(Source: Recovery from Mormonism discussion board,
Steve Benson, December 20, 2017)
Ho! Ho! Holy Oh, No!
Yes, it's that time of year to celebrate the season by rumbling in the raucous RfM holiday tradition of trading barbs over whether lying to children about the true nature of the Fake Santa is a wise, honest, rational and morally justifable way to teach them sound principles by which to live their innocent young lives, train their personal inner compasses and strengthen their inquisitive, developing brains.
In behalf of godless grinches everywhere, I say it's not--and assert that there are plenty of good reasons based on demonstrable facts, logic and history to sack Santa for the health and benefit of little boys and girls who look to grown-ups for guidance they can trust.
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-- Bringing Reason to the Season: Debunking the Mindless and Vengeful Mythology of the Two-in-One "Santa God"
In the spirit of tearing down certain "sacred” idols of societal worship (so sacred, in fact, that they’re apparently deemed off-limits to some Santa-lovin' folks around here), it’s appropriate to, once again, line up and boot Santa's behind through the uprights of all the Christmas lights. In other words, to give him an unholy heave-ho-ho.
Indeed, duty and expectation demands it. As RfM poster "dagny" has asked in a words filled with salivatingly sacrilegious suspense:
"Isn't it that time of year for you to share your comments about [Tom] Flynn's [book],'The Trouble With Christmas?' It's one of my favorites. Encore!" ("Here's What Gets Me," posted by "dagny," on "Recovery from Mormonism" discussion board, 6 December 2011)
Yes, boys and girls, it’s time to burst Bad Santa’s bag of trickster treats.
“Why?” some keepers of the Santa flame ask in alarm, wanting to see Santa’s goodly lies continue to dance through the heads of children snuggled in their beds. It's proper, they insist, to mislead children in supposedly healthy, well-intentioned ways by making it possible to experience the benefits of being sucked in by the Fake Santa in the name of God, Family, Country and, oh, Shameless Commercialism, Materialism and Greed.
To put it even more bluntly: “Don’t mess with my Savior, or my Santa, or my Savior Santa, or my Santa Savior. Whatever. Don’t go where angels fear to tread. Remember, it’s for the children. In the name of the Jolly Ol’ Fat Guy (who manages to climb his way into your house late at night when everyone's asleep in the name of checking things out and spreading love and good cheer). Amen.”
Yes, here we go again. Why? For one thing, this is a topic with a tried-and-true track record of jingling folks’ hells-bells in clearly significant and personal ways. Resurrecting the subject in timely fashion (pardon the he-is-risen mythological language traditionally reserved for another messianic action hero) is a perfect way to kick off this site's Rumble in the Toy Shop over why we have this forum in the first place. It’s a reminder that this is the perfect place for imperfect boys and girls of all ages to vent about matters that, well, matter. After all, faithful flocks take their Santa shepherd very seriously. And those who don’t agree with such lyin'-ization are just as serious in the opposite direction.
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--Baggage on This North Pole Reindeer-Whippin' World Traveler: Brought to You by “Evil” Elves Whose Christmas Wish Lists Include Wanting Him to Take Long and Overdue Vacation
It‘s a ice-cold Christmas Eve reality (one that borrows from from “Twas the Night Before Christmas” in shining light on an old-fallen snow job). There are those who think that the sanctified Santa Deception foisted on vulnerable and easily-manipulated kids is--dare we say?--strikingly Mormon-like in its controlling and damaging aspects. Don't believe me? Here's RfM poster "AngelCowgirl" with her frightening story:
"As a kid, I was so creeped out by Santa--and the similarity to TSCC [The So-Called Church’]. When I was young, I was molested by a relative. So, when I heard garbage about Santa like ‘he sees you when you're sleeping . . .’ and was told stories about a guy sneaking into my house late at night, I was completely beyond freaked out. I would have nightmares and wake up screaming. I absolutely hated Christmas.
"To this day, I am still sickened when I see parents FORCE their crying kids to sit on a costumed stranger's lap so they can take a picture. We tell our kids to not talk to strangers, not take candy from strangers, and then we chew them out when they won't take the stranger's proffered candy cane? And when the poor kid wails, ‘I don't want to!’ the parents wrestle them onto the guy's lap anyway, ignoring the child's tears and vocalizations of discomfort. Ugh.
"And this is similar in many ways--there's a big SkyDaddy watching you, and he's gonna make you a big burning lump of coal in hell if you're naughty! (And, hey, God has flying angels instead of reindeer...)
"And the children are forced to go into closed offices with grown men to be 'interviewed' about how naughty they are, even if the poor kids don't want to, they are generally forced to do so. Ewwwww!" (“As a Kid, I Was So Creeped Out by Santa... and the Similarity to TSCC,” posted by “AngelCowgirl," on ”RfM” discussion board, 11 December 2011, edited)
Positive, supportive reaction in that thread from fellow posters include the following comments to "AngelCowgirl":
-"Hadn't thought of it that way before. Now I'm creeped out too!"
-"It is creepy. As a kid we knew about Santa but it wasn't forced on us. [However], I do have one childhood picture of me screaming my head off. After that year my mom never made us do it if we didn't want to. It is beyond creepy. Even my kids ([ages] 9,6 and 4) think it is weird."
-"I loved Santa he same way i loved heavenly father. I genuinely cried when i found out Santa was fake :( but I'm glad i had that experience because I realized how similar believing in Santa was to faith in God. You make up excuses for stuff that doesn't make sense and the rest happens by 'magic.' Finding out about Santa helped me let go of 'God' but, wow, I'm never going to lie to my kids with crap like that."
-"Yes. I didn't understand how you can teach your kid to believe in Santa and baby Jesus at the same time, so we went with Baby Jesus. My kids knew as soon as they could talk; they had a choice when it came to physical contact [with Santa]. My son was wrestling with his uncle (father of two girls) and my son started screaming, 'No!' The uncle continued, so my son kicked him in the stomach! The uncle was mad, but we reminded him our son said 'no.'"
-"The whole being monitored thing really gets to me, but you are right about the parallels. I actually learned that christmas is actually a pagan holiday today. That blew my mind. I. too, found it weird when i saw kids at the mall sit on a stranger's lap. It's very weird to watch at my age. The thought that came to my head was. 'Just replace Santa with [the] resurrected Jesus and it still would be bizarre. But this is how Mormons think, being asked sexual questions by a stranger is just a normal day in the park to them."
-"Cowgirl: I like your position on this."
--"What do caring parents do if a kid is creeped out by thunder or darkness? They sit with the child and reassure them. They offer to step in and help buck up their courage. They are supportive, kind, and try to help the child deal with fear. They don't force the kid to face fear if they're not ready and they understand that every child is different. Not all of them must see reality if they're not ready to do so. Santa? Good parents don't foist him on unwilling kids nor do they withhold the experience if a child loves being part of the tradition."
