to Hogwarts or whatever kids are into these days, to visit the… land of the Ponies, I guess… or whatever, wouldn’t you be all “no, honey, that’s a fiction, not a real place.”?
That’s a good question.
I’d also like to ask these parents what would they say if their kid came to them and said, “Mommy and Daddy, I no longer wish to subscribe to your religious beliefs. The whole Santa Claus revelation has taught me that I should be more skeptical when it comes to fanciful stories that can’t be confirmed empirically. You know what they say. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me…you can’t get fooled again!”
Kids are gullible and trusting by nature, and some people enjoy taking advantage of that.
My parents never told us this crap, though we did observe the cultural rituals and were familiar with the myths. We hung stockings, put baby teeth under pillows, etc.
I never told my kid this nonsense either. How do you expect to be believed the rest of the time when every so often you pass off nonsense as the truth? Don’t you want to be trusted and to deserve that trust? We always felt sorry for the kids whose parents lied to them.
I do it because I enjoyed it as a child, to the point that even when I knew better I asked my mom to continue putting “Santa” gifts under the tree because I enjoyed the ritual and fantasy of it all.
Today I hope my kids enjoy it as well and so far so good. One is 14 and old enough to know better but never references his earlier belief in Santa in any negative way or with any disappointment. My younger one just turned three and this will be the first Christmas he really knows enough to get excited for it.
So I do it 'cause we like it. Good enough reason for us.
We had some newish friends that I couldn’t stay friends with over this. Christmas time rolled around and she put a “good day/bad day” list on her fridge and listed marks for each child for each day, detailing if their day was good or bad in Santa’s eyes. These were preschool and younger kids. Everything was a threat about being on the bad list. I was so put off by her manipulation that it was easy to let this friendship just drift.
Woman was a pediatrician, too.
If I had a five year old who wanted to be a wizard when he grew up, I’d tell him to rock on with his bad self provided it wasn’t an issue otherwise (just saying “I wanna be a wizard!” vs. crying because I refused to take him to Hogwarts). Why on earth wouldn’t I? It’s not as though the kid will grow up to be 16 and trying to apply for wizard colleges.
Don’t know. It’s literally never happened. Kids differentiate real from fantasy at about age 3. Santa and the Tooth Fairy persist a few years longer, thanks to adult complicity and planting of evidence.
If a three year old came to be and earnestly wanted to go to Hogwarts, I’d probably admit that I would really really love to go to Hogwarts, too, and suggest that we play Hogwarts and I get to be Hagrid and what should we use for a Sorting Hat? No, I see no need to disabuse a 3 year old of the notion that Hogwarts is real, because it’s developmentally appropriate for a 3 year old to still be working out real vs. pretend, and we might as well play Hogwarts.
If a twelve year old came to be and earnestly wanted to go to Hogwarts (which, again, has simply never happened), I’d assume that there was something going on that the kid was trying to escape. If they can’t separate reality from fantasy at that age, the specific belief is not the worry, it’s that they haven’t reached or have regressed past a developmental milestone.
In between, I’d take it on a case by case basis. Does this particular 7 year old seem to have trouble differentiating between reality and fantasy? That would dictate how I might intervene. If it happened, which it hasn’t.
Again, it’s never actually happened (to me). Has it been said to you by an actual child, or is this something you imagine a child might say?
But, sure, “if.” If it happened, I probably would have handled like I did when it came up unrelated to Santa. My kid didn’t connect Santa will his agnosticism, but when he did, years later, “confess” that he thought my community’s religious beliefs and practices were kind of silly, I simply shrugged and said, “Sometimes I do, too. I take what works for me and let the rest go on by. You can do what works for you.”
Well, in that scenario I was assuming that you would be thinking “oh, whoa, I should teach the little guy the difference between fiction and reality.” I mean, sure, he’ll figure that out eventually but parents are supposed to help out sometimes.
Joy and happiness mostly…also is it so bad for Children to think there is someone magical out there who is basically Good and fun? If you want the credit, pat yourself on the back as you wrap the presents.