How Much Santa is Too Much?

Treat it as any other fictional character, talk and act as if they’re real up to a point. Children should be allowed to have an imagination, but they should also know that somethings are real and somethings are imaginary. Don’t lie to them or use it to coerce them, that’s what religion is for.

Santa is “just for entertainment” according to our 4 year old.

Well, I never technically lied to my daughter about Santa, and therefore she figured it out on her own.

She knew that the Santa that flies around the world with reindeer was just a story; but, she also knew that “Santa” was someone who knew whether she was good all year, read the letter of wishes she wrote, tried to get all or as many as possible of the presents, and ate the cookies and drank the milk she left.

Santa was me; all those things were true. She’s 12 now, and the jig has been up for a few years, but she still gets Santa presents and surprises in her stocking.

She doesn’t leave me cookies anymore, though. We don’t want a fat Santa. 🙂

I’ve often thought of Santa basically as training wheels for belief in God and haven’t wanted to encourage this kind of belief in my step son. But I tend to lean towards tradition and go along with the St. Nick for now.
I’m hoping that my answers to his questions (i.e. “Some people believe in Santa”) will draw a parallel to God someday too.

Hopefully he’ll make this connection on his own as I don’t want to ‘make’ him believe in anything, but just show him the logical road:

Some people do believe in Santa.
Some people do believe in God.
Santa turned out to be a myth.
God…is really no different than Santa.

One of my best friends, my daughter, and I were talking not long ago about the Santa issue. We were each relaying our memories of when we realized Santa was our parents, and he said “I remember that after I figured it out, I held on to it for a while, because it made me feel good.”

We all three kind of looked at each other in silence, and knew that we were all thinking the exact same thing.

Finally he said what we were thinking…

“Kind of like God, huh?”

I was never raised religious. But I was raised in “Believing in Santa Claus”. It was a lot of fun as I remember, and my Mom probably had more fun pretending than we did believing. There is one fundamental difference between Santa and Religion though. Once you are old enough you will question Santa and eventually stop believing it, and gain a whole new outlook on learning to question what people tell you. The instance I found out about Santa, I no longer believed in the Easter bunny or Tooth Fairy. It’s inevitable.

In Italy, extra presents may be left for Christmas morning by “Baby Jesus”, then there’s yet another round of presents on Jan 6th (the Epiphany) by a witchy old crone called La Befana, who flies around on a broomstick and gives coal to the kids who were bad. It always seemed to me that the kids took this as one last way to extort loot from their families, and didn’t seriously believe the presents ever came from anywhere else.

I don’t think it’s within a 5-year-old to weep bitterly.

When my daughter (age 5) cries, her pain is real of course, but she doesn’t have the depth of emotion or experience that her tears could be called bitter.

Yes, she thinks santa is real… but she’s testing the question. I think at this point Santa is both “real” and “not real” to her, like Peter Pan.

I never believed, don’t know why, when I was a kid I felt like I “had” to lie to my mother.
With my kids, this was the year I told them, mostly because the oldest one is 12 and I assumed kids in junior high would be mean to him if he told them he still believed. And I told the 10 years old and the 5 years old, because I knew if I told one they will share it immediately.
Anyway, now they know, and there is no difference in this holiday and others, except the arguing about “time freeze” when you travel at light’s speed 🙂
Every time they talk about magic, I tell them there is no such thing, they reply “right, but if it would how would it be?”…and that is ok with me, I love Sci-Fi and we begin imagining this fantasy world.

I don’t think we poison our children if we let them use their imagination. When I was younger I would see all sorts of things in the clouds in the sky.

In a way, I think a vivid imagination when younger makes you more rational when you’re older.

I don’t see the danger of letting kids use their imagination and believe in fantasy worlds. It only becomes irresponsible when the child reaches mental maturity and the parent keeps insisting that the fantasy worlds (and beings) are real. I would be more concerned that by keeping a child from believing in fantasy you would be limiting their creativity and imagination as an adult.

I have played the Santa game with both my kids to no ill effect. My 15 year old figured it out when she was about 8 but my 7 year old still believes. The 15 year old is leaning towards atheism but social pressure is keeping her from admitting it to her friends – belief or non belief in Santa has played no part in it. The one thing I don’t do is blatantly lie about Santa – it’s easy enough to obfuscate with a 7 year old that you don’t have to. At some point she will figure it out and I’ll use it as an opportunity to let her know that I feel the same way about Santa as I do about God.

I never told my son about Santa, he got plenty of information from others. I don’t put name tags on gifts so when he was little he would assume that some of them were from Santa.

Last Christmas we went to his grandparents and they played out the Santa thing for all it was worth. He figured the whole thing out after that. He is 7 and chose to not say anything to his grandparents so they will still get him Santa gifts (smart little bugger).

I am happy with the way I handled the issue because I never had to lie to him, and he still got the Santa experience.

We consider Christmas a secular holiday, and Santa is part and parcel of that. Though there certainly are parallels between the concept of Santa and the myths of Jesus as messiah, the critical point of departure between the two is that all kids wise up at some point and realize the truth about Santa. We all know that is not necessarily the case with religion.
Yes, incorporating the concept of Santa condones a belief in the supernatural, but the adverse affect of it is minimal, and it is relatively short-lived, and when it comes down to it, so what? Just as I don’t make it a habit of denouncing Barney, The Backyardigans, or Transformers for being products of fiction, I don’t see a real reason to eschew Santa. I mean, who wants to be that much of a Scrooge?

I don’t see a problem with the whole Santa thing as long as you don’t go out of your way to deceive them. Once they’re old enough to comprehend the difference between fantasy and reality come clean and tell them the truth, but stress that other kids still believe and they shouldn’t ruin it for others.

just to weigh in the the santa issue: my parents never tried to convince me to believe in santa. I knew who santa was, read books about santa, knew all the christmas stories. I just was never told that he was real. we even visted santa at the mall. i just thought of it as a fun story. i was cautioned not to mention that santa wasn’t real to any of my friends, “because some people believe in him.” i just thought he was a nice story. maybe it says something that that was also how i thought of jesus. odd that the same parents taught me to believe in one but not the other.

I never believed in Santa as a child. My parents never told me he was real or entertained the joke of Santa. (They considered Santa to be a joke about the real reason of christmas – Christ’s birth).

I never felt that I was missing out on anything. By the time christmas arrived, school was over so there was no children to get confused with. i knew my gifts were from my parents, which was oh so fun.

I remember figuring out Santa wasn’t real. But it took another seven or eight years to put the nail in god’s coffin.

And there is this from Dr Free-Ride’s sprog blog – the Dependent Claus . Its the fourth comment.

Really cute.

My 2year old loves the Santa stuff. Yes, I indulge her imagination and belief in the imaginary. Just like we “cook” dinner for mommy on the kitchen play set. Just like we went looking for Ariel (The Little Mermaid) while at the beach this summer…

Make believe is an important part of childhood development. If my two year old asked me if Santa was real, I’d tell her no. Likewise, if she asked if Ariel was “real,” I’d have to tell her it was just a story. She’s not old enough to formulate such questions yet, but I think honesty with your children regarding these matters is the best policy.

I plan on using a similar strategy when it comes to God / Jesus.

My daughter is now 21. When she was in 1st grade elementary school, her way of testing if Santa was “real” was to ask Santa for a limousine. When she didn’t receive a limo for Christmas, she figured that Santa was only capable of getting gifts her parents could buy (and we certainly couldn’t afford a limo).

So — she figured if Santa had the same limits her parents had with respect to gift-giving, it made more sense to her to assume Santa didn’t exist and her parents were doing the gift-giving.

A few years after this, I had read about the Jewish religious scholar Martin Buber and how he thought the divine existed not in concrete form but rather god existed in the relationships between people.

I mentioned this to my daughter and asked if we could view Santa Claus the same way — Santa isn’t “real” in the sense that a person is real. But Santa and the seasonal spirit of generosity that we associate with Santa at this time of year exists in our sharing and our relationships with others.

My daughter didn’t think too much of this idea but it may be useful to some parents who are grappling with Santa and raising their kids with a non-supernatural worldview.

I’ve always been a fan of myths. The fact that they aren’t true detracts very little if anything from their allure. Since unlike religion Santa is something that (almost) everyone outgrows believing in, I can’t see to much harm in it: while you believe it, it’s fun (unless you have crazy lump-of-coal style parents), when you stop believing it, it’s still a nice story. I wouldn’t armtwist kids into believing it, but why not make a game of it?

If you insist on treating children as fully rational adults, your view of reality will be even more skewed than if you insist on treating adults as rational.

Beijingrrl,

That’s really the lesson I want my kids to grow up with – that they should think for themselves and come up with their own beliefs regardless of what other people think, including me.

Excellent answer. I wish I’d thought of that.

Do you tell your children about Santa?
When my son was born I was not planning on having him believe in Santa. His mother on the other hand had her say though. To be fair my wife has a BS in Psychology (Behavioral Analysis) and clued me in to Piaget’s Developmental Theory. You can Google that for more details but basically the age when a kid believes in Santa or God or whatever is between 2-7 years old. It’s called the Pre-operational Stage. 7-11 is the Concrete Operational stage at which time logical thinking really starts (these are guidelines, not steadfast ages).

With no reinforcement at around 8 or so your kid will figure Santa out for him/herself. Also if your kid has a notion of a god, the same logic they use to not believe in Santa anymore will apply as well. This means you aren’t guilty of forcing your kid into atheism as they’ll do it naturally.

So we go all out and do the cookies, milk and carrots. We even set out a video camera to capture Santa doing it all but the camera mysteriously fizzles out right before you see his face (me). It adds to the magic and he’ll naturally grow out of it and become a more critical thinker in the process.

Lawsey, if I didn’t have “Santa knows when you’re being bad” to fall back on, I’d have sold my four-year-old to the Gypsies by now.

I don’t see anything wrong with childhood belief in mythical beings; I think it might actually encourage a child’s imagination. I remember being fascinated by stories of fairies and goblins and whatnot as a child. (And look at how influential the “magic” in Harry Potter is.)

I think the crucial difference is that when my son gets a little older and comes to the conclusion that Santa isn’t real, I won’t insist that he is. And I certainly won’t claim that there are any negative consequences for Santa Apostasy.

This marks the second year I’ve been at odds with my wife over the issue. She sees it as harmless fun, which is a point I can certainly understand. However, I just don’t feel right about lying to my kid, who I’d like to raise to be a fellow rational secularist. I don’t think we should avoid Santa at all costs–he’s going to notice the red man eventually. But it’s hard to discern what is enough and what’s too much.

Any help on this?

I plan on treating Santa like any other game of pretend-play. It will be clear that Santa isn’t real, but isn’t it fun to pretend that he is and to leave out cookies? Isn’t it even more fun to wake up in the morning and have some cookies laid out to eat while we open presents?

I see no harm in pretending that Santa exists, as long as the kids are in on the game as well. I absolutely hate the idea of lying to a child, convincing her that there’s this supernatural being who spies on her and judges her every action.

Grimalkin: I think you misunderstand my definition of “belief.” I didn’t mean it in the sense of, “This thing is absolutely the truth,” but more in the sense of, “This kind of thing might be possible.” If you completely reject the notion that it’s even possible, then there’s not really much for the imagination to feed on.

I don’t think there are fairies at the bottom of my garden, but when I was a child it was fun to think that there might be. That doesn’t make me any more supportive of adults who insist that fairies definitely exist.

When I was little, I loved helping wrap presents. So I pretty much knew that all the presents under the tree came from somewhere, and saw Santa in places like the shopping mall, and knew that my favorite characters on TV were played by real people out there.

So I asked my mom “Who’s Santa?” in the matter of fact manner I often had for my questions. I think she gave me the best answer in the world –

“Everyone who gives someone else a present is Santa Claus. We’re all Santa to someone, and everyone out there is Santa to us.”

I plan to tell this to my children and anyone else who asks me. I can’t come up with a better way to explain the myth behind something and keep it so wonderful!

Don’t worry about it. I’m 16 years old, and figured it out by my own logic years ago. I am also an atheist by choice, yet I have a Christian mom. I see no logic in the existance of Santa or God, so I believe them to be nothing more than myths. Not to mention Santa’s status as a pervert (“sees you when you’re sleeping”? “knows when you’re awake”?)

Just don’t spoil it for the little ones. Santa is fun.