Plainly put, Santa is a bad dude cruising your neighborhood on a bad trip who--for yet another recovering RfMer--triggers flashbacks of Santa insanity, It comes by way of poster "catnip,” who details her self-described battle with "Santa Anxiety Syndrome" in the afore-mentioned 2011 thread:
"I can remember once, when I was about 4, standing in line to talk to 'Santa.' I heard him ask each kid, 'Have you been good this year?’ Nervously, I turned to my mother and whispered, ‘Have I been good this year?' She replied, with a snicker, 'Only when you're asleep.'
"Not long before that, an elderly family member had passed away and my father had driven to the city where her funeral was held. I had never seen a dead person and asked my father what this relative had looked like now that she was dead. He told me, 'She just looked like she was asleep.'
"So, in my confused little mind, I equated death with sleep, came to the rapid conclusion that my mother would be happier if I were dead, because only then would I be ‘good.’ I burst into tears, pulled loose from my mother's hand, broke out of the Santa line, and ran, sobbing, back to our car. I was too little and too inarticulate to explain why I didn't want anything to do with Santa. All the way back home, my mother berated me for being both bad and ungrateful. But she never tried to make me talk to Santa again.
"It took me a long time to work through the implications of being 'good,' 'asleep,' and 'dead.'" (“Santa Anxiety Syndrome,“ posted by “catnip,” on “RfM” discussion board, 12 December 2011)
NOTE: Positive, supportive reaction in that same thread from fellow posters include the following comments to "catnip":
-"Oh, 'catnip,' that broke my heart for the little you! :(
Your logic makes perfect sense. My kids make connections like that all the time that we adults don't generally understand. Holy crap, no wonder our society is so screwed up."
(The link to the 2011 thread, complete with the names of post authors:
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,362963)
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--An Anti-Santa Smack-Down: Taking on St. Nick and His Imaginary Cousin, St. Jesus, in Their Main-Event Christ-Mass Eve Tag-Team Performance
During this period for our planet when the "End Timers" are continuously bleeting out warnings of the apocalyptic arrival of the end of the Earth, many humans instinctively turn for religious refuge to the “miracle” of the Santa Christ.
‘Tis the season, as Flynn notes in his above-referenced book, "The Trouble With Christmas," where the Elf Man’s faithful fans, like rock-star groupies, focus their time and devotion on the object most worthy of their collective worship. As Flynn describes it: "John Lennon once said that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus Christ. He was wrong. That honor belongs to Santa Claus. An estimated 85% of American four-year-olds believe in Santa. Only 82% of adults in a recent poll told Gallup that they were Christians. Among their respective target audiences, Santa outpulls Jesus by a nose." (Tom Flynn, "The Trouble With Christmas" (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1993, p. 128)
Praise the Red-Suited Lord from the Northern Fiords and Pass the Presents.
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--St. Nick and Mormon Salvation: “Is Santa Claus a Mormon?”
Welcome to my personal adventure tales with the Santa Lie, centered around traditions of Mormon hearth and home.One Christmas season, when my oldest daughter was around eight and still a “believer” in the myth of the Jolly Old Elf, she innocently asked me, “Is Santa Claus a Mormon?” Uneasily, I tried avoiding answering her question, but it was clear that she was already viewing Santa Claus as at least a potential member of God’s One and Only True Church. Even for someone like myself who, back then, was still mired in the mind-loopy Mormon faith, I hoped to encourage a wider, more ecumenical world view when it came to judging Earth’s little non-Mormon girls and boys.
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--Enter Santa to Rock the Joint, Only to Get Manhandled
Like many of you, growing up, my nuclear family enjoyed favorite Christmas traditions, especially ones geared toward the children. By far, the most anticipated event was the arrival of Santa Claus at the Benson household on Christmas Eve. Milk and cookies were set out for St. Nick, along with carrots for the reindeer. (The next morning, the children would find the food all gone with a thank-you note left behind by a contented, sugared-up Santa). The highlight of Christmas Eve was when the children gathered around the family piano, as my mom played and dad led us in an enthusiastic rendition of “Jingle Bells.” It was our signal for Santa to make his presence known in the neighborhood. As the children reached the chorus, suddenly Santa’s sleigh bells could be heard ringing around the perimeter of the house, accompanied by a deep, “Ho! Ho! Ho!” The children would scream and rush off to bed, where they would dive under the covers and squeeze their eyes tightly shut, knowing that Santa would not come by until all the kiddies were sound asleep. It was so emotionally stressful for them that some of the younger ones would even cry because they weren't falling asleep fast enough. To be sure, getting the children to Santa-required Slumberland often proved difficult. The conniving grown-ups made it all the more challenging with more disruptive deceptions. Out in the dark backyard, a flashlight covered in a red sock could be seen bounding across the lawn. “Look!” the adults would exclaim, pointing it out to the children, “It’s Rudolph’s nose!” These traditions were passed from decade to decade in our family circles.
As the children grew older and finally came to know the “truth” about Santa, they, too, were brought into the secret fraternity and would participate in the elaborate ruses designed to deceive their younger siblings who still believed. Those “in the know” would ring the bells outside the house and then sneak back inside to help direct the anxious little ones off to bed. As part of the antics myself, I would dress up in a Santa suit and climb up on our roof, where my younger siblings could hear me clomping around and shouting, “On Dasher! On Dancer! On Prancer and Vixen!”
One year, I nearly fell off. But another year, the holiday hoaxing came close to being disastrously exposed. At the time, I was a teenager and living with my family in the Indiana-Michigan Mormon mission home, then located in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, where my dad was serving as the mission president.The mansion-like place had a large garage connected to the main living quarters by an outdoor walkway. Over the garage was a small apartment for the mission home staff. On Christmas Eve, I was decked out in my Santa suit, holding a large garbage bag over my shoulder filled with pillows and standing on the walkway, giving my best belly laugh performance. Peering out of the window across the way was my wide-eyed little brother, Mike. As I strutted around, bellowing and waving, the door of the mission home staff’s apartment suddenly opened behind me. The staff hadn’t been informed beforehand about the planned Santa act. Before I could say, “Get back inside, all!” one of the missionaries grabbed me, yelled, “Get in here, you honker!” (yes, that was the term, “honker”}, then jerked me inside the apartment. I struggled to break free, frantically telling them they were ruining the whole thing for my little brother who was watching the wrestle-mania with Santa unfold. Mike later asked me why the missionaries pulled Santa inside and slammed the door. I told him Santa wanted to meet with them. Miracle of miracles, Mike faithfully believed.
