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Negative Case

Sorry, Virginia ...

December 13, 2009|By David Kyle Johnson

Editor's note: The following op-ed article is for grown-ups only. Children are warned that if they read it, they will not receive any gifts from Santa Claus this year!

 

Parents should stop teaching their kids to believe in Santa Claus. Reading stories about Santa is fine, and encouraging generosity and imagination is great. But tricking children into believing that an omniscient fat man, with a red suit and rosy cheeks, will slide down the chimney bestowing presents on Dec. 24 is just flat-out immoral.

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First of all, it's lying. It's one thing to lie to save someone's life, but stop kidding yourself. "It's fun to watch the kids get excited" is hardly a noble cause. Nor is it harmless. I've amassed recollections of "finding out the truth about Santa," and many were stories of genuine embarrassment and resentment. The systematic deception makes children feel taken advantage of or like the butt of a joke.

Children crave knowledge about the world - they want the truth - and parents are their most trusted source. It shouldn't be surprising, then, that a violation of that trust spawns strong reactions.

Additionally, parental efforts to perpetuate the lie discourage children's efforts to think critically. A parent telling a child to ignore the evidence against Santa's existence encourages the child to think that believing whatever one wants is more important than weighing evidence and believing the truth. Parents who try to explain away the evidence with crackpot excuses skew the child's ability to discern good evidence from bad. And magical explanations? Do you really want your kids to be gullible enough to believe in magic? To perpetuate the lie, the parent has to effectively tell the child to "stop thinking and just believe." That is not what you want to teach your children.

And that is not what society needs you to teach your children. Gallup, Pew, and other polls reveal that a frightening percentage of Americans believe surprisingly ridiculous things - that the sun revolves around the earth, for example (18 percent), or in communication with the dead (21 percent), witches (21 percent), astrology (25 percent), clairvoyance (26 percent), telepathy (31 percent), ghosts (32 percent) and ESP (41 percent). How many Americans still believe that President Barack Obama is Muslim and not a U.S. citizen, that the world will end in 2012, and that Sept. 11 was "an inside job"? Not to mention the fact that "stop thinking and just believe" is the most common impetus for fanatical religious belief. All such beliefs are damaging - and they are also demonstrably false. If only there were some way we could set our children down the path of "knowing better."

Christmas has not been celebrated the same way for 2,000 years. Our holiday celebrations date back at least 4,000 years (Jesus' birth wasn't added to the mix until the Fourth Century), and they have been in a constant state of flux. The idea that you should tell the Santa Claus lie to your children was perpetuated by the New York elite - most notably, Clement Clark Moore, author of "A Visit From St. Nicholas" - in the early 1800s. It was an effort to domesticate Christmas, to change it from a holiday about giving to the poor to a holiday about giving to one's own children. It's time for another change.

Say Goodbye to the Santa Claus Lie

Can lying to your children about Santa be excused in the name of imagination?

Published on December 17, 2012 by Dr. David Kyle Johnson, Ph.D. in Plato on Pop

Parents often feel a twinge of guilt when they lie to their children about Santa Claus. But in her article, “The Santa Lie: Is the Christmas Con Hurting our Kids?” Slate author Melinda Wenner Moyerbut argues that the Santa lie “belongs in the ‘good lie’ pile.”  There is no need for guilt, she says, “because parents invoke him for their kids’ sake.” I disagree. We need to pay attention to that twinge of guilt to steer us clear of immoral and potentially dangerous behavior.

I first argued this in 2009, in an op-ed for the Baltimore Sun, entitled “Sorry, Virginia,” I suggested the Santa Lie should be avoided for three reasons. (1) It’s an unjustified lie, (2) it risks damaging your parental trustworthiness and (3) it encourages credulity and ill-motivated behavior. One of the arguments people made in response—amidst an unbelievable amount of hate mail I recieved, which you can see here—was essentially the argument that Moyerbut presents.  The Santa lie promotes imagination, and imagination is good for kids. As Moyerbut puts it, “What Kris Kringle does…is feed the imagination” and a “type of imaginative play that sparks creativity, social understanding and even—strange as it may sound—scientific reasoning.” (And her same argument has been repeated by like minded fans of Santa in defense of the Santa Claus lie, again and again and again…andagain.)

