No Virginia, there is no Santa Claus
It’s that time of year again, that joyful and heart-warming time when otherwise rational adults all lie to their children about a jolly fat guy in a red suit. Nobody seems to think twice about how strange this is, that we spend so much time and energy perpetrating a lie that must at some point subject children to disillusion and parents to distrust, but it certainly ranks among the weirder things we do as a culture.
When my eldest son was born, even before he was old enough to know what Christmas was, I found myself thinking about how to approach the Santa Claus issue with him. I didn’t want him to feel that I was spoiling a childhood experience for him, but I also didn’t want him to find that I had deliberately misled him. My decision was that I would leave the question alone until he asked me directly, and then I would tell him the truth.
The moment arrived when he was only four years old and not at all like I expected.
“Dad,” he said, “there is no Santa Claus. It’s just Moms and Dads.” It was not a question. He was educating me.
“That’s true,” I said.
“So why do Moms and Dads pretend?” he asked, and a conversation began that has had several instalments since.
Over the years we’ve talked about how Santa Claus is a symbol of giving and how we can believe in the giving that Santa Claus symbolizes without actually believing in a guy who drives a sled with flying reindeer. We’ve talked about how these kinds of symbols are important because they remind us, year after year, to be giving and loving, to value friends and family, to take time and remember the gifts that we ourselves have been given.
More recently, we’ve also talked about how these kinds of symbols can be used to manipulate us into buying things we don’t need and can’t afford, and about the ways our family can still celebrate giving without buying into all the stress and consumption that Christmas has become.
Other parents still ask me every year whether I’m denying my kids a part of their childhood by not encouraging them to believe in Santa Claus, but I think it’s a far more important part of childhood for kids to believe in the value of giving, not least because they will never have to discover that this belief is untrue.
