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Teaching
Your Children the Truth About Santa Claus
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by Steve
Benson
 Introduction:
Praise Be to Santa!
It’s that time of year, when millions celebrate the “miracle”
of Christmas.
‘Tis the season, as author Tom Flynn notes in his book, The
Trouble With Christmas, to focus on the object most worthy
of our collective worship:
John Lennon once said that the Beatles were bigger than
Jesus Christ. He was wrong. That honor belongs to Santa Claus.
An estimated 85 percent of American four-year-olds believe
in Santa. Only 82 percent of adults in a recent poll told
Gallup that they were Christians. Among their respective target
audiences, Santa outpulls Jesus by a nose. (Tom Flynn,
The Trouble With Christmas (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus
Books, 1993, p. 128)
St. Nick and Salvation: “Is Santa Claus a Mormon?”
One Christmas season, when our oldest daughter was around
eight and still a “believer” in the myth of the Jolly Old
Elf, she innocently asked me, “Is Santa Claus a Mormon?”
Uneasily, I tried avoiding answering her question, but it
was clear that our daughter was viewing Santa Claus as a member
of God’s true church. Even for someone like myself who back
then was still mired in the Mormon faith, I hoped to encourage
a wider, more ecumenical world view when it came to judging
the world's little boys and girls.
Traditions of Mormon Hearth and Ho-Ho-Home
Like many of you, growing up, our family enjoyed favorite
Christmas traditions, especially ones geared toward the children.
By far, the most anticipated event was the arrival of Santa
Claus at the Benson house on Christmas Eve. Milk and cookies
were set out for St. Nick, along with carrots for the reindeer.
(The next morning, the children would find the food all gone
with a thank-you note left behind by a contented Santa).
The highlight of Christmas Eve was when the children gathered
around the family piano, as Mom played and Dad led us in an
enthusiastic rendition of “Jingle Bells.” It was our signal
for Santa to make his presence known in the neighborhood..
As the children reached the chorus, suddenly Santa’s sleigh
bells would be heard ringing around the perimeter of the house,
accompanied by a deep, “Ho! Ho! Ho!” The children would scream
and rush off to bed, where they would dive under the covers
and squeeze their eyes tightly shut, knowing that Santa would
not come by the home of good little boys and girls until they
were all sound asleep.
But getting to slumberland often proved difficult for the
children. The conniving grown-ups made it all the more challenging
for them with more delightful deceptions. Out in the dark
backyard, a flashlight covered in a red sock could be seen
bounding across the lawn. “Look!” the adults would cry, pointing
out to the children, “It’s Rudolph’s nose!”
These traditions were passed from generation to generation
in our household. As the Benson children grew older and came
to know the real “truth” about Santa, they, too, were brought
into the secret fraternity and would participate in the elaborate
ruse geared for their younger siblings who still believed.
Those “in the know” would ring the bells outside the house
and then sneak back inside to help shepherd the anxious little
ones off to bed.
As part of the antics myself, I would dress up in a Santa
suit and climb up on our roof, where my younger siblings could
hear me clomping around and shouting, “On Dasher! On Dancer!
On Prancer and Vixen!” One year, I nearly fell off.
Another year, the holiday hoaxing came close to being embarrassingly
exposed. At the time, our family was living in the mission
home in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where my dad was serving as president.
The home had a large garage connected to the main living quarters
by an outdoor walkway. Over the garage was a small apartment
for the mission home staff.
On Christmas Eve, I was decked out in my Santa suit, holding
a large garbage bag over my shoulder filled with pillows and
standing on the walkway, giving my best belly laugh performance.
Peering out of the window across the way was my wide-eyed
little brother, Mike. As I strutted around, bellowing and
waving, the door of the mission home staff’s apartment opened
behind me. The staff hadn’t been informed beforehand about
the planned Santa act. Before I could say, “Dash away all!”
one of the missionaries grabbed me, yelled, “Get in here,
you honker!,” then jerked me inside. I struggled to break
free, frantically telling them they were ruining the whole
thing.
Mike later asked why the missionaries pulled Santa inside
and slammed the door. I told him Santa wanted to meet with
them.
Miracle of miracles, Mike still faithfully believed.
Our hokey, hallowed Santa tradition continued, as Mary Ann
and I raised our own children.
After the Christmas caroling around the piano, the bell-ringing
and the scampering off to bed, I would wait until the wee
hours of Christmas morning, then don the red suit, strap on
the beard, adjust the cap and visit the bedrooms of each our
slumbering children. There, I would pat them on the head,
whisper their names until they woke up, give them a candy
cane and ask them what they wanted for Christmas. All the
while, Mary Ann would be taking photographs of the grumpy,
bleary-eyed children who, at that point in the middle of the
night, wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep.
Personal Childhood Trauma: The Santa Myth Unmasked and
Unbearded
As fun as it was for me as a Santa-believing child anticipating
the arrival of the jolly old gift giver, finding out that
St. Nick was nothing but a myth (a polite term for bald-faced
lie) was a seriously disappointing—and sobering—experience.
