Santa Spoiler

[kizudo]

So, now that my little one (2.5) is not so little anymore, he's been asking about the man with the white beard.  I did a little search here on the topic and found this (it's 2 years old):  http://forum.brillkids.com/coffee-corner-general-chat/santa-do-you-do-it/   It's more of a do you/don't you thread.  What I want to know here is how you deal with telling the truth (St. Nick was a kind and giving man who is now dead) and preventing your child from spoiling it for the kids who come from families who teach them to believe in him being "alive".

Anyway, we are a "Santa WAS a real man who lived many years ago" kind of family.  Two days ago we had a playdate at our house and their 3 year old was talking about how he wanted Santa to bring him this and that.  My little guy hadn't heard of this before.  We plan on telling him (we've started a bit) all the historical information about St. Nick HOWEVER I don't want him to be the kid who spoils it for other children.  Who wants to get a phone call saying their kid came home from being with your kid and they said "Mikey says there is no Santa and that you and Dad are lying to me"?

So, what do you do?  What do you recommend (to do or NOT to do)?  Specifically, with a little one like mine...he's not even three yet.

[hypatia]

I've told her this year all about Christmas from a religious point of view, then told her that family members gathered to spend time together and that on Christmas days there would be gifts under the tree. I added: 'some people believe it is Santa who brings them over'.
For now it's been enough. I don't want to go full on about how he's going to come over with the reindeers (she'd be expecting to SEE him), but I still want to give her something to dream about.

[nhockaday]

 He knows about Santa, but WE give him gifts. He thinks Santa is just another part pf Christmas, like the tree and decorations. He is still too young to tell other kids that Santa doesn't bring his gifts, so I haven't figured out what we'll do about that yet. And my family is so shocked that I am not lying to him about Santa. They act like I am taking out a fun part of Christmas, but I don't want to lie to my child, and Chistmas is much more than Santa.

[mom2bee]

I'll be the outcast. I plan to teach my children the absolute truth about the customary lies of modern Christmas, Easter and such AND I dont care if they tell the entire kindergarten class over the loud speaker at assembly.

The bright side, however, is that I dont plan to put my children in public school, so that should alleviate SOME of the tension right then and there. But my kids will be encouraged to speak the truth when and wherever applicable.

Not only will I teach my children the truth about Santa, and that if asked, they can just reply that they KNOW there is no Santa, but I will also teach my children biblical scripture against lyings and those verses which are used in argument AGAINST christmas practices and I hope my children will feel free to call out other Christian parents as liars and hypocrites if ever they need to.

[waterdreamer]

Wow that's harsh Mom2Bee.

[MerryHeart]

I agree...that is harsh.  We don't elaborate on Santa. Family members will ask my 5 yr old what Santa is going to bring him and he just goes, "Huh?" I know we're going to have to address it further soon. I don't feel comfortable lying about any of the childhood traditions like Santa Claus, Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy. I hope that I will be able to explain it in a way that encourages my children to be respectful of others while still holding true to what they believe.

[Krista G]

Children have a great ability to understand many truths.  I have always told my kids that many parents have their children believe in Santa but that there is no such thing.  I have carefully explained to them that it is all make believe but it is not our business to spoil it for these children.  I am not an advocate of lying to my children and therefore have taught them that there is no Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy either, but I don't believe it is our business to discuss this with families that support these imaginary characters.

As a side note, I can vividly recall finding out as a child that there was no Santa.  It was very disappointing.  I would never want to put my children through that either.

[nhockaday]

Well said, Krista 

[tlyoung]

My daughter, now 20, never wanted to know if Santa was real or not.  She said she loved the holiday and wanted it to continue as it always was. I brought her up to respect other peoples differences and beliefs.  I will not change with our son.  Tolerance and acceptance are/should also be part of the holidays.

[mom2bee]

Wow that's harsh Mom2Bee.

Yeah, I know. But in my area, Santa is taken to the extremes and its quite insane. On more than one occassion, K and 1st grade teachers have been fired from their jobs for telling their students the Truth about Santa Claus. I have no problem teaching my kids the origins of the Myth and a respect for the values and such of the Holiday Spirit but I'll be darned if I allow anyone to try and dupe them into anything.