Our hallowed and sometimes harrowing Santa tradition continued, as I began raising our own young children. After the Christmas caroling around the piano, the bell-ringing and the scampering off to bed, I would wait until the wee hours of Christmas morning, then don the big red suit, strap on the yak-hair beard, adjust the cap and visit the bedrooms of each of our slumbering children. There, I would pat them on the head, whisper their names until they woke up, give them a candy cane and ask them what they wanted for Christmas. All the while, photographs were being taken of the grumpy, bleary-eyed children who, at that point in the middle of the night, wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep.
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--My Childhood Coming-to-“Santa-is-a Fake Moment”: The St. Nick Myth Unbearded, Uncovered and Unbelieved
As fun as it was for me as a Santa-believing child anticipating the arrival of the jolly old gift giver, finding out that St. Nick was nothing but a myth (a polite term for bald-faced lie) was a seriously disappointing wake-up experience. Years laters, it raised an important question: How beneficial is it to children to push the Santa Claus fable on them in the first place? For years, I was one of Santa’s truest of true-blue believers. I “knew” he was real, that he lived at the North Pole, that he had an army of elves who made toys in his workshop, that kept track of all the good and bad boys and girls, and that he flew through the air circumventing the globe on Christmas Eve, pulled by magic-motored reindeer, to deliver toys or coal to all the deserving recipients. I knew this was true because my trusty and wise parents told me it was. And parents don’t lie, right?.
Trouble was, I had a next-door neighbor blabber-mouth friend named Clark, who claimed to know otherwise. Seeing my faithful ignorance, he challenged me to perform a test. He informed me that Santa Claus was a fraud. With vivid memories of my family’s Christmas Eve antics dancing through my own head, I absolutely refused to believe him. “Feel his beard when you sit on his lap,” Clark told me, when I sat on Santa's lap in the department store, When that time finally came, I anxiously moved up the line, and when my turn came, I took my test position. Santa asked me what I wanted for Christmas but I wasn't listening. Instead, I was concentrating on gingerly twisting a bit of his beard between my fingers. But having never felt a genuine beard before (they were extremely rare in Mormonland back then), I couldn’t tell whether or not it was real and therefore returned home, troubled and unsure. I told Clark I wasn't convinced that Santa was a fake because my scientific beard experiment had yielded inconclusive results. Clark reiterated that Santa was still a fake. By now, I was beginning to entertain the nagging question, "What if he's right?" The stabbing icicles of doubt began to creep into my mind: Was Santa really real? I wanted so much to believe that he was, but (to quote the Mormon temple film that I wouldn't see until years later), my eyes “began to be opened.”
One Christmas morning in Salt Lake City as we were unwrapping our presents around the tree, I noticed something rather perplexing about the big box in which my much-anticipated dinosaur set had come. It sported a retail price tag from the local Skaggs department store. Huh? I asked my dad why this was so. “Aren’t the toys made in Santa’s workshop?” He replied, “They are, but then Santa’s elves take them to the stores.” My eyes were beginning to open even wider. That wasn’t the official party line I had heard in “’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” or seen on TV, or been told by Mom and Dad.
The final, devastating moment of truth came during my eighth year--1962--Year of Our Phony Santa Lord. By believer’s standards, being 8 meant I was pretty old to still be a Disciple of Claus. Most of my friends no longer bought into the Santa story, but I had tried desperately to hold on, wanting to believe that all I had heard and seen through my life really was true: Santa lived. My big reset moment arrived soon enough. One day, I was walking through the kitchen and spotted a small paperback book on the kitchen table. It had a photograph of a boy and girl on the cover, running and smiling. Authored by Frances L. Ilg and Louse Bates Ames, it was entitled, "The Gesell Institute’s Child Behavior: A Realistic Guide to Child Behavior in the Vital Formative Fears from Birth to Ten" (New York, New York: Dell Publishing Company, Inc., 1955). To this day, I have saved that fragile and tattered book as part of my childhood collection of artifacts chronicling my journey through this veil of vaporizing myths. What its now-yellowed pages revealed to me that fateful day was to prove to be of importance in the formation of my skeptical attitude toward authoritative claims made by others who expected me to believe and believe them without question or doubt. That approach would no longer work for me. My inner Satan was about to come out.
As a child, I loved books, so I went to my room with that book and opened it to the table of contents. There, under Chapter 17, in adult-sized capital letters, were words screaming back at me: “WHAT TO TELL ABOUT SANTA CLAUS, DEITY, DEATH, ADOPTION, DIVORCE,” p. 323. Uh-oh. With some apprehension, I opened to the specified page. Under the sub-heading “Santa Claus,” I encountered the words (quoted below) that I feared might be there. Just like I feared, I had been right:
”’There really isn’t a Santa Claus, is there, Mummy?’ Six-year-old Peter regarded his mother searchingly. Mother hesitated for a moment. She had known that this day would come--but still--questions about Santa, like questions about sex, often pop up when we’re not quite prepared for them. She decided to tell the truth. ’No, Peter, there really isn’t any Santa Claus.’"
Welcome to the real world, Stephen Reed Benson. I closed the book as a twinge of acceptance mixed with a sense of betrayal hit my stomach simultaneously. Now I knew I had to ask that same question to my mom. So, I returned to the kitchen, where she was preparing a meal. “Mommy,” I asked, “Is there a Santa Claus?” “Yes,” she replied. A warning bell went off in my head. Recalling what I had just read on page 323 and unable to suppress my doubts any longer, I persisted, “I mean the big fat man with the beard.” Mom hesitated, then, without looking directly at me, said, “No. Daddy is Santa Claus.” Npw. amid emotions of disappointment mingled with a triumphal sense of “ah-ha!,” I replied, “I know. I read it in a book.” In that moment (but unbeknownst to me at the time), an apostate was born. On that day, at the ripe old age of 8, I learned an extraordinary, page-turning, heart-pumping, brain-training lesson: You can’t trust adults to tell you the truth.
As I look back on that experience, I realize that in that pivotal experience, I began to lose faith in the adults who had led me through life, including the ones who had been solemnly vouching for Santa’s now-disproven existence. That Santa-smashing seismic event ended up playing a significant role in planting in my mind a growing degree of skepticism and distrust of authority figures--ranging from Santa Claus, to my parents, to my Mormon prophet grandpa, and eventually to Jesus Christ and the donkey he rode in on. The Santa lie had set me free to be me.
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--In Sacred Silliness: St. Nick’s Bag of Technicolor Trickery
Reason, knowledge, observation and experience inform us that Santa isn’t--and can’t logically be--real. Even when the truth of Santa’s non-existence was confirmed to me as an inquisitive child, I thought to myself, how could it be otherwise? After all, looking at the facts, anyone could see that Santa’s an obvious imposter. Take, for example, the staggering task of gift-delivering facing him each Christmas Eve. As reported by "Spy" magazine:
"Excluding non-Christians and bad children, Santa must visit 91.8 million homes within the 31 hours of Christmas Eve darkness afforded by the Earth’s rotation.