Perhaps it raises a more important question: How beneficial
is it to children to push the Santa Claus fable on them in
the first place?
For years, I was one of Santa’s true believers. I “knew” he
was real, lived at the North Pole, had many elves who made
toys in his workshop, kept track of all the good and bad boys
and girls, and flew through the air circumventing the globe
on Christmas Eve, pulled by magic reindeer, to deliver toys
or coal to all the deserving recipients.
I knew this was true because my parents told me it was.
And parents don’t lie.
Trouble was, I had a next-door neighbor friend named Clark,
who claimed to know otherwise.
One day he informed me that Santa Claus was a fake. With vivid
memories of my family’s Christmas Eve antics dancing through
my head, I absolutely refused to believe him.
“Feel his beard when you sit on his lap,” Clark advised me.
“It’s fake.”
So, when we visited Santa that year at the department store,
I waited anxiously in line for my turn, dreading what I might
discover. Sitting on Santa’s knee, I was hardly listening
to him as he asked me what I wanted for Christmas, concentrating
instead on gingerly twisting a bit of his beard between my
fingers. But having never felt a beard before, I couldn’t
tell whether or not it was real and returned home, troubled
and unsure.
From there, the cold icicles of doubt began to creep into
my mind: Was Santa really real? I wanted so much to believe,
but my eyes were, well, beginning to be opened.
One Christmas morning in Salt Lake City, as we were unwrapping
our presents around the tree, I noticed something rather perplexing
about the big box in which my much-anticipated dinosaur set
had come.
It sported a retail price tag from Skaggs department store.
I asked my dad why this was so.
“Aren’t the toys made in Santa’s workshop?”
He replied, “They are, but then Santa’s elves take them to
the stores.”
My eyes were beginning to open even wider.
The final, devastating moment of truth came during my eighth
year. By believer’s standards, I was old. Most of my friends
no longer bought the Santa story, but I had struggled desperately
to hold on, wanting to believe that all I had heard and seen
through my life really was true.
One day, I was walking through the kitchen and spotted a small
paperback book on the kitchen table. It had a picture of a
boy and girl on the cover, running and smiling. Authored by
Frances L. Ilg and Louse Bates Ames, it was entitled The
Gesell Institute’s Child Behavior: A realistic guide to child
behavior in the vital formative years from birth to ten
(New York, New York: Dell Publishing Company, Inc., 1955).
I have saved that fragile and tattered book as part of my
childhood collection of artifacts chronicling my journey through
this veil of tears. What its now-yellowed pages revealed to
me that fateful day was to prove to be of some importance
in the formation of my skeptical attitude toward authoritative
claims made by others.
As a child, I liked to read, so I went to my room with the
book and opened it to the table of contents. There, under
Chapter 17, in capital letters, were the words: “WHAT TO TELL
ABOUT SANTA CLAUS, DEITY, DEATH, ADOPTION, DIVORCE,” p. 323.
Nervously, I opened to page 323 and under the sub-heading
“Santa Claus,” scanned the words I had feared:
”There really isn’t a Santa Claus, is there, Mummy?” Six-year-old
Peter regarded his mother searchingly.
Mother hesitated for a moment. She had known that this day
would come--but still--questions about Santa, like questions
about sex, often pop up when we’re not quite prepared for
them. She decided to tell the truth.
“No, Peter, there really isn’t any Santa Claus.”
I closed the book, as a twinge of anxiety and sense of betrayal
hit my stomach.
Now, I knew I had to ask the same question.
So, I returned to the kitchen, where my own mother was preparing
a meal.
“Mommy,” I asked, “Is there a Santa Claus?”
“Yes,” she replied.
But recalling what I had just read on page 323 and unable
to suppress my own doubts any longer, I persisted: “I mean
the big fat man with the beard.”
My mom hesitated, then, without looking directly at me, said,
“No. Daddy is Santa Claus.”
With emotions of disappointment mingled with a triumphal sense
of “ah-ha!,” I replied:
“I know. I read it in a book.”
That day, at the ripe old age of eight, I learned a vital
lesson:
You can’t trust adults to tell you the truth.
As I look back on that experience, I realize that losing faith
in both “the big fat man with the beard” and in adults who
vouched for his existence played a pivotal role in the development
in my own mind of a certain degree of skepticism and distrust
of authority figures--ranging from Mormon prophets, to parents,
to God himself.
In Sacred Silliness: St. Nick’s Bag of Technicolor Tricks
Of course, reason, knowledge, observation and experience inform
us that Santa isn’t--and can’t be--real.
Even when the truth of Santa’s non-existence was confirmed
to me as a child, I thought to myself, how could it be otherwise?
After all, looking at the facts, anyone could see that Santa’s
an imposter.
Take, for example, the staggering task of gift-delivering
facing St. Nick each Christmas Eve.
According to Spy magazine:
--Excluding non-Christians and bad children, Santa must
visit 91.8 million homes within the 31 hours of Christmas
Eve darkness afforded by the Earth’s rotation.
--He must travel at least 72,522,000 miles, not counting ocean
crossings.
--Given his 31-hour deadline, he must maintain a speed of
650 miles a second.