Tolerance is one thing, Peer Pressure is another. I'm not Christian and a good portion of my immediate family isn't either but we've always been tolerant and even went to Christmas get togethers with the extended-family and I remember how my adult relatives would interrogate me and my siblings  and Parents when I was young (4, 5,6, 7, 8, 9.) years old on how and why we didn't "do" Santa. and "didn't we feel deprived?" and "Its so much fun" were there 2 favorite lines. I remember one year my aunt screaming at my dad about he was a jerk because their mom had done Santa for them and my father reminded his sister that when SHE revealed the truth of Christmas to him at about 7 or 8, he was devastated. Not that Santa wasn't real, but that their mom had lied to him, on numerous occassions. He'd fought other boys on the playground for calling his mother a liar, because in his mind, his Momma would NEVER lie to him.

Every year, the adults would have some debate going about why were my parents depriving me of the once-in a lifetime chance to be fooled and duped by society. It was a yearly thing and my parents just stuck to their guns but I always felt ridiculous defending our choices/lifestyle against adults. I never spoiled Santa or any of their other lies for their little kids, why did they have to bother me and mine?

I was talking about it once and someone said they could understand firing a Teacher over outing-Santa, "Wouldn't you be mad if someone told your kids The Quran wasn't real?" (I'm Muslim) and I said yes, but I actually BELIEVE in it, I dont intend to lie or cover up anything as ridiculous as Santa.

Santa isn't a religious fixture, he's a fictional-cultural one. and its well known that he's a fraud. Its fine to play Santa with your kids if thats what you want to do, but I dont intend for my kids to take the crap that I did. So long as adults can exercise some common decency about Santa around me and my kids then I will be happy to do the same, but I wont hobble my kids ability or right to defend themselves.

And I'm not going to groom my kids from jump to cave to peer pressure. "Everyone's Doing It" just doesn't fly for me. It never has, and I hope that it never will. If my kids are ever confronted with ProSanta Hostility, I want them to have the means and the might to defend themselves. Period.

In my area and in my (extended) family Santa is too freakin ridiculous to be tolerated by yours truly.

[MerryHeart]

Wow that's harsh Mom2Bee.

Yeah, I know. But in my area, Santa is taken to the extremes and its quite insane. On more than one occassion, K and 1st grade teachers have been fired from their jobs for telling their students the Truth about Santa Claus. I have no problem teaching my kids the origins of the Myth and a respect for the values and such of the Holiday Spirit but I'll be darned if I allow anyone to try and dupe them into anything.

Tolerance is one thing, Peer Pressure is another. I'm not Christian and a good portion of my immediate family isn't either but we've always been tolerant and even went to Christmas get togethers with the extended-family and I remember how my adult relatives would interrogate me and my siblings  and Parents when I was young (4, 5,6, 7, 8, 9.) years old on how and why we didn't "do" Santa. and "didn't we feel deprived?" and "Its so much fun" were there 2 favorite lines. I remember one year my aunt screaming at my dad about he was a jerk because their mom had done Santa for them and my father reminded his sister that when SHE revealed the truth of Christmas to him at about 7 or 8, he was devastated. Not that Santa wasn't real, but that their mom had lied to him, on numerous occassions. He'd fought other boys on the playground for calling his mother a liar, because in his mind, his Momma would NEVER lie to him.

Every year, the adults would have some debate going about why were my parents depriving me of the once-in a lifetime chance to be fooled and duped by society. It was a yearly thing and my parents just stuck to their guns but I always felt ridiculous defending our choices/lifestyle against adults. I never spoiled Santa or any of their other lies for their little kids, why did they have to bother me and mine?

I was talking about it once and someone said they could understand firing a Teacher over outing-Santa, "Wouldn't you be mad if someone told your kids The Quran wasn't real?" (I'm Muslim) and I said yes, but I actually BELIEVE in it, I dont intend to lie or cover up anything as ridiculous as Santa.

Santa isn't a religious fixture, he's a fictional-cultural one. and its well known that he's a fraud. Its fine to play Santa with your kids if thats what you want to do, but I dont intend for my kids to take the crap that I did. So long as adults can exercise some common decency about Santa around me and my kids then I will be happy to do the same, but I wont hobble my kids ability or right to defend themselves.

And I'm not going to groom my kids from jump to cave to peer pressure. "Everyone's Doing It" just doesn't fly for me. It never has, and I hope that it never will. If my kids are ever confronted with ProSanta Hostility, I want them to have the means and the might to defend themselves. Period.

In my area and in my (extended) family Santa is too freakin ridiculous to be tolerated by yours truly.

Wow, what a story. I would still say that even if someone is hostile towards you about your beliefs, what's the point in being hostile or defensive back? Say "That's our decision" with a big smile and leave it at that. Seems like a waste of time to argue with anyone that takes the belief in Santa Claus to the extreme.