Bottom of Form

Of course, Moyerbut is right about the benefits of imagination. What she (and the others who makes similar arguments) fail to recognize, however, is that the thing she is defending—The Santa Lie—does not actually promote imagination or imaginative play. Imagination involves pretending, and to pretend that something exists, one has to believe that thing doesn’t exist. Does the Christian “imagine” that Jesus rose from the dead? Does the Muslim “imagine” that Muhammad’s rode his horse Barack (Al Boraq) at lightening speed from Mecca to Jerusalem and then assended into heaven? Of course not; they believe these things are true. Tricking a child into literally believing that Santa exists doesn’t encourage imagination, it actually stifles it. If you really want to encourage imagination in your children, tell them that Santa doesn’t exist, but that you are going to pretend like he does anyway on Christmas morning.

Lots of children “play act” like they are Santa, and that does require imagination. But you don’t have to trick them into believing that Santa is real in order for them to play that way—just as you don’t have to trick them into thinking that Star Trek is real in order for them to pretend to explore alien planets in the back yard.

Moyerbut recognizes the worry that your children might develop trust issues when they realize that you have lied to them, but she argues that such worries are ill-founded. When they learn the truth, on average at around 8 she suggests, they know the difference between good and bad lies and will see it as a good lie. Consequently, they won’t resent you, think lying is always acceptable, or reject their religious beliefs.

While Moyerbut is right that many children suffer no ill effects from learning the truth, she is wrong that none do. In “Against the Santa-Claus Lie: The Truth We Should Tell our Children” (Chapter twelve in Scott Lowe’s Christmas and Philosophy) I document some horrific stories about the “big moment”—stories that show discovering the truth about Santa is often not with consequences--everything from the erosion of parental authority and trust to turning a child into an atheist. For example, Jay defended Santa’s existence in front of his whole class on the mere basis that his “mother wouldn’t lie” to him, only to read the encyclopedia entry on Santa in front of the whole class and simultaneously discover that she indeed would. When little Tennille realized that the reason she didn’t always get what she asked Santa for was that he didn’t exist, she figured that God’s non-existence was the best explanation for why her prayers also went unanswered. I’m not saying that this happens to all kids; I am saying it’s a possibility. If you are religious, I doubt it's a possibility you would willingly invite. Of course, if you are an atheist, you might like that the Santa lie does this. But there are even more reasons for not liking the Santa lie--reasons that should resonatequite quite loundly with everyone (espeically atheists).

Moyerbut suggests that Santa encourages “Fantasy play [that] forces kids to think through hypothetical or counterfactual scenarios, which bolsters their reasoning skills.” Again, it’s not Santa belief itself that does this; simply telling them the story but admitting it’s not really true would suffice—just like it does for all other fairy tales we tell our children. But any positive effect Santa belief had in this regard would be completely counteracted and outweighed by the negative effects of what is necessary to keep the belief going. Don’t get me wrong, children need to learn how to reason effectively and think critically, and I applaud Moyerbut for encouraging parents to promote this. But encouraging your children to literally believe the Santa lie is the last thing that encourages critical thinking and effective reasoning in children.

Think about what many parents do to keep kids believing. When a child brings doubts, parents often encourage the child to stifle those doubts and continue believing: “Just believe what you want to. After all, isn’t that more fun?” They will sometimes plant false evidence (or show terrible fake “scientific” documentaries that do so), make up faux ad hoc explanations, or—worst of all—just say “he’s magic.” But all these things are directly contrary to what parents who want to develop critical thinking in their children should do. Stifling doubt, believing based on desire (instead of evidence), being convinced by bad evidence, being fooled by ad-hoc explanations, and appealing to magic—these are all “bad habits of lazy thinking” that I have to drive out of my critical thinking students every semester. And, not surprisingly, the students in which these bad habits are most deeply entrenched are often those who believed in Santa for too long—far beyond 8 year old (sometimes into their teens!).

If your children already believe in Santa, then there is one piece of advice from Moyerbut that I endorse: Turn their experience of learning the truth into a critical thinking exercise; try to get them to figure it out on their own with solid reasoning.

If you are still deciding what to tell your children, however, decide now to tell them the truth. After all, as Moyerbut tells says, “Though lying can be an awfully convenient parenting crutch…it’s generally best to keep it to a minimum, both to develop trust between yourself and your child and to lead by example.” She’s right! She’s just wrong that December is a time for an exception to this rule. And if you are worried about what your kids might tell other children, just teach them seven simple words: “At our house, Santa is just pretend.”

David Kyle Johnson

Copyright, 2012

Santa Claus: Innocent Fantasy or Harmful Lie?

By CHALEY-ANN SCOTT 

From Psychology

Most progressive parents know that lying to our kids is not a good idea — it’s not respectful or kind, and is likely to erode the trust our child has for us.

However, what about Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and unicorns? Is it okay to tell our child that Santa Claus and the like are real? Are these just innocent ‘white lies’ that we all tell our kids so their faces light up with joy as they indulge in the pleasure of make-believe?