"He must travel at least 72,522,000 miles, not counting ocean crossings.
"Given his 31-hour deadline, he must maintain a speed of 650 miles a second.
"Assuming two pounds of presents a child, his sleigh must carry a load of 321,300 tons, plus a hefty Santa.
"The massive sleigh requires 213,200 reindeer to pull it, increasing the total Santa payload to 353,430 tons.
"The 353,430 tons of reindeer and presents traveling at 650 miles a second would create massive heat and air resistance, with the two lead reindeer absorbing 14.3 quintillion joules of energy a second each, causing them to burst into spectacular, multi-colored flames, almost instantaneously!” (“Magazine Reveals Stirring Statistics on Santa’s Trip,” in "The [Tacoma, WA] Morning News Tribune," 22 December 1990, p. A8; and “Seen, Heard, Said,” in "The Seattle Times," 25 December 1990, p. F2)
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--The Calloused Crime of Being a Santa Skeptic in a Screwed-Up, Santa-Sanctified System Driven by Miracle Mob Belief
Raising questions about Santa in a culture which hangs on desperately to the joys of myth and superstition can be highly unpopular. As Gamaliel Bradford lamented: “The fairies are gone . . . the witches are gone . . . the ghosts are gone. Santa Claus alone still lingers with us. For heaven’s sake, let us keep him as long as we can” (Flynn, pp. 148-49). In other words, don’t rock the boat. It feels good to believe. And remember this, as well: Those who challenge the myth, do so at their own peril. The pressure from society to believe and deceive was well described by psychiatrist Renzo Sereno, who noted sadly that “[a]ny adult who dares tell a child the objective truth on the matter [of St. Nick] is considered worse than blasphemous” (Flynn, p. 129). A similar view was held by playwright and novelist W. J. Locker, who warned: “He who would destroy a child’s faith in Father Christmas, and thus annihilate the exquisite poetry of childhood, should be kept chained up beyond the reach of his fellow man” (ibid).
Flynn recounts the spasmodic reaction of a sheep-herded society when a national news network exploded the Santa myth: "During World War II, labor leader John L. Lewis called a coal miners’ strike just before Christmas. NBC opened its radio newscast with the words, 'John L. Lewis just shot Santa Claus.' In the next hour, 30,000 calls inundated the network’s switchboards. A Texas boy despaired and downed a bottle of castor oil. So frightening was the reaction that NBC hurriedly staged an 'interview with Santa Claus' to reassure Americans that the Jolly Old Elf was still alive. The actor portraying Santa Claus reported that 'John L. Lewis just missed me . . . '" (Flynn, p. 136)
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--Profiles in Christmas Courage: Tales from the Files of Outspoken Santa Debunkers
In our Santa-submersed culture, speaking the inconvenient truth about the myth of St. Nick can, indeed, be done at risk to one’s personal position. As many of you may have also discovered, finding out that truth--not to mention speaking it--can be difficult, especially when the forces of community and culture are plotting to keep it covered with that thick blanket of a North Pole snow job. Over the years, With that in mind, I have collected over the years news stories dealing with the Santa myth. This hobby is, no doubt, grounded in my own anger at being manipulated about the fable of St. Nick. It has been heartening to me, however, to see that despite objections by society at large against those who would topple Santa from his magical and mindless pedestal, truth-tellers have refused to keep quiet and, instead, have outed Santa, come hell or high stockings stuffed with coal. Here are a few examples:
**The Priest Who Dared Declare Santa Dead
Those of have burst the Santa bubble have incurred the wrath of even God’s servants. In an article headlined, “Christmyth: Priest Says Parents Lie, Santa Dead,” a man of the cloth was tagged and gagged by his own church for being a Santa whistleblower:
"A priest who told youngsters that Santa Claus is dead and that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer doesn’t exist was acting on his 'zeal to emphasize the spiritual dimension' of Christmas, church officials said Tuesday. The Diocese of Metuchen issued a statement to clarify comments by the Rev. Romano Ferraro at the St. John Vianney Roman Catholic Church in Colonia [New Jersey] on Saturday. Ferraro also had said that parents who tell their children Santa exists are liars.
"'He tried to kill Santa,' said Joanne Apolonia, a mother who attended the weekend Mass at the Church with her 'Confraternity of Christian Doctrine' class. 'That’s how the kids took it.'
"The sermon started 'very nicely,' with Ferraro explaining St. Nicholas’ history and telling the children that the saint distributed presents to the poor, a forerunner of gift-giving, said Apolonia, who attended with her daughter. But Ferraro than said that just as Saint Nicholas is dead, so is Santa Claus, she said. He also said there is no North Pole and no Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. . . .
"During a discussion after Mass . . ., a fifth-grader asked whether the sermon meant parents were liars, Apolonia said. Ferraro answered, 'yes,' Apolonia said, and told the kids, who ranged from first-graders to sixth-graders, 'If you pretend to be sleeping (on Christmas Eve), you’ll catch your parents putting presents under the tree.' . . .
"'The emphasis on the birth of Christ and his love is to be paramount at Christmas,' said Father Francis J. Sergel, pastor at St. John’s. 'It is unfortunate that Father Ferraro . . . may have appeared to diminish the importance which many, especially children, attach to some of the cultural and secular aspects of the season. We regret any lack of sensitivity and any disappointment or disillusionment on the part of the children.'
“Sergel also apologized for any awkwardness or difficulty the comments may have caused parents. . . . Robert Madison, whose child also attended, said the parents 'are going nuts' over the priest’s comments. Ferraro has 'taken away something very special to little children,' Madison said. The Rev. Robert Wister, associate dean at the School of Theology at Seton Hall University said, 'The priest’s main purpose was to focus the people on the centrality of Christ and draw them away from the commercialism of the holiday. I’ve given sermons with that theme, but I never killed Santa.'" ("Associated Press, "dateline: Woodbridge, New Jersey, reprinted in "The Arizona Republic," 10 December 1986, p. D2)
**The Little Girl Whose Anti-Santa Stance Caused a Class to Cry
Others, including even little children, have paid the price for telling the truth about Santa--including being taken out of school. In a news story entitled, “Pupil Kills Cherished Santa Belief, Classmates Sob,” the kindergarten teacher of student Cherish Stutts ordered her '"not to say such things" when the teacher overheard Cherish tell "other students that Santa Claus wasn’t real.” As a result of the teacher’s action, Cherish’s mother decided the girl was "going to stay home from school for the rest of the year to defend her right to [not believe in Santa] . . . 'I’m going to home-school her,' the mother said. 'The children were discovering that not everybody thinks alike. That is a fact of life.' . . . Cherish’s teacher violated the girl’s rights when the teacher took the pupil aside . . . and asked her to keep her skepticism about Santa Claus to herself, Debra Stutts said.
