Is it “okay” to Lie about Santa? (Yes!)
So I’m participating in the local Santa chatter this year. It’s usually along the lines of how does one negotiate the question of two religions in a household, what about the kids at school who say he doesn’t exist, what if we’re atheists, kind of thing. But this year the discussion has taken a slightly different, and to my mind, disturbing turn for the worse. It’s not so much that some parents aren’t playing along with Santa, it’s why they’re not playing along. They don’t want to “do” Santa because it’s “wrong to lie” to the children.
Now just to say from the outset, I LOVE Santa and Christmas with every humanist bone in my body. They will have to pry the holly from my cold dead hand before I give up on Christmas. But I do recognise that not everyone celebrates the holiday (although I personally think we all should – it’s about as religious as The Grinch and the return of the light after the solstice is a universal symbol of hope) and there’s no reason why, whatever a family celebrates, it shouldn’t be a magical occasion for the kids – Santa or no Santa. But to eschew Santa because it’s dishonest seems to me to miss the whole point.
Not only do I think it’s okay to lie to kids. I think it’s important to lie to them. Lies we tell to children are really more like over simplifications. Because, as Jack “St” Nicholas says in A Few Good Men, they “can’t handle the truth”. There are things they need to know something but not everything about. There are things they don’t need to know about and shouldn’t know about until they are adults. And Santa? Santa is in a class of his own.
To ban Santa on the principle that we some how owe it to them not to participate in The Myth of Santa isn’t just an awfully worthy and rather kill joy thing to do, it undermines one of the last vestiges of the distinction between kids and adults. Santa Claus is a vast adult conspiracy carried out on behalf of the next generation. It’s a tacit agreement that for a few years we will give our children the gift of fancy. We’ll make keep faith with their belief in magic and collectively make it real. For me, this is one of the most genuinely miraculous things about Christmas and to see it eroded this way is a bad tiding indeed. Bah! Humbug!
With you on that one, Nancy. Now my kids are old enough really to ‘get’ Santa, Christmas etc, I find myself becoming actually upset by the implicit cultural campaign against Santa. Not only what you say – the way that (in Britain certainly) the whole thing has been caught up in the paedophile panics, so even the concept of ‘viisiting Santa in his grotto’ begins to sound dirty and suspicious. Needless to say, anything involving blokes voluteering as Santa, and other adults (usually mums!) helping him becomes a focus for a crazed CRB-checking frenzy, which spoils the whole thing for me – god only knows what the kids make of it!
I also totally agree with you Nancy. (Me and the kids are watching all the Christmas movies on Movies 24 we are so imbued with the Christmas spirit).
The horrible thing about this is the erosion of our old friend adult authority; there seems to be no understanding of the magic of childhood any more; and the difference in the way as an adult you see things and the way a child sees things.
It is as if we want to deny children the innocence of childhood in the guise of protecting children-Jennie’s comment is pertinent here. Adults and children are not the same- letting the childrens’ imagination and innocent belief blossom is not a lie. It is only if you see your child as an equal to you would you look at it like this-which just seems a strange way to look at the world.
My mum never lied to me about anything, and especially not Santa. It didn’t do me any harm, but as soon as my own son was old enough to talk I lied to him about all sorts of things. When he asked why it rained, I made up stories about a giant who lived in the clouds who had a big hosepipe–it was a lot easier than trying to explain elementary physics to a 4-year-old. Needless to say, he never believed a word of it, but he loved it. That’s why he always asked me questions, and seldom asked his mum, who usually tried to answer questions seriously.
For heaven’s sake, parents ought to lighten up. So long as you love your kids and enjoy being with them, it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference what you do. Tho it is a lot easier if you make up your mind at the beginning that you are the boss.