lying, deception, hypocrisy and deception, in order that children learn to see the world truly, without faith in the invisible, the unsubstantiated, the unverifiable . . .

are we to discard myth, metaphor, fantasy?


What about fiction? In this brave new world of reality-only-based discourse, what role does fiction play? Parody? Where does one draw the line between deception and play?



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/13/2011 04:17PM by Lorraine aka síóg.

The differentiation for me is to first explain what fiction is, then enjoy and learn from it.

It's when we are deceptive about it being fiction up front that causes the problems later (feeling being lied to or not correctly distinguishing between reality and fantasy).

We should value myth and cultural stories. Fantasy and imagination are important. However being mislead about the truthfulness of it seems unnecessary to me. Why the dishonesty?

No one needed to try and make the animals real in Aesop's fables when they were read to me. I'm not sure why we treat some fiction differently and present it as factual. It's just as valuable without having to lie about it, IMO.

Well, Santa was a lot more fun when I believed he was real. I got over the betrayal by my parents just fine and have no scars

... etc. are escapes. We go to the movies to escape. We dive into books to escape.

And what are we escaping from?

Reality.

As long as that is understood, I don't think its a problem. Santa, for example, is only temporary. At some point the myth is debunked by either the parent or the child, but it is always debunked and usually at a very early age.

Religion is another story. People converted to and embraced religious fairy tales long before the Santa myth came into play. Santa hasn't changed that or made it worse.

Timothy



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/13/2011 04:36PM by Timothy.

If a book isn't reality, and a movie isn't reality, and, presumably, music isn't reality, then what is reality?

Lorraine, you're asking some really interesting questions. I hope you'll share your perspective a bit more. I'm fascinated with what I think you're saying, even though I'm not sure what it is. :) I'm a slow learner as others here can attest to.

So I'm hearing continuum. Fiction or myth is okay as long as they are seen as points on a continuum between delusion (blind acceptance of religious dogma as fact) and insistence on empirical evidence before acceptance.

So where do Santa, the Krampus, St Nikolaus (distinct from Santa) or, say, Elvis fall on this continuum?

Black or white distinctions have come into the conversation, after all.

It comes to mind, just now, that art as accepted by the academy -- academic art in 18th to 19th century France, for instance -- was ranked on subjects. Most admired were mythological, historical (by which we can also say mythological) or religious painting were most highly prized. Genre or still life, both representation of 'real life', were lesser subjects.

Points on a continuum, again.

Hence, the deception of children and the manipulation of their behavior by adults through orchestrated, intentional, society-sanctioned lying.

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,363413,363593#msg-363593



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 12/13/2011 05:18PM by steve benson.

Depriving poor little Raptor JuHEEsus his ninja cyborg!

Shame on you, Claus!

Timothy

So myth, fantasy, fiction, poetry, metaphor, parody, those narratives that present life 'as if' but in nonreal form, are okay as long as there are clear disclaimers as to the accuracy of their content beforehand?

Like labels on tobacco products? Or movie ratings? Or left to the discretion of the reader/viewer?



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/13/2011 05:28PM by Lorraine aka síóg.

. . . as well as suggestions offered for dealing with this historical cultural conspiracy of lying to vulnerable, gullible kids:

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,363413,363593#msg-363593



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/13/2011 05:31PM by steve benson.

I could probably cite in response research suggesting the importance of fantasy and play to childhood development.

And the importance of myth to civilisation and of metaphor to human psychology. And so on.

But it's 23:30, so I don't.

In the meantime, more sources:

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,359446,359446#msg-359446



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 12/13/2011 05:43PM by steve benson.

Lorraine aka síóg Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I could probably cite in response research suggesting the importance of fantasy and play to childhood development.

That would be Jean Piaget.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaget's_theory_of_cognitive_development

See the Preoperational stage vs. the Concrete operational phase.The Preop stage (~2-7 yrs.) is characterized by fantasy, magical beliefs and animism. Around age 7 a child's capacity to learn logic starts to emerge (that's why kids start to figure out the Santa myth around the 3rd grade.) These are natural developmental stages that can't be rushed.