"But Principal Gradon Axtell said the teacher talked to the girl only after several crying classmates told her about Cherish’s opinions. Axtell said he stands by the teacher’s actions. 'Here (pupils) are all excited about St. Nicholas, and here is a little girl coming along and saying there is not a Santa Claus,' Axtell said.'" In a related story, Cherish’s mother "said her daughter never has believed in Santa Claus because she was told the true story of how Santa came to be." ("Associated Press," dateline: Green Bay, Wisconsin, reprinted in "The Arizona Republic," 9 December 1989; and “Pupil Fights for Fight Not to Believe in Santa,” reprinted in "The Phoenix Gazette," 9 December 1989, p. B6)
**The Case of the Santa-Sacking Gym Teacher
David Henry--a P.E. teacher at Fairwood Elementary School in Kent, Washington--landed in hot water when parents of five- and six-year-old students said it wasn’t "his business . . . .[to force their children] to put away their visions of sugar plums and view the world with Scrooge-like realism. . . . Henry . . . touched off an unseasonable controversy . . . by attempting to destroy one of the most cherished myths in Christendom. . . . [F]or reasons he will not disclose, Henry sat down children in gym classes from kindergarten to third grade . . . and told the students that Virginia had been deceived: There is no Santa Claus. 'He told them mommy and daddy were Santa Claus,' said Rob Robson, whose daughter Amanda is a kindergartner at Fairwood. 'I was really upset. He’s a gym teacher and I think it’s way out of his realm to be talking about Christmas and things that really don’t pertain to what he teaches.' . . .
"Henry’s action violated no rules, [Kent School District spokeswoman Judy] Parker said. 'This is not considered an infraction against any district policy,' she said. 'We do not have any policy on Santa.'” (“Truth Hurts: Gym Teacher Gives Lowdown on Santa,” dateline: Kent, Washington, reprinted in "The Phoenix Gazette," 1 January 1994, p. A2)
**Fake Santa Tells the Kids That Santa Is a Fake
Then there was the case where children got it straight from the ho-ho-ho'er’s mouth. Headlined, “Mall Santa Loses Clout with Kids: Sorry Virginia . . . Gift Says He’s Fake,” a news story described how one storefront Santa delivered a blow to his own myth, along with his gift: "Santa Claus handed a book with a singularly blunt message to the suburban Virginia tots who sat on his lap at Tysons Corner Center last week: There really is no Santa. After listening to what the youngsters wanted for Christmas, letting them tug on his beard and posing for pictures, the jolly old elf at the Vienna, Va., shopping mall gave each child a stocking stuffer from his sack: a children’s book called 'A Pee Wee Christmas.' The book’s disclosure that Santa doesn’t exist caused trouble. . . . [A]fter a Vienna mother, [Lynda Smyth], complained, the mall pulled the books from Santa’s sack. . . . After she brought it to their attention, red-faced mall officials quickly re-read the book, and, by Saturday, Santa was offering Christmas stickers and fingerprinting kits, instead. . . .'What can I say?' Tysons General Manager Jim Foster asked Sunday. 'We screwed up.' . . . 'It’s just so absurd, the irony of it,' said . . . Smyth, a nurse who took her four-year-old son, Logan, to visit St. Nicholas . . . . 'Here’s Santa handing out the one thing saying he doesn’t exist. . . . '" (originally published in "The Washington Post," reprinted in "The Arizona Republic," 26 November 1989, p. A3)
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--The Negative Effects of Perpetrating the Santa Myth
Just how psychologically and intellectually healthy is it to foist upon children the blatant lie that Santa is real? In answer, Flynn offers 10 compelling reasons “why thoughtful people should ‘Say No’ to Santa Claus”:
Reason #1: ”To teach and perpetrate the Santa Claus myth, parents must lie to their children.”
Flynn contends that the Santa story “is not an innocent ‘sharing of fantasy,’ as defenders claim. It is a lie, and one in which parents are always caught, eroding children’s trust at a critical time.” Flynn notes that children who discover that they have been lied to by their parents about Santa may cause damage to them in later years. Flynn quotes the observation of John Shlien, who warns that the destruction of belief “leaves a cynical disillusionment which occasionally shows up among the trauma in case-histories of maladjusted adults.” Flynn also cites the warning of Dr. Lee Salk, director of pediatric psychology at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center: “A child should be told from the beginning that Santa is a make believe person or it might create an early credibility gap between parent and child.”
The components of the Santa lie are sweeping and subversive. Describing some of these deceptions as “uncomfortably reminiscent of a childlike view of God,” Flynn offers a sampling of the lies parents “must tell to initiate kids into the Santa tradition":
A. A benign force reigns over the world from a headquarters at the North Pole.
B. Santa sees--and records—everything that happens. On the upside nothing is overlooked. On the downside, no child has privacy.
C. Every child receives his or her just desserts each year, based on a global judgment whether the child has been "good" or "bad."
D. Santa physically visits every family with children in the world in one night.
E. Since Santa is the source of all the bounty of Christmas, holiday cheer originates outside of the family and is unrelated to the family’s emotional or economic needs. (Flynn, p. 129)
Flynn then asks tough questions about long-term consequences of, in the name of Santa, deceiving vulnerable children: "What price are we paying for lying to children about Santa Claus? It may be steeper than we think. Because the myth panders to childhood credulity, some have implicated it in the rising incidence of scientific illiteracy among the young. Because it encourages children to build their world views on authority, not on independent thinking, others have related it to the abysmal judgment supposedly displayed by young adults. Can parents honestly be surprised when children do not consult them before experimenting with sex, drugs, crime, or destructive relationships--so soon after their parents have made it clear that children cannot trust them to provide accurate knowledge of the world? A Christian parent put the issue clearly in a letter to the editor: ‘Certainly we can’t get away with lies for seven to ten years and then expect children to “outgrow” Santa . . . then suddenly expect them to believe us when we mention high intensity moral issues. Simply being honest with our children, in my opinion, would outweigh anything Santa ever brought.’” (Flynn, pp. 129-30, 132, 148)
Reason #2: ”The Santa Claus myth exploits characteristic weakness in young children’s thinking, perhaps obstructing their passage to later stages of cognitive development.”
Flynn explains how lying about Santa exploits childhood tendencies to accept simplistic religious claims: "Parents who lie about Santa Claus catch their children at a vulnerable age. Youngsters have trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality as it is. . . . Recent research suggests that the Santa Claus myth attracts the young because it exploits the same cognitive predispositions that help children learn religion . . . Young minds might embrace religious ideas of varying complexity at characteristic ages. A . . . study by child psychologist Fritz K. Oser . . . [showed that] . . . [a]t the ages when belief in Santa peaks . . . children tend to hold a blend of two naïve religious views. The simplest [Stage One] imagines God as a distant, powerful ultimate being and a stern, unpredictable judge. . . . At the next level [Stage Two], God is still imagined as an external judge, but . . . [this latter] . . . deity can be influenced by good behavior. Such ideas echo the religions of sacrifice, familiar from ancient history and the pages of the Old Testament. . . . Like the Stage One God, Santa Claus is external and powerful. He observes from a distance and metes out justice (presents or coal) based on what he sees. Like the more advanced Stage Two God, Santa Claus can be bought. Children learn that they can purchase Santa’s blessing and guaranteed themselves a merry Christmas by 'being good.'"
