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Cantabile

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Are kids learning any life lesson by the myth of Santa?

i don't know what the origin or intention behind the mythology might have been at its arche, but the function of the mythology is plain, constituted by a double movement

on the one hand, it serves to conceal the means of production and exchange at the root of the crass commercialism that has overtaken the mystical underpinnings of the solstice holiday, obscuring the religious meanings that are more ancient and more significant, and have nonetheless been surpassed, and linger only as a remnant of an older social formation.

on the other hand, it is an illusion that is meant ultimately to be dispelled, to produce disillusionment in the young mind regarding the premises that property might exist and be transferred outside of market relations and that virtue is rewarded. that the disillusionment also encompasses the totalitarian aspect of the santa myth is no small part of the process--the lesson there is that only in myth can someone always be watching--which is of course completely false.

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Belief begets reality.

Since implicit rules are generally invisible, the tendency is to always think that the guy who follows explicit rules is the one constrained. The problem is, in other words, that those who deceive themselves about their immunity from deception, are deceived even more.

We game opportunity to conjure the illusion that there is no Santa. And yet, those whose (cartoon) brain wants to maintain the fiction that Santa is merely a fiction, a conceit, a kind of epistemological joke that all adults are “in” on, are merely mouthing platitudes that have been hard-wired into their stone-age neural pathways.

By insisting on the nonexistence of Santa, we are making him more real.

One of the advantages of knowing the ways the brain is prone to game ambiguities for social and psychological advantage is that it allows you to become that much more sophisticated in your rhetorical manipulations. All tricksy, like. This includes flying reindeer, obvious paradoxes about the indivisibility of obese seniors, conceits about perspective of fireplace-versus-man, etc. I could go on, where it not for the futility of repetition vis a vis social convention.

So I know my argument is bound to tweak any number of people who read this post. As soon as people need you to be wrong to preserve some flattering cornerstone of their self-identity, you know that the very rationalizations you are railing against will be turned against you. All those years of posting. Council membership, custom titles: the comfort of feeling morally and intellectually superior. An institutionally sanctified status…

And yet while we insist on its impossibility, we are merely deceiving ourselves about the advent of the very thing we claim to reject with our brains, but which our animal instincts crave: the Santa. Reality is merely the least pliable sphere of existence, the one where individuals are most helpless against circumstance. Yet while we continue to repeat this comforting thought to each other, at the same time we shape the very thing we deny, creating it with our thousandfold thought, making real. We can feel Him already at the horizon.

The Redness that Comes Before.

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Right now my 4 year old niece believes in Santa with her whole heart. She wrote him a list that included such items as a magic ball. (When my mom called my sister to see if "Magic Ball" was some kind of brand name, my sister informed my mom that my niece actually wanted a magic ball, one that could turn her into rainbows and giraffes and such. Melted my poor heart into a puddle.)

The point is right now my niece truly believes in magic. She gets to be totally innocent and expect that anything is possible. I feel like that is such a gift to give a child. The rest of her life she is going to see how cold, hard and unfair the world is. But she'll always have this pool of light to draw from her childhood. It's also good for her imagination, and seems to make her happier. She'll figure it out before to long, or if she gets to 7 my sister will tell her. But Santa is all about letting kids be kids, and letting grown ups worry about the big stuff.

Totally agree. This is one of those instances where I look at the board and think.. what are you guys even talking about? Its a fun thing for kids, nothing more. Sure, one day they might be disappointed when they learn the truth but I don't think that will outweigh the fun they had with it in the mean time. I don't even remember the moment when I stopped believing, so its not like it was some traumatic event for me. I have a big extended family and as a kid and I can remember all of us being at my grandparents house on Christmas eve - like 9 kids of Santa-believing age.

My dad would say he was going out to the store to pick something up and then like an hour later we'd see Santa outside waving to us. Then dad would come back and we'd be all - 'oh no! dad, you missed it, Santa came by!' :lol: Also remember my dad and my grandfather would get on the roof and stomp around a bit making it sound like reindeer had landed on the roof. When that happens you have to sprint up the stairs and pretend you're asleep, 'cause everyone knows Santa wont deliver presents if you're awake. I mean, those were some pretty fun times for all of us kids and I don't think any of us was scarred for life the day we found out that it was dad out in the yard in a cheap Santa suit. If anything, nowadays it makes me appreciate my parents more, knowing that they went to those lengths to make something more fun for us.

it is well known that the greatest trick santa ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist.