--Assuming 2 pounds of presents a child, his sleigh must carry
a load of 321,300 tons, plus a hefty Santa.
--The massive sleigh requires 213,200 reindeer to pull it,
increasing the total Santa payload to 353,430 tons.
--The 353,430 tons of reindeer and presents traveling at 650
miles a second would create massive heat and air resistance,
with the two lead reindeer absorbing 14.3 quintillion joules
of energy a second each, causing them to burst into spectacular,
multi-colored flames, almost instantaneously!”
(“Magazine reveals stirring statistics on Santa’s trip,” The
[Tacoma, WA] Morning News Tribune, 22 December 1990, p.
A8; and “Seen, Heard, Said,” The Seattle Times, 25
December 1990, p. F2)
The Crime of Being a Santa Skeptic in a Santa-Sanctified
Society
Raising questions about Santa in a culture which hangs on
desperately to the joys of myth and superstition can be highly
unpopular. As Gamaliel Bradford lamented:
“The fairies are gone . . . the witches are gone . . . the
ghosts are gone. Santa Claus alone still lingers with us.
For heaven’s sake, let us keep him as long as we can.” (Flynn,
pp. 148-49)
In other words, don’t rock the boat. It feels good to believe.
And those who challenge the myth do so at their own peril.
The pressure from society to believe and deceive was well
described by psychiatrist Renzo Sereno, who noted sadly that
“[a]ny adult who dares tell a child the objective truth on
the matter” of St. Nick “is considered worse than blasphemous.”
(Flynn, p. 129)
A similar view was held by playwright and novelist W. J. Locker,
who warned:
“He who would destroy a child’s faith in Father Christmas,
and thus annihilate the exquisite poetry of childhood, should
be kept chained up beyond the reach of his fellow man.” (ibid.)
Flynn recounts the particularly harrowing reaction of society
when a national news network exploded the Santa myth:
During World War II, labor leader John L. Lewis called
a coal miners’ strike just before Christmas. NBC opened its
radio newscast with the words, "John L. Lewis just shot Santa
Claus." In the next hour thirty thousand calls inundated the
network’s switchboards. A Texas boy despaired and downed a
bottle of castor oil. So frightening was the reaction that
NBC hurriedly staged an “interview with Santa Claus” to reassure
Americans that the jolly old elf was still alive. The actor
portraying Santa Claus reported that “John L. Lewis just missed
me . . . ” (Flynn, p. 136)
In our Santa-centric society, speaking the truth about the
myth of St. Nick is often done at one’s own peril. As many
of you may have also discovered, finding out that truth—not
to mention speaking it—can be difficult, especially when the
forces of society are plotting to keep it covered with a thick
North Pole snow job.
Profiles in Christmas Courage: Tales from the Files of
Outspoken Santa Debunkers
Over the years, I have collected news stories dealing with
the Santa myth. This hobby is, no doubt, grounded in my own
sense of personal betrayal concerning the fable of St. Nick.
It has been heartening to me, however, to see that despite
objections by society at large against those who would topple
Santa from his magical pedestal, truth-tellers have refused
to remain silent.
The Priest Who Dared Declare Santa Dead
Those of have burst the Santa bubble have incurred the wrath
of even God’s servants.
In an article headlined, “Christmyth: Priest says parents
lie, Santa dead,” a man of the cloth was tagged and gagged
by his own church:
A priest who told youngsters that Santa Claus is dead and
that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer doesn’t exist was acting
on his "zeal to emphasize the spiritual dimension" of Christmas,
church officials said Tuesday.
The Diocese of Metuchen issued a statement to clarify comments
by the Rev. Romano Ferraro at the St. John Vianney Roman Catholic
Church in Colonia [New Jersey] on Saturday.
Ferraro also had said that parents who tell their children
Santa exists are liars.
"He tried to kill Santa," said Joanne Apolonia, a mother who
attended the weekend Mass at the Church with her "Confraternity
of Christian Doctrine" class. "That’s how the kids took it."
The sermon started "very nicely," with Ferraro explaining
St. Nicholas’ history and telling the children that the saint
distributed presents to the poor, a forerunner of gift-giving,
said Apolonia, who attended with her daughter.
But Ferraro than said that just as Saint Nicholas is dead,
so is Santa Claus, she said. He also said there is no North
Pole and no Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. . . .
During a discussion after Mass . . . a fifth-grader asked
whether the sermon meant parents were liars, Apolonia said.
Ferraro answered, "yes," Apolonia said, and told the kids,
who ranged from first-graders to sixth-graders, "If you pretend
to be sleeping (on Christmas Eve), you’ll catch your parents
putting presents under the tree." . . .
"The emphasis on the birth of Christ and his love is to be
paramount at Christmas," said Father Francis J. Sergel, pastor
at St. John’s. "It is unfortunate that Father Ferraro . .
. may have appeared to diminish the importance which many,
especially children, attach to some of the cultural and secular
aspects of the season.
“We regret any lack of sensitivity and any disappointment
or disillusionment on the part of the children.”
Sergel also apologized for any awkwardness or difficulty the
comments may have caused parents. . . .