Flynn also debunks the notion that belief in Santa Claus produces good behavior in children: "According to the stereotype, the Santa myth . . . is said to help children outgrow the selfishness of early childhood and develop adult ideas about generosity and giving. Research suggests otherwise. When educational psychologists David J. Dixon and Harry L. Hom sought links between charitable acts by children and their belief in Santa Claus, they came up empty. So much for the idea that parents can justify lying about Santa because it makes their children better people. . . . Like a true virus, the Santa Claus myth turns the wheels of society toward purposes unrelated to human welfare. It exploits the nascent religious sensibilities of children, if such there be. It compels parents to tell, and later to defend, insupportable lies. At the end, the Santa Claus myth benefits only itself." (Flynn, pp. 132-34)
Reason #3: ”To buoy belief, adults stage elaborate deceptions, laying traps for the child’s developing intellect”
Flynn describes how the Santa lie breeds distrust and cynicism in children toward everybody: "Disillusioned eight-year-olds don’t just learn that their parents lied to them, they learn that society invested tremendous energies to drag out the lie a little longer. No one can be trusted. Deception about Santa begins at home. Kids begin to notice how many Santas there are at the mall. They spot the present from Santa that is wrapped with the same paper as gift from Mom and Dad. They ask how Santa can visit every house in the world in one night. It gets harder to confine the kids to their room after lights--out on Christmas Eve--time parents need to set the stage for the drama of Christmas morning. As the lies become more elaborate, and correspondingly hard to keep straight, some parents begin to feel “like a burned-out secret agent ready to come in from the cold.”
Moreover, on the one hand, the Santa lie discourages the development of critical thinking and, on the other, fosters belief in the preposterous. Notes Flynn: "As boys and girls detect successive contradictions in the myth, always to get smoke-screened by fast-talking adults, they learn to distrust their own observations and their powers of deduction. In place of independent discovery, they learn to settle for the leaden substitute of data presented by authority figures and learned by rote. . . . Too often children keep faith in Santa until they have lost faith in inquiry. . . After we spend our children’s formative years lying about Santa Claus and sabotaging their early efforts to unravel the myth for themselves, we stand before them revealed not merely as liars, but as the architects of an elaborate deception. Yet we are unashamed. Should we wonder when our children grow up as quick to lie as we were, or when they stumble into adulthood even easier to deceive than we? . . . Children can hardly be blamed for growing up to prefer magical thinking, paranormal beliefs, or exotic sectarian creeds to reality and critical thinking, or for grasping at any glittering lie to "add a tinsel splendor to the plain straight road of our life." (Flynn, pp. 134, 137)
Reason #4: ”The myth encourages lazy parenting and promotes unhealthy fear.”
Flynn contends that it is unwise parents who hold Santa over the heads of their children as a god-like promise of reward for good behavior and as a divine threat of punishment for bad. He writes: "Children see Santa as an all-seeing judge who holds in one hand the carrot of Christmas, in the other a stick shaped like a lump of coal. The temptation for parents to abuse the myth is strong. ‘Mothers get a lot of mileage out of Christmas,’ Erma Bombeck once observed. Parents do not imagine the damage they may do when they use the Claus as a club. This omnipresent Santa figure, like the myth of an all-seeing God, reminds children that there is no place for them to hide: The Santa myth teaches kids that they live in a world without privacy. The idea of a watcher who overlooks not a single forbidden actions or a single wayward thought--even one parents miss--can hardly fail to terrify some children." In essence, says Flynn, parents who use Santa to produce compliant children are making “coalitions with God" by ". . . extract[ing] obedience by threatening children with divine punishment. The children believe that God sees what they do, knows what they think, and punishes wrong actions. Viewed like this, God is the equivalent of Santa Claus. . . . I]f parents can harm their children by claiming that God is their back-up, using Santa Claus that way is probably harmful, too." (Flynn, pp. 137-38)
Reason #5: ”The number of characteristics that Santa Claus shares with God and Jesus verges on the blasphemous.”
Children do, indeed, make definite connections in their minds between Santa and God. As Flynn notes: "Research studies, personal anecdotes, and press reports illustrate the links between Santa Claus, God, and Jesus in the popular mind. One psychologist . . . [reported] that children’s belief in Santa Claus 'lays the groundwork for later belief in God.' . . . Arnold Gesell, director of the Yale Clinic of Child Development, revealed that three-year-olds he had studied understood the concept of Santa Claus before they knew the concept of God. John Shlien reported that four- and five-year-olds would not eat candies shaped like Santa Claus, a behavior thought to show reverence. Another writer complained in the 1930s about overhearing his daughter praying to Santa Claus."
Examples of the similarities between Jesus and St. Nick in the following areas have been provided by Idaho secular humanist Ralph Nielsen:
MIRACLES
Santa Claus: Flying reindeer
Jesus: Angels
Santa Claus: Covering the world in one night
Jesus: Bringing the Word to all nations
Santa: Bottomless bag of toys
Jesus: Loaves and fishes
PARALLEL ELEMENTS
Santa Claus: Elves
Jesus: Apostles
Santa Claus: Letters to Santa
Jesus: Prayers (especially pledges of good behavior in return for favors)
Santa Claus: Milk and cookies
Jesus: Bread and wine
Santa Claus: Immortal
Jesus: Immortal
Santa Claus: All-seeing, all-knowing
Jesus: All-seeing, all-knowing
Santa Claus: Rewards and punishes behavior
Jesus: Rewards and punishes behavior
Santa Claus: Lives at white, pure North Pole
Jesus: Lives in white, pure heaven
OPPOSITES
Santa Claus: Fat
Jesus: Thin
Santa Claus: Jolly
Jesus: Serene
Santa Claus: Creature of winter
Jesus: Lived in deserts
Santa Claus: Brings toys, luxuries
Jesus: Brings health, spiritual necessities (Flynn, pp. 138-140)
Reason #6: ”The Santa myth harms children’s cognitive and emotional development and damages family dynamics.”