:lol:

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After a few years of Father Christmas, I got the colly-wobbles about this exact theme of telling untruths to children, which could potentially undermine their trust in adults and jeopardise their longterm well-being.

We explained to our kids about St Nicholas, his life and times and martyrdom. Over the course of several months, we touched on the myth of FC, and the basing of the myth on St Nicholas and his good works. We left it to the kids to make up their own minds, working through the story and doing their own seeking for truth.

In this way we could explore all sorts of myths, legends, truth, untruth and grey truth. It also helped that Mr Ptree has a forename which is adjacent to FC.

Mind you, at 2 years old, my son was debating infinity, and my daughter didn't want to have a baby, and asked how to stop one growing.... :shocked:

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Totally agree. This is one of those instances where I look at the board and think.. what are you guys even talking about? Its a fun thing for kids, nothing more. Sure, one day they might be disappointed when they learn the truth but I don't think that will outweigh the fun they had with it in the mean time.

I don't think this is a Santa vs Do Nothing Fun argument though. It's a Santa vs any number of fun and wondrous things that aren't lies. There is so much in the world that is magical and real.

aimlessgun,

So, where does you pithy little test place my daughter? She has know for years that Santa isn't "real". She's simply chosen to believe. By the way she's a seven year old who reads on the college level.

Well if were to assume that my test was serious, she's already passed, since as you say she knows :) Her decision to continue 'believing' is irrelevant to her test score: if she is as intelligent as she seems, the belief is a hollow thing at heart and unsustainable.

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I don't think this is a Santa vs Do Nothing Fun argument though. It's a Santa vs any number of fun and wondrous things that aren't lies. There is so much in the world that is magical and real.

Exactly, there isn't a Santa-cortex in the brain which only belief in Santa will activate, flooding us with magical rainbow happiness. Would anyone argue that kids from countries that don't celebrate Christmas are less happy than American kids who do? The atmosphere of Christmas is what makes it special. For those that can remember when they stopped believing in Santa, was Christmas any less magical? (minus the coolness factor wearing off a bit since you've experienced it so many times).

There are plenty of ways to make a child happy that don't include lying to them for years on end. If manipulating them into believing in Santa is the best way to put a smile on their face, then I'm thinking we should rethink our parenting skills.

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Are parents who don't teach their kids about God "no fun" because they're depriving their child from believing in a mythological being?

Most gods spend there time killing and sending people to be tortured for all eternity. Santa spends his time giving presents. They are remotely the same.

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When I was in second grade, my whole class visited a some "Christmas Festival" two or three days before the eve, on the last school day before break. I'm Jewish, but I came home...believing in Santa. This didn't make much sense to my parents, as, besides the whole Jewish thing, I'd already decided that I wasn't a big fan of the whole god concept. My dad sat down with me and tried to understand how one could believe in Santa but not god, but I wasn't to be swayed. I think I sort of knew it didn't make much sense, but it just seemed like such a cool thing that I went along with it. Then Christmas came, I got nothing, and that was it for me and Santa.

This story made me sad. Don't know what I would do if I had a kid come home professing belief in a mythological creature from somebody else's religion, though.

I don't actually recall if I ever believed in Santa, but if so, I figured it out pretty early. My brother and I spent years trying to make our parents admit that he doesn't exist, but they refused. Finally my mom admitted it (I think we were both teenagers at that point) but insisted that we all continue to pretend anyway because it's fun. We still all hang stockings and sneak into the living room at night to fill them for each other. :laugh:

Although, I guess we've talked for the last several years about buying "stocking stuffers" and we do thank each other for the things in them, so it's not quite the same....

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My parents taught all of us from the get-go that Santa was fictional. They didn't want to lie to us, and I respect that. Also, they didn't want to detract from the Real Meaning of Christmas--meaning we got to read lots of Bible verses and such. (I think it's a bit amusing, now, that my parents wanted to be so sure we knew Santa was a myth but had zero qualms about indoctrinating us into all the quirks of their religious faith...)

Somehow, oddly enough, knowing that Santa was a myth didn't take away from my imagination or tarnish my childhood.

ETA: Also, one thing I hate about Santa is that people act like it's some freaking societal obligation that we all MUST keep. Look, you can tell your kids whatever the hell you want, but the rest of us don't have to play along.

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