Or is it a dangerous path that deeply affects our child’s capacity to trust adults when they eventually find out the truth?

Both my husband and I grew up believing in Santa and never felt betrayed when we figured it out. However, my eldest son, Jack, was told Santa was real, and boy was I unprepared for the fallout when he eventually found out the truth.

I can still remember the look on his face of dismay, confusion, sadness, and incredible anger when he discovered that I — the person he felt he could trust the most in the world — had lied to him.

He looked directly at me with such sad, tear-filled eyes and said, “I will never trust you again.”

Ouch.

He did (eventually) and we moved on but, many years later, he still occasionally mentions it and pulls me up if I say anything remotely resembling a white lie to his younger sisters. He has turned into the ‘lie police’ in our house (no bad thing!). Needless to say, I have regretted my original approach to Santa ever since.

From my counseling work, I have discovered I am by no means alone in this experience. Just like my son, many children are devastated to find out the truth about Santa.

We were one of those families that really played it up. We baked cookies for Santa and left out carrots for the reindeer, on Christmas morning there would be some half-eaten cookies and some strangely chewed-up carrots on the plate. Santa wrote letters and everything. In hindsight I wish I wouldn’t have played that much into it. Draven, 11, was one of the ones who felt really betrayed… He gets the whole idea behind the spirit of Santa, but truly feels we lied to him for many years. He just told me he doesn’t even want to set up a tree this year because Santa isn’t real, so why decorate. His feelings of betrayal have put a dimmer on the season for us for the last 2 years. If I had it to do over again I wouldn’t play so much into the make believe. I would let the child lead and I’d follow.

– Tina

Some children take the feeling of betrayal and confusion into adulthood, and it has long-lasting effects on the parent-child relationship.

Some families go a bit nutty on the Santa hoax — my parents did. They actively did things to make it look like Santa had visited and told stories of hearing noises on the roof or just missing seeing him. I don’t think my younger brother bought it all as long as I did, but I definitely felt betrayed when I found out it had all been an elaborate lie, and that feeling lasted a long time.

– Meredith

Lying to our children about Santa, or any other mythical figure, isn’t kind or necessary. Our children will still be able to enjoy the wonder of make-believe without our fabrications. On the flip side, some parents, thinking they’re being honest and progressive, go too far and kill all the joy of Santa. However, there are gentler approaches in between outright lying to children about Santa and exposing the whole thing as a cruel hoax. These approaches are motivated by joy, love, respect, and imagination.

In our house we have always played Santa, but it has always been an imaginative game and she has always known that he isn’t real. She is 11 now and we still play the game and it’s still magical and fun. But that’s always all it’s ever been, just a fun game.

– Tova

So how can you keep the magic of Christmas alive for your children without betraying their trust? It is important to remember that all children are different when it comes to fantasy. Some take things more seriously than others and are more literal. Some fall right in with the game. Some catch on to the whole ‘spirit of giving’ thing and see Santa as part of that. Some get their feelings hurt and end up bitter about it.  And some are downright terrified about the thought of an elderly man coming into their house at night!

My daughter was terrified of Santa coming into her home, so we left her presents at Grandma’s house.  It satisfied her to an extent, but she was still really anxious about the whole thing, and was afraid when she saw people dressed as Santa.  I wish I told her the truth because she really didn’t get any joy from it.

– Bec

Playing ‘The Santa Game’ with our kids can be great fun for all concerned. Just like we might talk about fictional characters such as Dora, or Power Rangers, Santa can fit right in! Going out of our way to try to make our kids really believe there is a man living in the North Pole with his wife and elves, who rides around on a sleigh just isn’t necessary. It is still possible to really get into the whole Christmas spirit as much as our children wish by following their lead, maybe by decorating the house, telling stories, watching movies, going to carol services, present-giving, baking, and dressing up.

Playing ‘The Santa Game’ Without the Harm

So how exactly do you play ‘The Santa Game’?

By making sure that the make-believe world doesn’t cross over into our world — which is what leads us to lie.  

For example, because the tooth fairy is supposed to trade teeth for coins, we tell our children the coin was left by them, not us. Because we tell our child that Santa delivers presents, or that the Easter Bunny leaves them eggs, we have to pretend to do that, often by being deceitful.  

What we can do instead is tell the story of a kindly old man who leaves gifts for children in make-believe world, and we can give presents to each other ‘just like Santa does in the story.’  We can tell our child the fun story of the tooth fairy and swap teeth for coins, ‘just like the tooth fairy does in the story.’ The child would still know the joy of these fantasy tales, but there would be no deception.

