Santa fraud

I’ve been kind of surprised by the number of anti-Santa parents I’ve met of late. Or those who will only tell the tale pragmatically, as in, “Santa lived once and was generous and gave gifts to all the children, and now we do the same thing in that spirit.”

More than a few people I’ve spoken with were traumatized by the means that, as children, they were disillusioned of Santa Claus. Being teased out of the fantasy on the playground or school bus made them feel that their parents had lied to them, that they were duped by the world. (My husband is one of those people.)

“I can’t lie to my child, no way,” one mom told me recently.

Personally, I never fully stopped believing in Santa Claus. I can’t swear to him, either, but I met plenty of Santa haters (especially older kids who seemed to take joy in dispelling the story) that gleefully tried to humiliate my faith, and it left no bruises on me.

I think believing in the impossible, or the improbable, is especially good for a science-enamored kid like mine. It’s one thing for him to learn to suspend disbelief at the movie theater, another thing entirely to do that with his own life. I don’t know where the world’s scientific developments would be without the capacity to imagine, desire, fear or believe in things that seem just too crazy to be real.

Related Posts:

Say something, would you? (via Facebook or Wordpress):

comments

2 thoughts on “Santa fraud”

  1. Oh, I love this! You are so right. It breaks my heart when I hear people say that they don’t believe in Santa. Since when is make-believe such a bad thing? I suppose those same parents are reading Encyclopedia’s instead of Mother Goose. Oh no, they’re not…are they? I am no worse for the wear having once believed in Santa and the like. As a matter of fact, maybe it’s made my spirit just a little bit bigger.

  2. My friends and I used to debate this every holiday season. Then our kids got bigger and we had pretty much the same debates about god/religion! I was trying to think what we debate about now (with tweens and little kids) and there isn't anything — maybe because we all already did our debating. Probably in a couple of years we'll be debating about sex & drugs & curfews!!

Leave a Reply to Momo Fali Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *