Stuffing Santa in the Clauset
A year ago, I commented in a post on the symbols of Christmas that I didn’t tell my kids to believe in Santa, but I wasn’t going to discourage that belief. My views have since changed. I find myself quite hostile towards the entire complex of social deception. Accordingly, I hereby declare my anti-santa-belief position.
Now to be a bit more moderate, since I have you listening. I don’t have a problem with movies that depict Santa as such. I don’t have problems with the decorations. Maybe he can be rehabilitated if we all start talking about the story about a guy who supposedly gave presents to show us to be generous and giving. But I do have a problem with telling kids he’s real. My official line with my little girl (4 just this week) is that Santa is as real as Mickey Mouse. She thinks Mickey’s great, but she knows he’s not going to pop up and be her best friend, and she likewise knows we bring the presents. Some of you will call me a scrooge, but there are several reasons I have switched from studied neutrality to anti-Santa.
First, I’m more and more bothered by the culture of deception around the Santa thing. All of the movies make it a character thing. If you don’t believe you are defective (think Miracle on 34th Street, the Santa Clause, etc.–and don’t even get me started on “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.” That guy should be ashamed of himself.). Then kids get older and find that they were really believing in something non-existent. It’s like a hazing ritual involving a mind-bogglingly large segment of the earth’s population. Yikes!
Second, I can’t just quietly tell my kids Santa isn’t real. The local pre-school has been dealing, according to our sources, with the scandal of a kid who mentioned that Santa isn’t real. My problem is that it is a problem for a kid to tell the truth. So if I decide not to lie to my kid about this, then they get pushed not to say anything about it by adults in positions of authority. Then there’s the people who contiually ask your child if Santa is coming or came to bring her presents. And then, if she says, “No. Mom and dad did,” she gets the whole once over by, again, grown adults, about not believing in Santa. So the kid has to decide–are my parents just wrong, or is there a really warped plot to decieve my friends. And if there is this deception thing going on, why would so many adults be trying to get kids to believe in a Jolly fat man that frankly scares me in his mall incarnations (She still won’t sit on Santa’s lap. I think this is reasonable, since he’s like no other adult on earth, and I think it takes the prospect of presents to get kids to warm up to Santa generally, so without that incentive, mom and dad being responsible for the presents, she just says no to the Jolly guy. Maybe later when she can go a step beyond and say, hey, what a fun game to pretend this big guy brings me presents, she might change on this.)
Finally, it’s just the wrong thing about Christmas to focus on. I find that there is so much to say about Christmas without the big guy. He’s fun, he’s Jolly, his presents-asociatedness gets kids absolutely giddy, but that’s got so little to do with Christmas. I hear so many people talking about how to keep Christmas Christ-centered (too many hyphenated words in this post). My personal idea on the matter is simply to make it a holiday about Christ. Why the lights and the trees and the festivals and, yes, even the presents, because Jesus was born, and his birth made possible the atonement, the most important thing in the world. My girl got to give a talk in primary last week about Jesus’ birth, and she learned the word savior. That’s what Christmas is about.
Well, I’m pretty much with you on this. We try to emphasize that Santa is pretend and it’s fun to pretend, While Jesus and Heavenly Father are real. However, My daughter is only three and we haven’t had to get to the stage where being ecumenical is necassary. After all, I don’t want my daughter telling Buddhists Ganesh isn’t “real” or Evangelicals that the Trinity isn’t “real”. So we are going to encourage her to also not venture forth combatively on the concept of whether Santa is real.
The challenge is, of course, that this is unknown territory for me, as both my parents and my wife’s parents were Santa promoters, though my brother let me off the hook at a pretty young age.
All that said, I am teaching my sunday school lesson this sunday on Santa Claus.
Comment by Matt W. — 12/20/2006 @ 10:36 am
I’m in the anti-Santa camp too. I don’t even have kids yet and already I’m feeling awkward. My best friend is pro-Santa. She and her daughter were staying with us overnight recently. My uncle-in-law came by early in the morning and left some presents on the doorstep and when A* and I found them later she was all excited. “Santa came and gave you presents!” she squealed. I could not and would not say “Yes, he did.” I don’t know why– I was raised with Santa myself and I have no memory of any trauma when I learned he wasn’t real– but the whole thing sticks in my craw. I hate it, I really do. But I tolerate other people’s decisions. I was able to avoid the whole thing by saying “No, it wasn’t Santa because it’s not Christmas yet.” It feels like lying by omission but… My friend keeps saying that her daughter will probably teach my kids about Santa. Fortunately, at the rate we’re going by the time my kids are born, let alone old enough, A* will have grown out of it.