Robert Madison, whose child also attended, said the parents
"are going nuts" over the priest’s comments. Ferraro has "taken
away something very special to little children," Madison said.
The Rev. Robert Wister, associate dean at the School of Theology
at Seton Hall University said, "The priest’s main purpose
was to focus the people on the centrality of Christ and draw
them away from the commercialism of the holiday.
"I’ve given sermons with that theme, but I never killed Santa."
(Associated Press, dateline: Woodbridge, New Jersey, reprinted
in The Arizona Republic, 10 December 1986, p. D2)
The Little Girl Whose Anti-Santa Stance Caused a Class
to Cry
Others, including even little children, have paid the price
for telling the truth about Santa--including being taken out
of school.
In a news story entitled, “Pupil kills cherished Santa belief,
classmates sob,” the kindergarten teacher of student Cherish
Stutts ordered her “not to say such things” when the teacher
overheard Cherish tell “other students that Santa Claus wasn’t
real.”
As a result of the teacher’s action, Cherish’s mother decided
the girl was:
going to stay home from school for the rest of the year
to defend her right to [not believe in jolly old St. Nicholas]
. . .
“I’m going to home-school her,” the mother said. “The children
were discovering that not everybody thinks alike. That is
a fact of life.” . . .
Cherish’s teacher violated the girl’s rights when the teacher
took the pupil aside . . . and asked her to keep her skepticism
about Santa Claus to herself, Debra Stutts said.
But Principal Gradon Axtell said the teacher talked to the
girl only after several crying classmates told her about Cherish’s
opinions.
Axtell said he stands by the teacher’s actions.
“Here (pupils) are all excited about S. Nicholas, and here
is a little girl coming along and saying there is not a Santa
Claus,” Axtell said.
In a related story, Cherish’s mother "said her daughter never
has believed in Santa Claus because she was told the true
story of how Santa came to be."
(Associated Press, dateline: Green Bay, Wisconsin, reprinted
in The Arizona Republic, 9 December 1989; and “Pupil
fights for right not to believe in Santa,” reprinted in The
Phoenix Gazette, 9 December 1989, p. B6 )
The Case of the Santa-Sacking Gym Teacher
David Henry--a P.E. teacher at Fairwood Elementary School
in Kent, Washington--landed in hot water when parents of five-
and six-year-old students said it wasn’t:
his business . . . .[to force their children] to put away
their visions of sugar plums and view the world with Scroogelike
realism. . . .
Henry . . . touched of an unseasonable controversy . . . by
attempting to destroy one of the most cherished myths in Christendom.
. . . [F]or reasons he will not disclose, Henry sat down children
in gym classes from kindergarten to third grade . . . and
told the students that Virginia had been deceived: There is
no Santa Claus.
“He told them mommy and daddy were Santa Claus,” said Rob
Robson, whose daughter Amanda is a kindergartner at Fairwood.
“I was really upset. He’s a gym teacher and I think it’s way
out of his realm to be talking about Christmas and things
that really don’t pertain to what he teaches.” . . .
Henry’s action violated no rules, [Kent School District spokeswoman
Judy] Parker said.
“This is not considered an infraction against any district
policy," she said. “We do not have any policy on Santa.”
(“Truth hurts: Gym teacher gives lowdown on Santa,” dateline:
Kent, Washington, reprinted in The Phoenix Gazette,
1 January 1994, p. A2)
Fake Santa Tells the Kids That Santa Is a Fake
Then there was the case where children got it straight from
the ho-ho-hoer’s mouth.
Headlined, “Mall Santa loses clout with kids: Sorry Virginia
. . . gift says he’s fake,” a news story described how one
storefront Santa delivered a blow to his own myth, along with
his gift:
Santa Claus handed a book with a singularly blunt message
to the suburban Virginia tots who sat on his lap at Tysons
Corner Center last week: There really is no Santa.
After listening to what the youngsters wanted for Christmas,
letting them tug on his beard and posing for pictures, the
jolly old elf at the Vienna, Va., shopping mall gave each
child a stocking stuffer from his sack: a children’s book
called “A Pee Wee Christmas.”
The book’s disclosure that Santa doesn’t exist caused trouble.
. . . [A]fter a Vienna mother complained, the mall pulled
the books from Santa’s sack. . . .
After [Linda] Smyth brought it to their attention, red-faced
mall officials quickly reread the book, and by Saturday, Santa
was offering Christmas stickers and fingerprinting kits instead.
. . .
“What can I say?” Tysons General Manager Jim Foster asked
Sunday. “We screwed up.” . . .
“It’s just so absurd, the irony of it,” said . . . Smyth,
a nurse who took her 4-year-old son, Logan, to visit St. Nicholas
. . . . “Here’s Santa handing out the one thing saying he
doesn’t exist. . . . ”
(originally published in The Washington Post, reprinted
in The Arizona Republic, 26 November 1989, p. A3)
 The
Negative Effects of Perpetrating the Santa Myth
Just how psychologically and intellectually healthy is it
to foist upon children the lie that Santa is real?
In answer, author Tom Flynn offers ten compelling reasons
“Why Thoughtful People Should ‘Just Say No’ to Santa Claus.”
Reason #1: ”To teach and perpetrate the Santa Claus
myth, parents must lie to their children.”
Flynn contends that the Santa story “is not innocent ‘sharing
of fantasy,’ as defenders claim. It is a lie, and one in which
parents are always caught, eroding children’s trust at a critical
time.”
Flynn notes that children who discover that they have been
lied to by their parents about Santa may cause damage to them
in later years. Flynn quotes the observation of John Shlien,
who warns that the destruction of belief “leaves a cynical
disillusionment which occasionally shows up among the trauma
in case-histories of maladjusted adults.”
Flynn also cites the warning of Dr. Lee Salk, director of
pediatric psychology at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical
Center: “A child should be told from the beginning that Santa
is a make believe person or it might create an early credibility
gap between parent and child.”
The components of the Santa lie are sweeping and subversive.
Describing some of these deceptions as “uncomfortably reminiscent
of a childlike view of God,” Flynn offers a sampling of the
lies parents “must tell to initiate kids into the Santa tradition:”
--A benign force reigns over the world from a headquarters
at the North Pole.
--Santa sees--and records—everything that happens. On the
upside nothing is overlooked. On the downside, no child has
privacy.
--Every child receives his or her just desserts each year,
based on a global judgment whether the child has been "good"
or "bad."
--Santa physically visits every family with children in the
world in one night.
--Since Santa is the source of all the bounty of Christmas,
holiday cheer originates outside of the family and is unrelated
to the family’s emotional or economic needs. (Flynn, p.
129)
Flynn then asks tough questions about long-term consequences
of, in the name of Santa, deceiving vulnerable children:
What price are we paying for lying to children about Santa
Claus? It may be steeper than we think. Because the myth panders
to childhood credulity, some have implicated it in the rising
incidence of scientific illiteracy among the young. Because
it encourages children to build their world views on authority,
not on independent thinking, others have related it to the
abysmal judgment supposedly displayed by young adults. Can
parents honestly be surprised when children do not consult
them before experimenting with sex, drugs, crime, or destructive
relationships--so soon after their parents have made it clear
that children cannot trust them to provide accurate knowledge
of the world? A Christian parent put the issue clearly in
a letter to the editor:
“Certainly we can’t get away with lies for seven to ten years
and then expect children to “outgrow” Santa . . . then suddenly
expect them to believe us when we mention high intensity moral
issues.
“Simply being honest with our children, in my opinion, would
outweigh anything Santa ever brought.” (Flynn, pp. 129-30,
132, 148)
Reason #2: ”The Santa Claus myth exploits characteristic
weakness in young children’s thinking, perhaps obstructing
their passage to later stages of cognitive development”.
Flynn explains how lying about Santa exploits childhood tendencies
to accept simplistic religious claims:
Parents who lie about Santa Claus catch their children
at a vulnerable age. Youngsters have trouble distinguishing
fantasy from reality as it is. . . .
Recent research suggests that the Santa Claus myth attracts
the young because it exploits the same cognitive predispositions
that help children learn religion . . .
Young minds might embrace religious ideas of varying complexity
at characteristic ages. A . . . study by child psychologist
Fritz K. Oser . . . [showed that] . . . [a]t the ages when
belief in Santa peaks . . . children tend to hold a blend
of two naïve religious views. The simplest [Stage One] imagines
God as a distant, powerful ultimate being and a stern, unpredictable
judge. . . . At the next level [Stage Two], God is still imagined
as an external judge, but . . . [this latter] . . . deity
can be influenced by good behavior. Such ideas echo the religions
of sacrifice, familiar from ancient history and the pages
of the Old Testament. . . .
Like the stage One God, Santa Claus is external and powerful.
He observes from a distance and metes out justice (presents
or coal) based on what he sees.
Like the more advanced State Two God, Santa Claus can be bought.
Children learn that they can purchase Santa’s blessing and
guaranteed themselves a merry Christmas by “being good.”
Flynn also debunks the notion that belief in Santa Claus produces
good behavior in children:
According to the stereotype, the Santa myth . . . is said
to help children outgrow the selfishness of early childhood
and develop adult ideas about generosity and giving. Research
suggests otherwise. When educational psychologists David J.
Dixon and Harry L. Hom sought links between charitable acts
by children and their belief in Santa Claus, they came up
empty. So much for the idea that parents can justify lying
about Santa because it makes their children better people.
. . .
Like a true virus, the Santa Claus myth turns the wheels of
society toward purposes unrelated to human welfare. It exploits
the nascent religious sensibilities of children, if such there
be. It compels parents to tell, and later to defend, insupportable
lies. At the end, the Santa Claus myth benefits only itself.
(Flynn, pp. 132-34)
Reason #3: ”To buoy belief, adults stage elaborate deceptions,
laying traps for the child’s developing intellect”
Flynn describes how the Santa lie breeds distrust and cynicism
in children toward everybody:
Disillusioned eight-year-olds don’t just learn that their
parents lied to them, they learn that society invested tremendous
energies to drag out the lie a little longer. No one can be
trusted.
