etrehumain:

greenstate:

nprfreshair:

The Business Insider has a great — provocative, thought-provoking and flame-baity — piece up today about why indoctrinating your kids into this whole Santa myth thing is maybe a bad idea. It’s immoral! Selfish! Pointless!

I for one (not speaking for Fresh Air here, just yours truly) am inclined to agree. 

The argument goes something like this: lying to children is bad.

You would think that this would be uncontroversial, somewhere between “Don’t punch old ladies” and “World peace is a good idea”, but there we are.

I have two kids, ages 2 and 5. I advanced this argument — gingerly — early on, before they were old enough to know any better. I lost decisively and quickly.

Look, I’m no Scrooge. I love the holidays and (almost) all they entail. And. I understand there’s always some jerky kid at the playground, ruining it for everyone by crowing that “Santa isn’t real” to the little believers. That’s no good. But why infuse their heads with these lies in the first place, only to be let down in the long run? I mean, as parents, aren’t we just needlessly messing with them? 

You may now commence to calling me horrible names. 

— braiker

it will not surprise anyone to know that i was the little jewish kid telling all of the christian kids that santa wasn’t real. and when their mothers called my mother to tell her what a shitty kid i was, and how that made her a shitty mom for raising me to ruin other childrens’ dreams, my mother ever so calmly said, ‘well, maybe you shouldn’t lie to your fucking kid, and then my kid won’t have to tell your kid that you lied to them, hmm?’ 

truth!

I’m probably going to continue the whole gift giving thing, but is Santa really that essential in the equation? Santa may represent the spirit of giving, but telling your kids Santa really honest to god exists is just cruel.

The article is still just an op-ed, the things he brings up like “Maybe your kids will trust you less.” and “it doesn’t help them be imaginative.” are all just uncited claims. Also note that this guy Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry (who has a tumblr!) is “ a Paris-based entrepreneur and writer for Business Insider” and not any kind of a child rearing expert. If you agree with what he says that’s fine but it’s not like he really knows any better than you, just because he bolded all his points it doesn’t make them facts. I was raised with the Santa myth and I turned out fine! Is just as much anecdata as anything in there.

Now onto my thoughts on the subject itself, I feel that Santa was a huge part of the secular concepts of Christmas for me growing up. I was brought up without religion completely, so to me Santa was really the best explanation as to why we celebrated a secular Christmas at my house. “Magical fat man distributing free Nintendos, where do I sign up?” The holiday concept of celebrating the spirit of giving and generosity during a time that was originally celebrated by pagans to honor the winter solstice is not the easiest concept to grasp at 5. I still don’t feel that my parents were lying to me, anymore than they were to get me to stop making stupid faces.

I always loved and still love all the goofy Christmas movies and tv specials. I honestly don’t know (and admittedly can’t know) if I would have appreciated them at the time as much if I had a more cynical belief that Santa didn’t exist. I also felt pretty imaginative about the whole thing, I would expand the concept in my own head. I had to understand inside of myself how he was making and delivering millions/billions of brand-name toys and that required more creativity than anything my parents could have “fed” me.

When my parents did reveal it as a myth it did upset me. Though after a good cry I thought more critically about the whole thing. It was my parents the whole time, it wasn’t magic, it was just thoughtful gifts from my parents. It was a good story, it had a good run, I had tons of good memories and great gifts. 

I can see there being a wrong way to deal with Santa, maybe as an excuse to keep kids in check (I don’t remember ever being told not to do something because of Santa), or a reason to have not gotten a kid what they want. However I don’t see it as inherently abhorrent to give a kid a story that is a little bigger than reality. I plan to do the Santa myth with my children and I hope to do it right.

If you choose not to do the Santa thing that’s fine, I’m not never saying nor would I ever say that you have to. I’m just sharing my experience with the man-with-the-bag.

Whatever you do, don’t let Parisian entrepreneurs tell you what’s right for your kids.

-Joe