Every facet of education is grounded in Piaget's work. When you walk into a preschool or a kindergarten, and see kids playing with a pretend kitchen, large blocks, etc., those are Piaget's theories in action. Imaginative, fantasy-driven play is a child's work, literally. It's how they make sense of their world and build a base for further learning.

Like a lot of families, we will soon celebrate Christmas at my house.

On Christmas Eve, my children will carefully select which cookies to leave out on a plate for Santa Claus. We'll read The Night Before Christmas. They'll go to bed, and probably fight to stay awake as long as they can, in the hope that they might catch a glimpse of the jolly old man in the red suit.

At six and two, they both still believe in Santa, and fully expect that he will emerge from our chimney with a sack full of gifts...

Finally, they will fall fast asleep. Visions of sugarplums just might dance in their heads.

And that is when my husband and I will go to work, filling stockings, assembling toys, and eating those cookies.

Because, as we adults know, Santa Claus won't really be coming down that chimney at all. As fun as he is to believe in, he doesn't really exist.

So are we wrong to teach our children that he does?

The Anti-Santa Argument
Several bloggers have written recently about their decision NOT to let their children ever learn to believe in Santa Claus in the first place. These parents feel that perpetuating the myth of Santa Claus is the equivalent of blatantly lying to your kids, and suggest that children will never completely trust their parents once they realize that they have been less than honest about the mythical man from the North Pole.

Many of these parents also argue that the idea of Santa Claus places more emphasis on receiving rather than giving gifts, and that children should never be bribed into being "good" through the promise of presents from an imaginary character. And there are also those (with whom I kind of have to agree) who think that the idea of an old man who spends the night breaking into people's houses is just plain creepy.

My Argument In Favor of Santa Claus
Personally, though, I've always enjoyed Christmas and the myth of Santa Claus. I never felt lied to once I realized that he wasn't real, and I always enjoyed pretending that I still believed for the sake of my younger siblings. I see no harm in allowing my own children to revel in the existence of a mythical man who bestows gifts out of the goodness of his heart, even if it's only for a short while.

Sure, Santa isn't a necessary part of Christmas, and it's certainly possible to teach children about the spirit of hope and generosity without him. But a belief in Santa Claus allows children to use their imaginations to envision a world where anything is possible (and the laws of physics need not even apply). Imagination is important, as is the ability to believe in things we can't always see.

Santa Claus encompasses both.

Alison Gopnik, a professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, made an interesting point in an essay she contributed to The Truth About Santa, a discussion of the Santa Claus issue that was published by The New York Times in December of 2009:

"When children pretend, they are exercising the evolutionarily crucial human ability to envision alternative ways the world could be. In adults that ability is at the core of our very real capacities for invention and innovation."

Eventually, my children will figure it all out. They'll ask questions, and I won't lie to them. We'll talk honestly about the history of Saint Nicholas, and the evolution of Santa Claus as a character who symbolizes benevolence and joy. But I will never be the mom who sits her six-year-old down and tells her point blank that there is no such thing as Santa Claus, or the one who never wants to pretend that Santa is real in the first place.

Should we lie to our children? No. But I just don't see Santa Claus as a lie. If anything, I see him as a gift that we can give them, a gift that encourages imagination and pretend play and the ability to believe. And even, as they grow older and begin to realize that Santa isn't real in the most literal sense of the word, the gift of logical thinking and deductive reasoning.

All families are different, and we all have different values and belief systems that we want to impart to our children. I can certainly respect the decision made by parents who have chosen not to pretend about Santa Claus. But, for me, allowing my children to believe in Santa is harmless.

In fact, I believe that they just might grow up to be better people for it.

this post is just some rhetorical rebuttal! :)

If you only you were as hard on Santa as you are on the lies of Mormonism.

Every one of your rationalizations for peddling Santa are used in defense of perpetuating false notions embedded in religion.

To pretend there are treasures of gold plates; and intervention by the angel Moroni; and judgment of bad people by a superpower entity residing in realms beyond terra firma watching every move you make and ready to punish you if you make the wrong moves. is to engage in (per your quotation) "exercising the evolutionarily-crucial human ability to envision alternative ways the world could be. In adults that ability is at the core of our very real capacities for invention and innovation."