Steve, how does your family deal with your daughter’s friends vis a vis Santa?
Comment by Proud Daughter of Eve — 12/20/2006 @ 1:12 pm
I’m right there with you Steve. Maybe we are lucky, or it is a result of the secularist mentality her in the NW, but believing Santa isn’t real isn’t particularly difficult here. We don’t have any Santa enthusiast friends, and I don’t think they talk about it at school.
BTW, I’m dying to see a picture of the kids, Steve…email me.
Comment by J. Stapley — 12/20/2006 @ 2:03 pm
Matt,
I agree that kids shouldn’t be combative. It’s just that they get hit with it, and they have to say their peace. The other factor is that there is still lively debate from a global perspective about whether Ganesh or the Trinity are real. To date, I have met exactly 0 informed adults that will actually claim, to other adults, that Santa is real. They have special places for those who do. There was even a Monk episode about it (my favorite show, by the way).
PDoE,
My daughter hasn’t personally had too many problems so far with friends, though she has been very confused when people ask her if Santa is coming to her house, if she’s been a good girl, etc. She handles it with a bit of confused silence and perhaps a bit of embarassment at not knowing how to negotiate this ritual. That’s the problem.
J,
I’ll try to get out the pictures tonight. They are so cute. Also, my wife, when she read this said that she hasn’t really ever seen a picture of Blaine.
And finally, where are the Santa defenders? Am I missing something here? Am I just missing the thing that would help me recognise the good in Santa? Or are there just fewer Santa defenders than I think there are? I’m about to literally stuff my Santas (we have two in the stock of decorations) in the closet. Will anyone talk me down?
Comment by Steve H — 12/20/2006 @ 6:46 pm
Steve:
To date, I have met exactly 0 informed adults that will actually claim, to other adults, that Santa is real. They have special places for those who do.
You Mean they go to Times and Seasons?
Comment by Matt W. — 12/20/2006 @ 9:23 pm
Matt,
Thanks for the tip off to the T&S post (Though the link itself is a bit off). I’m less in the Bloggernacle loop than I once was. I was amazed at the virulence of some of the comments, though I related to some of the sentiment. It did, however, confirm my suspicion that some folks have actually been punished for innocently saying there was no Santa. Comes accross to me as enforcing priestcrafts.
Comment by Steve H — 12/21/2006 @ 2:16 am
My parents never told us that Santa was real. We were always raised on the real St. Nicholas story, and then told that he was a symbol of the spirit of generosity and gift-giving. We were also told that some people take that symbol very, very seriously – to the point of believing he was real and alive today.
That way, we could navigate the storms of the believing. I really don’t think we missed anything by never believing in Santa. If anything, the symbol means more to us because we always understood that we had to take part in the spirit of giving, and not just leave it up to an old guy in a red suit.
Comment by UnicornMom — 12/21/2006 @ 6:29 am
Did I really write that Buddhists believe in Ganesh? I am such an idiot!
Comment by Matt W. — 12/21/2006 @ 9:43 am
Steve; Didn’t you ever have a childhood where the possibility of Santa coming into your own home with a pack of toys made Christmas magic — and allowed the aire of myth and story to flourish on its own because it so naive and innocent? I want that for my own kids (now all grown and well beyond the Santa days). One of the sweetest discussion I have had was with my 12 year daughter who came to me and: “Dad, all those years I thought it took someone magic and working all year to make Christmas special for me and now I knwo it was you. You are awsome … and is it OK if I still see Santa in you every Christmas Eve?” Priceless. For everything else, there is Mastercard.
Comment by Blake — 12/22/2006 @ 9:12 pm
UnicornMom,
A great way to handle this.
Blake,
I actually stuck to my guns when all around me said there wasn’t a Santa. I had been told by some people I trusted that there was a Santa. Soon after that I cuaght on that not only was this something that wasn’t real, but I was being patronized. Call me odd, but I remember feeling like, hey, I’m their entertainment.
The problem for me is that it doesn’t seem like a natural thing in any way, and it causes problems systemically when a culture tries in a broad way to perpetuate a false belief. It just feels disrespectful to me.