Deception about Santa begins at home. Kids begin to notice
how many Santas there are at the mall. They spot the present
from Santa that is wrapped with the same paper as gift from
Mom and Dad. They ask how Santa can visit every house in the
world in one night. It gets harder to confine the kids to
their room after lights--out on Christmas Eve--time parents
need to set the stage for the drama of Christmas morning.
As the lies become more elaborate, and correspondingly hard
to keep straight, some parents begin to feel “like a burned-out
secret agent ready to come in from the cold.” . . .
Moreover, the Santa lie, on the one hand, discourages the
development of critical thinking and, on the other, fosters
belief in the preposterous.
Notes Flynn:
As boys and girls detect successive contradictions in the
myth, always to get smokescreened by fast-talking adults,
they learn to distrust their own observations and their powers
of deduction. In place of independent discovery, they learn
to settle for the leaden substitute of data presented by authority
figures and learned by rote. . . . Too often children keep
faith in Santa until they have lost faith in inquiry. . .
.
After we spend our children’s formative years lying about
Santa Claus and sabotaging their early efforts to unravel
the myth for themselves, we stand before them revealed not
merely as liars, but as the architects of an elaborate deception.
Yet we are unashamed. Should we wonder when our children grow
up as quick to lie as we were, or when they stumble into adulthood
even easier to deceive than we? . . . Children can hardly
be blamed for growing up to prefer magical thinking, paranormal
beliefs, or exotic sectarian creeds to reality and critical
thinking, or for grasping at any glittering lie to "add a
tinsel splendour to the plain straight road of our life."
(Flynn, pp. 134, 137)
Reason #4: ”The myth encourages lazy parenting and promotes
unhealthy fear.”
It is unwise parents who hold Santa over the heads of their
children as a god-like promise of reward for good behavior
and as a divine threat of punishment for bad.
Flynn writes:
Children see Santa as an all-seeing judge who holds in
one hand the carrot of Christmas, in the other a stick shaped
like a lump of coal. The temptation for parents to abuse the
myth is strong. “Mothers get a lot of mileage out of Christmas,”
Erma Bombeck once observed. Parents do not imagine the damage
they may do when they use the Claus as a club.
This omnipresent Santa figure, like the myth of an all-seeing
God, reminds children that there is no place for them to hide:
The Santa myth teaches kids that they live in a world without
privacy. The idea of a watcher who overlooks not a single
forbidden actions or a single wayward thought--even one parents
miss--can hardly fail to terrify some children. . . .
In essence, Flynn argues, parents who use Santa to produce
compliant children are making “coalitions with God by:”
. . . extract[ing] obedience by threatening children with
divine punishment. The children believe that God sees what
they do, knows what they think, and punishes wrong actions.
Viewed like this, God is the equivalent of Santa Claus. .
. .
[I]f parents can harm their children by claiming that God
is their back-up, using Santa Claus that way is probably harmful,
too. (Flynn, pp. 137-38)
Reason #5: ”The number of characteristics that Santa
Claus shares with God and Jesus verges on the blasphemous.”
Children do, indeed, make definite connections in their minds
between Santa and God. As Flynn notes:
Research studies, personal anecdotes, and press reports
illustrate the links between Santa Claus, God, and Jesus in
the popular mind. One psychologist . . . [reported] that children’s
belief in Santa Claus “lays the groundwork for later belief
in God.” . . . Arnold Gesell, director of the Yale Clinic
of Child Development, revealed that three-year-olds he had
studied understood the concept of Santa Claus before they
knew the concept of God. John Shlien reported that four- and
five-year-olds would not eat candies shaped like Santa Claus,
a behavior thought to show reverence. Another writer complained
in the 1930s about overhearing his daughter praying to Santa
Claus.
Examples of the similarities between Jesus and St. Nick in
the following areas have been provided by Idaho secular humanist
Ralph Nielsen:
MIRACLES
Santa Claus: Flying reindeer
Jesus: Angels
Santa Claus: Covering the world in one night
Jesus: Bringing the Word to all nations
Santa: Bottomless bag of toys
Jesus: Loaves and fishes
PARALLEL ELEMENTS
Santa Claus: Elves
Jesus: Apostles
Santa Claus: Letters to Santa
Jesus: Prayers (especially pledges of good behavior in return
for favors)
Santa Claus: Milk and cookies
Jesus: Bread and wine
Santa Claus: Immortal
Jesus: Immortal
Santa Claus: All-seeing, all-knowing
Jesus: All-seeing, all-knowing
Santa Claus: Rewards and punishes behavior
Jesus: Rewards and punishes behavior
Santa Claus: Lives at white, pure North Pole
Jesus: Lives in white, pure heaven
OPPOSITES
Santa Claus: Fat
Jesus: Thin
Santa Claus: Jolly
Jesus: Serene
Santa Claus: Creature of winter
Jesus: Lived in deserts
Santa Claus: Brings toys, luxuries
Jesus: Brings health, spiritual necessities (Flynn, pp.