It is part of what Flynn describes as the “emotionally twisted subtexts” of Christmas celebration. For starters, he asserts that Santa’s promise of reward or vow of punishment is simply too vague for small children to meaningfully comprehend: "If a merry Christmas depends on being a good boy or girl, they will struggle to be good even if they are not sure what 'good' or 'bad' means." Flynn quotes Steven A. Gelb who, in his article, “Christmas Programming in Schools; Unintended Consequences” ("Childhood Education," October 1987), argues that “[t]elling children to be 'good' so that Santa will be pleased and give them presents . . . is counterproductive--not only because it encourages children to look outside themselves for standards, but because the words 'good' and 'bad' convey little information, especially to young children." Citing Eric R. Wolf, Flynn further argues that the Santa myth harms parent-child relationships by serving to enforce upon children their parents’ “own distorted, nostalgic vision of a ‘golden age of childhood.’” Noting the observations of psychiatrist Renzo Sereno, Flynn writes that parents who do so are themselves “seek[ing] meaning, comfort and reassurance in religion or mystical ideas.”
Santa, Flynn says, also plays the role of a convenient scapegoat for parents: "[According to sociologist Warren Hagstrom], [i]f a child has fixed his or her heart on a gift the parent cannot afford, or receives the wrong present because a Christmas list was misunderstood, the parent can always resort to the callow argument that 'Santa knows best.' . . . [Santa Claus is also useful] in allowing parents to give gifts without appearing to demand anything in return. As social psychologist Barry Schwartz noted, accepting a gift which one cannot reciprocate is an admission of social inferiority that even children can understand."
Additionally, Flynn cites Sereno’s view that parents employ the Santa Claus lie “as a buffer because they are unsure whether they deserve their children’s love”: '[Parents] need the reassurance of such deceitful acts in order to secure from their children the feelings and the conduct which should be their right and their duty to expect. Instead of letting their love flow, the parents attempt to strike a bargain . . . . The child . . . begins to nourish doubts about the love of his parents, and resents being obligated to a mythical ludicrous stranger, rather than being tied by love to those he loves most . . . [P]arental love—diffused through a maze of pointless and never explained ceremonies—is wholly lost.'” (Flynn, pp. 141-42)
*Reason #7: ”The Santa myth stunts moral development because it encourages children to judge themselves globally, as good or bad persons, rather than to judge positive or negative behavior.”
Flynn points out the confusion generated by the Santa lie in the minds of children as to their individual, personal worth: ". . . [T]hey will strive to be 'good' even if they do not understand the distinction between being a 'good child' and being a child who usually does good things. The distinction matters. Do we want to teach our children to evaluate their behaviors, to see which can be improved? Or do we want them to score themselves as persons? Most child psychologists prefer the first strategy. When it is time to judge actions, positive or negative evaluation are applied to the acts, not to the child’s personhood. It is healthy to explain to a child why he or she has done a foolish thing but harmful to say that because of that behavior, he or she is a foolish child. The Santa Claus myth gets it backwards. Christmas morning is the biggest report card of the year. Presents--or coal? A year’s worth of behavior funnels into that stocking; either you were a good child or you were a bad child." (Flynn, p 142)
Reason #8: “The myth promotes selfish and acquisitive attitudes among children.”
As if the commercialized orgy of the contemporary holiday season is not bad enough, Flynn notes that the St. Nick lie “prepares children to become docile members of consumer culture”: "In a study of children’s letters to Santa Claus, kids always asked Santa for material items, not new skills, intangible benefits for other family members, or good health. By contrast, when the same children listed their desires in contexts not associated with Santa Claus, fewer than half of their requests concerned material objects." Citing “masterful” research in this area, Flynn says that Santa becomes a key figure in seducing children into becoming “materially indulgent” commercial feeders by "[teaching them] that life is so full of free lunches, there may not be enough noontimes to eat them all. In this way kids are groomed to assume their roles as American consumers, grasping for happiness with each new purchase. . . . [Thus,] . . . virtue is not its own reward, but if we are good enough a reward will eventually appear." (Flynn, pp. 143-44)
*Reason #9: “Children may not enjoy the Santa Claus drama as much as parental nostalgia suggests.”
Contrary to what parents may want to think, many children--particularly the younger ones--view Santa Claus with a certain amount distress and uneasiness. As an indicator of that, recall how many small children recoil, protest and cry when placed on Santa’s lap in the mall. (Flynn, p. 144)
*Reason #10: ”Contemporary authorities who defend the Santa myth on psychotherapeutic grounds fail to make a convincing case."
Contrary to the assertion of self-proclaimed “friends of Santa” who say that discouraging belief in the St. Nick myth throws children into an unfriendly world, Flynn notes that no evidence exists in the literature “that children denied the Santa Claus myth grow up “to hate reality.” Ultimately, Flynn says, the problem with the Santa myth is that “. . . Santa is viewed not as myth or metaphor, but as fact. . . .American culture treats the figure of Santa Claus too literally for the myth to function as a true fable. It is time for mental health and child development professionals to reopen their minds and ask whether the Santa myth is good for children.” (Flynn, p. 146)
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--The Christmas Wrap on Santa
Austin Cline, in his article, "Santa Claus: Should Parents Perpetuate the Santa Claus Myth?," summarizes why Santa is a bad-dude idea:
1. "The Santa Claus Myth Promotes Materialism"
"The entire Santa Claus myth is based on the idea of children getting gifts. There’s nothing wrong with getting gifts, but Santa Claus makes it the focus on the entire holiday. Children are encouraged to conform their behavior to parental expectation in order to receive ever more presents rather than simply lumps of coal. In order to make Christmas lists, kids pay close attention to what advertisers tell them they should want, effectively encouraging unbridled consumerism.
2. "Santa Claus is Too Similar to Jesus and God"
"The parallels between Santa Claus and Jesus or God are numerous. Santa Claus is a nearly all-powerful, supernatural person who dispenses rewards and punishment to people all over the world based upon whether they adhere to a pre-defined code of conduct. His existence is implausible or impossible, but faith is expected if one is to receive the rewards. Believers should regard this as blasphemous; non-believers shouldn’t want their kids prepared in this way to adopt Christianity or theism.
3. "The Santa Claus 'Tradition' is Relatively Recent"
"Some might think that because Santa Claus is such an old tradition, this alone is sufficient reason to continue it. They were taught to believe in Santa as children, so why not pass this along to their own? The role of Santa Claus in Christmas celebration is actually quite recent — the mid to late 19th century. The importance of Santa Claus is a creation of cultural elites and perpetuated by business interests and simple cultural momentum. It has little to no inherent value.
4. "Santa Claus is More About Parents than Children"
"Parental investment in Santa Claus is far larger than anything kids do, suggesting that parents’ defense of the Santa Claus myth is more about what they want than about what kids want. Their own memories about enjoying Santa may be heavily influenced by cultural assumptions about what they should have experienced. Is it not possible that kids would find at least as much pleasure in knowing that parents are responsible for Christmas, not a supernatural stranger?
5. "The Future of Santa Claus"
"Santa Claus symbolizes Christmas and perhaps the entire winter holiday season like nothing else. An argument can be made for the importance of the Christmas tree as a symbol for Christmas (notice that there are no Christian images which come close), but Santa Claus personifies Christmas in a way that trees cannot.
"Santa Claus is, furthermore, a very secular character by now which allows him to cross cultural and religious lines, placing him in an important position for the entire season rather than for Christmas alone.Because of this, it’s plausible that giving up on Santa Claus will mean abandoning much of the Christmas holidays altogether--and perhaps that’s not such a bad thing. There’s a lot to be said for Christians dismissing the consumerist, commercialized Christmas of America and focusing instead on the Nativity of Jesus. Ignoring Santa Claus would symbolize this choice. There’s a lot to be said for adherents of other religions refusing to allow Santa Claus to become part of their own traditions, representing an intrusion of Western culture into their own.
"Finally, there’s also a lot to be said for non-believers of various sorts--humanists, atheists, skeptics, and freethinkers-- refusing to be co-opted into a religious observance. Whether Santa Claus in particular or Christmas in general is treated as defined by Christian or pagan religious traditions, neither are religions which nonbelievers are part of. Christmas and Santa Claus have strong secular elements, but those are primarily commercial — and who is going to invest themselves in a holiday all about commerce and who can spend the most money on credit?
"The future of Santa Claus will depend on whether people will care enough to do anything--if not, things will continue on the same course they have been on. If people care not to be taken over, borg-like, by America’s Christmas, resistance may reduce Santa’s status as a cultural icon." ("Santa Claus: Should Parents Perpetuate the Santa Claus Myth?," by Austin Cline, at:
http://atheism.about.com/od/christmasholidayseason/p/SantaMyth.htm)
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--The Conclusion on Claus: Chuck Santa in Favor of Checking Reality
As recovering ex-Mormons who have learned through our own difficult and painful experiences not to depend on harmful magical, superstitious, and “godly” beliefs spoken to us in authoritarian tones by Jesus's supposedly designated conveyors of "truth," what should we consider teaching our children about the Jolly Old Elf? For some, that can be a tough question--given that we live in a society fixated on perpetuating fantasies for a variety of deep, psychological reasons--and at a high cost to authenticity.
In an article entitled, “Is Santa Claus Real? [The] Question Never Grows Old for Children,” Maureen Downey of Cox News Service writes: "Santa Claus brings children toys and parents a quandary. Do you pretend that St. Nick brought the tricycle, or come clean on who fills the stockings? Should you fall back on the old 'Santa is the spirit of love' speech? Ethicist Judith Boss of the University of Rhode Island advocates honesty, saying, 'Children depend on their parents for a realistic view of the world.' . . . But even if a parent opts for candor, children may still insist Santa is real, says Atlanta psychologist Cathy Blusiewicz. 'It is going to be hard to convince them, because a lot of other people are pushing the idea--grandparents, nursery school teachers and peers,' she says." ("The Arizona Republic," 22 December 1991, p. G7)
Still, psychologists suggest that honesty is the best policy with children, when it comes to dethroning the Santa myth. In an article entitled, “Kids Weigh Evidence, Make Own Decision on Santa’s Existence,” Nancy Curry, a child-development specialist at the University of Pittsburg, notes: 'Once they [children] start to question, you know they’re getting ready to want to hear the real answer.' . . . . Curry recommends to parents that '[w]hen the child starts to ask the practical questions, then throw it back to them and say, ‘Well, what do you think?’ . . .
Curry said talking to children about whether Santa Claus exists is a little like talking to them about sex. 'Usually, the children will ask questions and not need great, long full explanations,' she said. 'Usually, it’s good for adults to listen to children and get what their ideas are.'"
The article further notes that according to "[a] study by two New York psychologists of more than 500 children, . . . on average, children believe in Santa Claus until they are about 7-and-a-half years old, often carefully weighing the evidence before coming to a conclusion. Most children believe in Santa Claus because books, advertising, the entire culture tells them he is real, said Cynthia Scheibe of New York’s Ithaca College, co-author of the study with John Condry of Cornell University.
“'The evidence clearly supports that Santa Claus is real, given what (children) know, give the fact that most adults say Santa Claus is real, that he brings you presents and you can see him,' she said. 'For adults, it’s an issue that Santa couldn’t get to all the houses in one night, but magic is a pretty good answer for kids.' . . . Scheibe said it is best for an adult to confirm the truth only if a child has strong doubts after wrestling with the question of Santa Claus’ existence. 'If kids come to the conclusion on their own, they feel a sense of accomplishment,' she said. 'It’s sort of a rite of passage.'
"Curry said it is fun to put out cookies and milk for Santa, help kids mail wish lists to the North Pole, and clean out the chimney on Christmas Eve, but she cautioned against using Ol’ St. Nick as a means of discipline. 'The "you better watch out," that kind of stuff, that can be kind of manipulative,' she said.” ("Associated Press," dateline: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, reprinted in "The Arizona Republic," 25 December 1987, p. D6)
Flynn is more direct, explicit, on-point and blunt, offering five specific suggestions to help parents “steer clear” of encouraging negative Santa myths that are damaging to the emotional, psychological and intellectual well-being of their children:
1. "Tell your kids that the Santa Claus myth is not true."
2. "Make clear to children that it is parents and relatives, not supernatural visitors, who put those presents under the Christmas tree."
3. “Do not call Santa Claus a metaphor, an allegory, or 'the spirit of giving.' Just say that Santa Claus is a false belief that other people sometimes teach their children. Present it as you might a peculiar religious doctrine: If other children believe in Santa, that is their right, and their sincerity in so believing it oughtn’t to be impugned. But none of that requires entertaining for a moment the idea that belief in Santa Claus is either true or beneficial."
4. “Tell children why Santa Claus has no place in your household. Instill elementary principles of critical thinking: a realistic outlook, a respect for truth, and an appreciation for cause and effect."
5. “Encourage (or at least permit) children to share their Santa skepticism with friends, at school, and during recreational activities. This is vital even if it leads to confrontations with neighbors, relatives, or teachers who accuse your kids of 'ruining other children’s Christmas.' Should this occur, defend your children’s open iconoclasm. Challenge critics who stoop to such negative stereotypes as ‘Scrooge’ and ‘Grinch.’ Most important, be sure children know that—and how—you supported them in their stance.” (Flynn, p. 147)
So, what next? Might as well go for it: For all you inquisitive kids out there who happen to be reading RfM right now, sorry to break it to you if your folks won’t but:
There is no Santa to bring you toys.
There is no angel Moroni to bring you gold plates.
There is no God to bring you power or fame.
On the bright side, however . . .
There are pagans out there to bring you the celebration of a Earth-rooted Winter Solstice. Enjoy!