Even with this approach there are kids who really want to believe Santa is real and that doesn’t have to be squashed — but you don’t have to lie, either. For example, when asked directly if Santa is real we can say, smiling, ‘I guess you have to figure that out for yourself,’ ‘What do you think?’ or ‘All I know is when I was little I put my stocking up and got stuff in it, and I think you should put one up, too.’ Many children say later that they knew deep inside but they chose to live as though they believed because it was fun.

Many kids take this approach (my eldest daughter included). Of course, there are those children that really want a straight out answer to their question or who don’t enjoy fantasy, and they will keep pushing for an answer. In that case the Santa game works great, and I think a response such as, “No, there isn’t a real Santa living in the North Pole, but it sure is fun to pretend, right?” is not going to hurt a child who truly wants to know the truth.

But it will hurt a child to know the truth when he or she really just wants a parent to play along with his or her desire to believe. It will also hurt a child, like my son, to be lied to in order to mix fantasy with reality. If we remember that our child is unique, we can let them lead us to find their joy so we can follow.

When my daughter was about 6 or 7, she asked me if we could leave out cookies and milk for Santa.  ”I know he isn’t real,” she said, “but I just want to pretend he is.”  I thought that was perfectly fine, so we made some cookies especially for Santa each year since then and either her dad or I would eat a couple or take bites out of them and drink the milk.  It was a un little tradition and we would all laugh about it and “pretend” that Santa had come and eaten them. We’ve had many discussions about it through the years and she knows not to reveal anything to her cousins, etc. who do ‘believe,’ just out of respect for how their family wants to celebrate the holidays. She’s 15 now and I am glad I made the choice to raise her telling the truth but letting her “fantasize”…I think it’s the honest way to do it.  

– Julie

The truth is that kids find joy and wonder in the world regardless of whether you create fantasies for them. They create their own and they marvel at the world without needing any more than bare-bones reality. Some kids enjoy fantasy game-playing, some don’t, but they don’t need it to know that the world is miraculous, so long as they have lots of opportunities to be joyful and to wonder without being told ‘stop that, be careful, put it down, come here, don’t dawdle, you don’t want that, that’s nothing special.’

Most important, they need to be able to trust the most important people in their lives to not be deceptive — a lesson I learned the hard way.

Santa Claus: Naughty or Nice?

Telling your kids that Santa Claus is real is a lie, but does it actually hurt them?

WebMD Feature Archive

By Dulce Zamora

WebMD Feature

Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD

This year, Mikio plans to write a letter to Santa Claus, as he's done since he can remember, and leave his North Pole visitor some milk and cookies.

"He's a man with a white beard who delivers presents and flies with reindeer," says the 8-year-old. "I think he's a cool guy."

Mikio is one of millions of children who eagerly anticipate the jolly old soul's magical trip around the world. Every December, kids hear the story of a red-clad, robust man who enters homes through chimneys and doles out gifts to well-behaved youngsters.

No doubt the tale has generated excitement in many households. A brief review of comments from some online message boards, however, reveals that the Santa notion also elicits its share of cringes:

• "I will never teach my children about the myth of Santa, because he is not the reason we celebrate Christmas."

• "You teach your kids not to lie and yet we lie to them right away about Santa and the Easter Bunny."

• "The truth is some kids get nothing for Christmas, because there really is no Santa and some parents cannot scrape up the extra dough. The child that gets told Santa loves and gives to everybody will wonder what is wrong with them." 

• "Why would anyone want to make the nice gesture of buying and wrapping the perfect gift, only to give the credit to a fictional character?"

Roberto, a San Francisco Bay-area father, says family and friends have already told his 2-year-old daughter about Santa Claus. Yet he does not plan to further promote the story because the consumerism produced by the holidays bothers him.

"When Christmas or Fourth of July comes around, these figures symbolize that holiday, but they also propagate sales," he says. "To have Abraham Lincoln be responsible for a President's Day sale is ludicrous."

The 32-year-old father says he won't stop his daughter from believing in Santa Claus if she chooses to, but he wants her to know that holidays can be engineered to encourage spending. Instead of focusing on Santa Claus during the holidays, he says he will encourage his daughter to cherish family time.

Any thought of hooking Santa Claus away from the holiday stage is enough to make some parents roll their eyes or throw up their hands in outrage.

"Why on earth are we in such a hurry to take away the innocence and magic that exists in childhood?" says one parent in an online message board.

"Let children be children for as long as possible!" says another parent.

Like-minded mothers and fathers say they would never deny their kids the joy brought on by belief in Kris Kringle. There are those who declare that Christmas wouldn't be the same without good ole St. Nick.