And it doesn’t keep my kid from having fun with the idea, actually. We went to see “The Christmas Gift of Aloha” in Honolulu. It’s about a North Pole elf (Merry) who crash lands in a menehune village (like a hawaiian elf). Lots of music. She now dances to it all the time (on CD). I asked her tonight if it’s fun to pretend that Santa is coming. She said, “yeah, and Merry and Mele [one of the menehune]come too.” She loves pretend, and it’s one more game.
I just want her to know it’s a game. I’m not telling her something untrue to perpetuate the game.
The big problem for me isn’t about belief in God. She can only get a real testimony like everyone else–through the spirit. But if the most reliable info on Santa comes to her on the street or from her friends, what info will she believe about drugs and sex one day? Maybe what mom and dad tell me is just another thing society pays lip service to but doesn’t really believe when it comes down to it.
Comment by Steve H — 12/23/2006 @ 1:30 am
Steve,
I’m not saying I am a Santa promoter, I’m just not an anti-Santaist.
We are also firm in our teaching of the gospel in our home. I am rightly proud of the testimonies that my 11 and 12 year olds proclaim through their words and actions.
Having said that, we told our daughter last year that the whole thing was a sham. She was 10 and I was sure that she already knew. I must admit that I hid in my room when my wife told her in conversational tones, “You know, Santa isn’t real”. I couldn’t hide from the reaction. My wife told me that her eyes filled with tears and she went silently sobbing into her room.
Now I must say that my daughter, personal bias aside, is one of the most bright and caring young women around. She gets straight A’s and is not what I would call gullible.
What was sad for her and me was the loss of innocence and magic that Santa and some of the other “lies” bring to our lives. While yes, we were deceiving her, the magic of a young child’s imagination and pure belief brought some of that innocence back into my cynical life.
This year, our house is just a little bit less magic and festive than it was last year. I, for one, miss that and I yearn for that innocence lost.
Comment by Craig S. — 12/23/2006 @ 3:10 pm
Craig,
I don’t get how Santa “brings” innocence to our lives. Certainly we can use Santa as a way of displaying the trust of children, but I’m not sure that display really does anything for them, though it may bring us some nostalgic pleasure for the days before we found out that we can’t take things at face value. It seems to me that the “innocence” would have been there with or without Santa, and it was the revelation that got rid of the “innocence.”
P.S.–I’m not sure anyone knows what we mean by innocence when we talk about children. The word means lack of guit or harmlessness. I think we tend to attach anything we find good about childhood to this word, since the romantics started connecting it with childhood at about the turn of the 19th century. But the word itself doesn’t mean that much in this context, unless innocent, here, means trusting, and I see no reason to diplay that trust by artificial means.
Comment by Steve H — 12/23/2006 @ 6:48 pm
Santa is a hard one for me. I was raised to believe in him and it wasn’t a big deal when I found out he wasn’t real. So for my oldest daughter (8) I have always pushed the Santa story and the rest of my family and her family do as well. However this year I felt odd about it. She is definitely old enough to realize what and who he is. So this year I took her shopping for the stocking stuffers for her little sister. She knows the mall Santa isn’t real and her great uncle plays Santa at another place we go. I have been trying to explain that Santa is the spirit of generousity in gift giving that came from a man who lived a long time ago. However I didn’t want to completely squash her. So I tried doing it slowly. It didn’t work though until Christmas morning as on Christmas Eve night she asked about the cookies and such. In the morning we had a bit of a talk about it all. I feel like a wretched mom right now, but maybe it will be easier with my 2 year old.
Comment by Nicole — 12/26/2006 @ 12:52 pm
I was reading last night in a book about Christmas memories by Christian women (non-Mormon, not that we’re not Christian, I’m saying Evangelicals, think Pat Robertson’s wife) and one of them said she just told her children Santa was a made up fun person and Christmas was for Jesus. They seem to have survived the trauma of it.
Comment by annegb — 12/31/2006 @ 6:27 pm
Late Comment but I just found this site. I love Santa. Everything about the season is magical so I have no problems believing in Santa, Elves, etc. and letting my children believe it too. Honestly I believe Christ loves to see my children believe in such a person as Santa and He can see how we focus on His birth as well.
Comment by Jared — 1/25/2007 @ 11:27 am
No, God does not like Santa idolizing that’s what it really is. Sorry the truth is sometimes not pleasent.
Comment by Yanina — 1/29/2007 @ 10:55 am
Is this the type of post seen on atheist sites discussing teaching children about God?
Comment by OzP — 1/17/2008 @ 10:58 pm