138-140)
Reason #6: ”The Santa myth harms children’s cognitive
and emotional development and damages family dynamics.”
It is part of what Flynn describes as the “emotionally twisted
subtexts” of Christmas celebration.
For starters, Flynn notes that Santa’s promise of reward or
vow of punishment is simply too vague for small children to
meaningfully comprehend:
If a merry Christmas depends on being a good boy or girl,
they will struggle to be good even if they are not sure what
“good” or “bad” means.
Flynn quotes Steven A. Gelb who, in his article, “Christmas
Programming in Schools; Unintended Consequences” (Childhood
Education October 1987), argues that:
Telling children to be “good” so that Santa will be pleased
and give them presents . . . is counterproductive—not only
because it encourages children to look outside themselves
for standards, but because the words “good” and “bad” convey
little information, especially to young children.
Citing Eric R. Wolf, Flynn further notes that the Santa myth
harms parent-child relationships by serving to enforce upon
children their parents’ “own distorted, nostalgic vision of
a ‘golden age of childhood.’” Noting the observations of psychiatrist
Renzo Sereno, Flynn writes that parents who do so are themselves
“seek[ing] meaning, comfort and reassurance in religion or
mystical ideas.”
Santa also plays the role of a convenient scapegoat for parents:
[According to sociologist Warren Hagstrom], [i]f a child
has fixed his or her heart on a gift the parent cannot afford,
or receives the wrong present because a Christmas list was
misunderstood, the parent can always resort to the callow
argument that “Santa knows best.” . . . [Santa Claus is also
useful] in allowing parents to give gifts without appearing
to demand anything in return. As social psychologist Barry
Schwartz noted, accepting a gift which one cannot reciprocate
is an admission of social inferiority that even children can
understand.
Finally, Flynn cites Sereno’s view that parents employ the
Santa Claus lie “as a buffer because they are unsure whether
they deserve their children’s love:”
”[Parents] need the reassurance of such deceitful acts
in order to secure from their children the feelings and the
conduct which should be their right and their duty to expect.
Instead of letting their love flow, the parents attempt to
strike a bargain . . . The child . . . begins to nourish doubts
about the love of his parents, and resents being obligated
to a mythical ludicrous stranger, rather than being tied by
love to those he loves most . . .[P]arental love—diffused
through a maze of pointless and never explained ceremonies—is
wholly lost.” (Flynn, pp. 141-42)
Reason #7: ”The Santa myth stunts moral development
because it encourages children to judge themselves globally,
as good or bad persons, rather than to judge positive or negative
behavior.”
Flynn points out the confusion generated by the Santa lie
in the minds of children as to their individual, personal
worth:
. . . [T]hey will strive to be “good” even if they do not
understand the distinction between being a “good child” and
being a child who usually does good things.
The distinction matters. Do we want to teach our children
to evaluate their behaviors, to see which can be improved?
Or do we want them to score themselves as persons?
Most child psychologists prefer the first strategy. When it
is time to judge actions, positive or negative evaluation
are applied to the acts, not to the child’s personhood. It
is healthy to explain to a child why he or she has done a
foolish thing but harmful to say that because of that behavior,
he or she is a foolish child.
The Santa Claus myth gets it backwards. Christmas morning
is the biggest report card of the year. Presents--or coal?
A year’s worth of behavior funnels into that stocking; either
you were a good child or you were a bad child.
(Flynn, p 142, original emphasis)
Reason #8: “The myth promotes selfish and acquisitive
attitudes among children.”
As if the commercialized orgy of the contemporary holiday
season is not bad enough, Flynn notes that the St. Nick lie
“prepares children to become docile members of consumer culture:”
In a study of children’s letters to Santa Claus, kids always
asked Santa for material items, not new skills, intangible
benefits for other family members, or good health. By contrast,
when the same children listed their desires in contexts not
associated with Santa Claus, fewer than half of their requests
concerned material objects. (original emphasis)
Citing “masterful” research in this area, Flynn says that
Santa becomes a key figure in seducing children into becoming
“materially indulgent” commercial feeders by :
[teaching them] that life is so full of free lunches, there
may not be enough noontimes to eat them all. In this way kids
are groomed to assume their roles as American consumers, grasping
for happiness with each new purchase. . . . [Thus,] . . .
virtue is not its own reward, but if we are good enough a
reward will eventually appear. (Flynn, pp. 143-44)
Reason #9: “Children may not enjoy the Santa Claus drama
as much as parental nostalgia suggests.”
Contrary to what parents may want to think, many children--particularly
the younger ones--view Santa Claus with a certain amount distress
and uneasiness. As an indicator of that, recall how many small
children recoil, protest and cry when placed on Santa’s lap
in the mall. (Flynn, p. 144)
Reason #10: ”Contemporary authorities who defend the
Santa myth on psychotherapeutic grounds fail to make a convincing
case."
Contrary to the assertion of self-proclaimed “friends of Santa”
who say that discouraging belief in the St. Nick myth throws
children into an unfriendly world, Flynn notes that no evidence
exists in the literature “that children denied the Santa Claus
myth grow up “to hate reality.”