Who's right and who's wrong? Could the Santa Claus tale actually hurt kids? Or is it harmless fun? WebMD placed Santa on the naughty or nice checklist and asked child psychology and development experts what they thought about the twinkle-eyed gent.

The Jury on Santa

Small studies from the United States and Canada suggest that virtually all children know about Santa Claus, even if they do not view him as a real person. A significant percentage of believers discovered the truth behind the tale around age 7. Only half of kids aged 8 to 11 reported believing in Santa.

When they did find out the truth, most of them reacted in a positive manner. Two out of three kids said they felt a sense of pride in figuring out the truth about Santa Claus. Half of them said that although the jolly guy was not real, they liked the idea of him.

Yet there are also various anecdotal reports on Internet chat boards about how the truth has disillusioned or even traumatized people. One mother said she was greatly disappointed when she realized who Santa was, but was more upset that her parents "forced" her to perpetuate the "lie." Her parents had said children who do not believe in Santa Claus do not get any presents.

The way children experience Santa depends on how he is represented to them, says Benjamin Siegel, MD, FAAP, professor of pediatrics at the Boston University Medical School. "If Santa Claus represents someone who is nurturing, good, thoughtful, and generous ... then it's a joyful (experience)."

Shari Kuchenbecker, PhD, a research psychologist and author of Raising Winners, says when her children were young, she told them Santa Claus was a symbol of loving, giving, and hope. "I never said Santa Claus was a real person," she said, stressing how important it is never to lie to children.

"Always tell the truth as you know it. That doesn't mean being explicit beyond what a child wants to know," says Kuchenbecker. To prove her point, she shares a story of a little girl who asks her mother what "sex" is. The flustered parent tries her best to explain the meaning of the word to her daughter, but at the end of the long lecture, the girl says she simply wanted to know what the difference was between males and females.

Children are apparently good at picking up what they need to know at the appropriate time. When they are ready to learn, it's a good idea for parents to be available as a resource.

Parents who strongly believe that they are betraying their children's trust by sharing the Santa Claus tale probably do not need to tell them the story, says Robert Feldman, PhD, professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, who has conducted extensive research on lying and deception.

Keep in mind, though, that in the overall scale of deception, propagating the Santa myth is no worse than saying things like "You look terrific," or "You haven't gainedweight," or "What a great dress," says Feldman, noting that people generally use lies as a social crutch.

The Jury on Santa continued...

"We actually teach our kids that deception is acceptable," says Feldman. For example, he says parents often ask their children to pretend they like gifts from relatives to spare the feelings of family members.

Children are also resilient and can usually overcome any negative feelings related to discovering the real Santa. "It's no worse than telling them about the three bears, or Goldilocks, or Cinderella, or anything else. It's a story and when they get older, they understand that it was only a fairy tale," says George Cohen, MD, FAAP, clinical professor of pediatrics at the George Washington University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C.

Children's Fantasy World

Very young children live in an imaginary world, and that world is reality for them. "Little kids think there actually might be a monster in their closet or a dragon under their bed," says Douglas Kramer, MD, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin Medical School. "It seems real to them, so it's got to be real."

At ages 1 through 4, children can comprehend tangible things such as sleigh, reindeer, and Santa Claus as a real person, Kramer explains. These kids cannot yet grasp abstract concepts.

At 4 to 6 years old, Kramer says children may begin questioning whether Santa Claus is a real person. It is not until kids are about 6 to 8 that they may be ready to understand that Santa Claus is real, but not in a concrete sense. Their ability to think abstractly begins developing at this time and continues on until they are about 14 years old.

In all ages, a good imagination is important, but it's crucial for very young children. They simply cannot do without a good fantasy life, says Carolyn Saarni, PhD, a developmental psychologist and professor of counseling at Sonoma State University in California.

"Play is central to cognitive development," says Saarni. "You can master the world through your ability to manipulate things in fantasy. Play allows you to kind of practice what you would do in the real world."

A little girl who is playing with a doll, for instance, may try to imitate her mother's nurturing ways. In her pretend world, she is practicing what she would do in certain situations.

Tasha Howe, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, Calif., says parents can use fantasy to encourage children's critical and independent thinking. When children ask questions related to Santa Claus, such as "Is there really a Santa Claus?" or "How do reindeer fly?" she suggests encouraging little ones to come up with their own explanations.

There is no scientific research indicating the Santa tale can be helpful or harmful to kids, says Howe. So when her students who are parents ask her whether or not they should promote the Santa tale, she simply responds, "It's a personal choice. Whatever choice you make, I don't think it's going to harm your child."

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