My aunt said that she asked my grandmother if Santa Claus was real. She would always say, "If you believe in him, you might get something." A great way of not lying but leaving them open to believe in the unseen. I take it to the most extreme in my family. My boys just could care less about Santa Claus. So I am not going to make it important when it isn't.

I do tell my boys about Saint Nicholas. He was real. He was a giving man that personified what Christmas is all about.

Sorry your family is that way. Thanks for sharing. It does make your comments more understandable.

[TmS]

When children come into the world they want to make sense of it.

In fact that's pretty much what we spend the rest of our lives doing - trying to make sense of a pretty much senseless world.

I had been planning to be completely honest and truthful about Christmas (we are non-religious and do not lie to our child about anything no matter how silly it might be). It has always been my belief that lies create more lies and create a relationship you can't trust. I also despise doing things simply because that is what is done.

However, I have had to change my mind as a direct result of my research on imagination, how it develops, it's uses and how to encourage it.

The fact is that working out that Santa is a lie is a massive developmental step for children who are making sense of the world. Working out how does he fit in the chimney, how do they visit all the houses on one night, how does he know if we're naughty or nice, how does he know if we're on holidays etc requires huge intuitive leaps of logic that they have developed by observing the world around them. Santa doesn't obey these rules and it actually helps children to understand the truth of reality. The same goes for the tooth fairy etc.

So our decision has been this - we will create an imaginary and magical xmas, easter, toothloss, whatever. He will experience the magic and have the opportunity himself to see flaws in the system and work out what goes against the nature of the world he is beginning to understand.

I will never lie to him when he asks me a direct question. I will instead give him more fanciful questions to answer in the hope that this wonderful magical imaginary experience helps him to push his imagination to extremes and bring him back to think logically and to separate fact from fiction etc.

Of all the areas of intelligence we can work on imagination is the most important. Far more important than reading and maths.

This is how we understand that things could be different - by imagining other possibilities, how we make changes, how we invent things and so on and so on.  You want a child who is good at science? - they need imagination, good at maths? - they need imagination, good at cooking? - they need imagination.

It is our imagination that allows us to tap into our genius and excel at any given thing.

I have to say though I know where you're all coming from. The media and marketing industries of the world have tainted Santa, I never wanted to encourage my child to believe in something that had virtually no basis in fact.

But I have decided that as with God and religion, this will be his choice. All I can do is provide him with opportunity and information and help him develop a brain that knows how to exercise logical thought.

Good luck to you all - it's a tricky tricky situation.

[kizudo]

Amidst this deep discussion that I started I wanted to share my cute story. 

Today we were at a Christmas party - games, face painting, cookies, etc.  When we came home my son excitedly told my husband about the event...and at the end, referring to the man in red, he said " And there was a king, there Daddy.  He was sitting on his throne and kids took turns sitting on his lap." 

I imagine there will be more questions next year when he's closer to four.

[Krista G]

That is so funny! 

My kids used to call him an old man before they knew who Santa was.

[Chris1]

Dale McGowan (Parenting Beyond Belief and Raising Freethinkers) posts on The Meming of Life blog about Santa Claus being the “ultimate dry run” for questions about God’s existence.

"In part…

    By allowing our children to participate in the Santa myth and find their own way out of it through skeptical inquiry, we give them a priceless opportunity to see a mass cultural illusion first from the inside, then from the outside. A very casual line of post-Santa questioning can lead kids to recognize how completely we all can snow ourselves if the enticements are attractive enough. Such a lesson, viewed from the top of the hill after exiting a belief system under their own power, can gird kids against the best efforts of the evangelists – and far better than secondhand knowledge could ever hope to do.

My daughter is eight years old and has plied me with numerous questions about Santa, which I’ve handled much as Dale has handled his children’s questions. She hasn’t brought it up in a couple months (oddly enough), but I’m pretty sure she’s very close to the point where she’s going to determine that Santa is fictional. I’m also pretty sure that she’ll handle it just the way Dale’s son handled it.

We’ve had discussions about God, religion, and what other people believe. She knows I’m an atheist, but also knows that many people believe many different things and that she’s allowed to make up her own mind. She’s been to a Christian pre-school and has been to a church “music camp” for the past two years in the summer, so she’s been exposed to religion and Jesus and God. When my wife asked her if she believed in God, her response was that she was too young to know one way or the other. I thought that was an exceptionally reasonable answer for an 8-year-old.

Now we’ll see how the Santa thing plays out." 

Some of you might be interested in this Good News Bible for iphone, ipod...
http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/good-news-bible/id400449861?mt=8
 

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