That's exactly what Mormons do--and it ain't a good world that they envision., that they invent and that they wish to innovate for as the dwelling place of Elohim.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/13/2011 06:44PM by steve benson.

Spoiler Alert | The federal government is not going to blow the whistle on Santa. The United States Postal Service caused an outcry last month when it decided to stop delivering letters addressed to “Santa Claus, North Pole.” It quickly reversed itself after members of Congress intervened. “We never wanted to spoil people’s Christmas,” an agency spokesman said.

So it’s up to families. How and when should parents come clean?


Alison Gopnik, psychologist, U.C. Berkeley
Karen Karbo, novelist
Carole S. Slotterback, author, “The Psychology of Santa”
Bruce Henderson, psychologist, Western Carolina University
Gregory Mone, Popular Science magazine
Bruce David Forbes, professor of religious studies

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


The Importance of Imagination
Alison Gopnik, a professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, is the author, most recently, of “The Philosophical Baby: What Children’s Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love and the Meaning of Life.”

Contrary to what we once thought, even the youngest children are adept at distinguishing imagination and reality. Children may seem confused about the distinction because they are such vivid, emotional pretenders. But psychologists have discovered that children know that pretending and imagining are different from reality — that you can’t write with a pretend pencil or eat an imaginary hot-dog and that no one else can see the fairies and monsters.

Even the youngest children know that pretending and imagining are different from reality.
.Why do children love imaginary figures like Santa Claus, then? Because they like to pretend. And when children pretend, they are exercising the evolutionarily crucial human ability to envision alternative ways the world could be. In adults that ability is at the core of our very real capacities for invention and innovation.

At the same time, though, young children often take what adults say seriously. Children are particularly likely to believe what adults say if they have what looks like firsthand evidence. The psychologist Jacqui Wooley introduced 3- to 5-year-old children to a Santa Claus-like figure called the Candy Witch who gave children candy at Halloween. About half the children said the Candy Witch was real, but that number increased if the children saw the candy the witch had left. The disappearing cookies and milk may be what convinces children that Santa is real.
Children will happily and convincingly engage in the lovely pretend game about the benign old guy with the reindeer, without necessarily thinking he’s real. That sort of play is one of the great joys as well as benefits of childhood. But they may also end up thinking that Santa really exists with a sufficiently straight-faced adult armed with disappearing milk and cookies. That belief won’t do them any harm either, after all most adult Americans believe in the supernatural.

My policy, however, would be to imagine Santa along with the children as fully and whole-heartedly as you can, and when it comes right down to it, explain that he’s only an invention of the human mind. Christmas, after all, is about fire, feasting, music, stories and hope, which are all human inventions.

this part to me is important in relation to what some people went thru during Christmas...
But they may also end up thinking that Santa really exists with a sufficiently straight-faced adult armed with disappearing milk and cookies.

and i would add...parents and siblings going to the Nth degree to make Santa seem even more real..

Yes, Fiona, There Isn’t a Santa Claus
Karen Karbo, a novelist and memoirist, is the author of “The Gospel According to Coco Chanel: Life Lessons from the World’s Most Elegant Woman.”

When my daughter, Fiona, was 8, the age when a lot of children begin to ponder the logistics of Santa’s magical journey (How does he make it around the world in one day? How does he get back up the chimney?), she experienced a Christmas miracle.

I thought she would be a believer for the rest of her life. Then I was blind-sided by Easter.
.On Christmas Eve she and her father were doing some last minute shopping at a funky secondhand shop and she came upon a model horse she wanted for her collection. She said she knew it was too late to add it to her official Christmas list, so she was just going to make a last minute request to Santa.

Her quick-thinking dad made some hurried arrangements with the shop owner, and picked up the horse that night after Fiona went to bed. The next morning our girl was ecstatic, mostly because the presence of the model horse beneath the tree also confirmed the existence of Santa. I thought she would be a believer for the rest of her life.