Ultimately, Flynn says, the problem with the Santa myth is
that:
. . . Santa is viewed not as myth or metaphor, but as
fact. . . .
American culture treats the figure of Santa Claus too literally
for the myth to function as a true fable. It is time for mental
health and child development professionals to reopen their
minds and ask whether the Santa myth is good for children.
(Flynn, p. 146)
 Conclusion:
Chucking Santa in Favor of Checking Reality
As recovering ex-Mormons who have learned through our own
difficult and painful experiences not to depend on harmful
magical, superstitious, and “godly” beliefs spoken to us in
authoritarian tones by God's supposedly designated conveyors
of "truth," what should we consider teaching our children
about the Jolly Old Elf?
That can be a tough question--given that we live in a society
fixated on perpetuating fantasies for a variety of deep, psychological
reasons--but at a high cost to authenticity.
In an article entitled, “Is Santa Claus real? Question never
grows old for children,” Maureen Downey of Cox News Service
writes:
Santa Claus brings children toys and parents a quandary.
Do you pretend that St. Nick brought the tricycle, or come
clean on who fills the stockings?
Should you fall back on the old “Santa is the spirit of love”
speech?
Ethicist Judith Boss of the University of Rhode Island advocates
honesty, saying, “Children depend on their parents for a realistic
view of the world.” . . .
But even if a parent opts for candor, children may still insist
Santa is real, says Atlanta psychologist Cathy Blusiewicz.
“It is going to be hard to convince them, because a lot of
other people are pushing the idea--grandparents, nursery school
teachers and peers,” she says. (The Arizona Republic,
22 December 1991, p. G7)
Still, psychologists suggest that honesty is the best policy
with children, when it comes to debunking the Santa myth.
In an article entitled, “Kids weigh evidence, make own decision
on Santa’s existence,” Nancy Curry, a child-development specialist
at the University of Pittsburg, notes:
“Once they [children] start to question, you know they’re
getting ready to want to hear the real answer.” . . . .
Curry recommends to parents that “[w]hen the child starts
to ask the practical questions, then throw it back to them
and say, ‘Well, what do you think?’”
The article continues:
Curry said talking to children about whether Santa Claus
exists is a little like talking to them about sex.
“Usually, the children will ask questions and not need great,
long full explanations,” she said.
“Usually, it’s good for adults to listen to children and get
what their ideas are.”
The article further notes that according to:
[a] study by two New York psychologists of more than 500
children, . . . on average, children believe in Santa Claus
until they are about 7-and-a-half years old, often carefully
weighing the evidence before coming to a conclusion.
Most children believe in Santa Claus because books, advertising,
the entire culture tells them he is real, said Cynthia Scheibe
of New York’s Ithaca College, co-author of the study with
John Condry of Cornell University.
“The evidence clearly supports that Santa Claus is real, given
what (children) know, give the fact that most adults say Santa
Claus is real, that he brings you presents and you can see
him,” she said.
“For adults, it’s an issue that Santa couldn’t get to all
the houses in one night, but magic is a pretty good answer
for kids." . . .
Scheibe said it is best for an adult to confirm the truth
only if a child has strong doubts after wrestling with the
question of Santa Claus’ existence.
"If kids come to the conclusion on their own, they feel a
sense of accomplishment," she said.
“It’s sort of a rite of passage.”
Curry said it is fun to put out cookies and milk for Santa,
help kids mail wish lists to the North Pole, and clean out
the chimney on Christmas Eve, but she cautioned against using
Ol’ St. Nick as a means of discipline.
“The ‘you better watch out,’ that kind of stuff, that can
be kind of manipulative,” she said.” (Associated Press,
dateline: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, reprinted in The Arizona
Republic, 25 December 1987, p. D6)
Flynn offers five specific suggestions to help parents “steer
clear” of encouraging negative Santa myths that are damaging
to the emotional, psychological and intellectual well-being
of their children:
--"Tell your kids that the Santa Claus myth is not true.
--Make clear to children that it is parents and relatives,
not supernatural visitors, who put those presents under the
Christmas tree.
--Do not call Santa Claus a metaphor, an allegory, or
'the spirit of giving.' Just say that Santa Claus is a false
belief that other people sometimes teach their children.
Present it as you might a peculiar religious doctrine: If
other children believe in Santa, that is their right, and
their sincerity in so believing it oughtn’t to be impugned.
But none of that requires entertaining for a moment the idea
that belief in Santa Claus is either true or beneficial.
--Tell children why Santa Claus has no place
in your household.Instill elementary principles of
critical thinking: a realistic outlook, a respect for truth,
and an appreciation for cause and effect.
--Encourage (or at least permit) children to share their
Santa skepticism with friends, at school, and during recreational
activities. This is vital even if it leads to confrontations
with neighbors, relatives, or teachers who accuse your kids
of 'ruining other children’s Christmas.' Should this occur,
defend your children’s open iconoclasm. Challenge critics
who stoop to such negative stereotypes as ‘Scrooge’ and ‘Grinch.’
Most important, be sure children know that—and how—you supported
them in their stance.” (Flynn, p. 147, original emphasis)
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