Then I was blind-sided by Easter. Fiona was always dubious that a rabbit came to our house and left baskets filled with fake grass and marshmallow Peeps, and that very next Easter she said, “Mom, there’s no Easter bunny, is there? I just don’t believe there’s a giant bunny in a little vest.”

I said, “No honey, there isn’t.” She looked at me for a minute, then sighed, as if she regretted what she was about to say next. “And what about, you know, Santa?”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Tooth fairy?”

“What do you think?” I said. I wanted more than anything for her to ask whether there was anything she could believe in, and I would get to say “me and your Dad! You can always believe in us.” Instead she said, “I think I’ll just believe a few more years if you don’t mind.”

What Children Want to Hear
Carole S. Slotterback is a professor of psychology at the University of Scranton, Scranton, Penn. She is the author of “The Psychology of Santa.”

Myths and stories about Santa Claus permeate our society. Even if your family doesn’t celebrate Christmas, your children may still believe in the big man. For example, psychological research in the 1980s found that even Jewish children believed in Santa. But at some point these beliefs change.


Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters

Participants in Santacon, an annual Santa Claus Convention, in New York’s Washington Square Park. The change in children’s conceptualization of Santa is driven in part by cognitive development: as level of reasoning increases, belief in Santa will decrease. But this relationship is not perfect.

Some children, though advanced in reasoning abilities, still believe in Santa, perhaps because of incentives from parents and others. Some of the children’s letters to Santa in my study (I analyzed 1,235 letters to Santa from 1998 to 2003, going through the main post office in Scranton) expressed questions about how Santa is able to do all that he does, but typically end averring their belief in him.

Research in the 1960s demonstrated that a child’s conceptualization of Santa goes through a series of adjustments where their information about Christmas gets reorganized — it doesn’t simply disappear.

Further research at the University of Texas, found that the majority of children surveyed in the study worked through the issue on their own, having a gradual transition in their belief rather than a single “Eureka!” incident.

My own research with college students found that 17 percent thought they had just gradually found out, and 16 percent remembered their parents telling them about Santa, usually because they had asked questions.

Of the several hundred students I surveyed, only one indicated any distress: her father told her that Santa had had a heart attack and died — NOT an approach I would recommend!

What should a parent do? Answer the questions your child has as they come up. Keep in mind that although you may go through a long explanation, your child will hear only what he/she wants to hear and is ready to hear — probably only a small sound byte of your explanation. They, like everyone else, filter everything through the information they have acquired and the experiences they have had.

What they won't be hearing, though, from most adults (until pressed with questions and contrary evidence) is that Jesus is a fable, along with Santa.

Hence the deception, manipulation and commericialism abound, along with the fear in the hearts of little children afraid of getting on the wrong side of both the Santa God and the Jesus God.

This is all about adults who want to play-act through their kids in order to fill some deep inner need on their part to perpetuate a world of fantasy and puppeteering that is divorced from reality but that makes THEM feel good.

It reminds me of putting young girls through creepy fashion shows so that their parents can vicariously live a fantasy world through their dolled-up pageant-contesting kids.



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 12/13/2011 06:36PM by steve benson.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/13/2011 06:35PM by steve benson.

And imagining the all-seeing eyes of a judgmental old man who can sneak into your house in the middle of the night to reward or punish you is good, as well, eh?

And imagining that your parents would never deliberately lie to you is not a good thing?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/13/2011 06:50PM by steve benson.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/13/2011 06:49PM by steve benson.

This happens every December.

:)

bignevermo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> :)

No. Not really, now you mention it. ;o))

Though there's always this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS2khYJZKwA



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/13/2011 06:28PM by matt.

They pretend with their toys and in their minds it's real for the moment.

They have real life interaction and activities which often turn into play.

Eventually, they sort out what is real and what isn't. Too much explanation from older kids and adults often tends to frustrate and confuse little kiddies.

Follow their lead and don't impose adult interpretations on children until they show an interest is my advice.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/13/2011 06:51PM by Cheryl.

Just like parents lie to them about religion.

But let the kids figure all that out themselves, then admit to lying to them only when they finally call you on it.

How sick is that?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/13/2011 07:04PM by steve benson.