like to devil’s advocate for the person currently mucking up my notes, i do think the whole thing of convincing kids santa is real is a little unnecessary, like i feel like kids could have just as much fun with it if you just tell them it’s a fun pretend game (kids love pretend) but at the end of the day i don’t think it’s a big deal or harmful or anything, maybe just a little superfluous.

Yeah, as I said in this post, children often enjoy games of pretend that are explicitly acknowledged as pretend, so I think the Christmas culture around Santa Claus would basically work fine if we were all honest with children and told them the truth: there’s no literal fat guy in a red suit who lives at the north pole named Santa Claus, the presents from “Santa” are actually from your parents, Santa Claus is a metaphor and part of some fun games.

I’d argue a little bit about the “[not] harmful” part of your post here, cause situations like this exist (they’re not typical, but they exist).

As I said in this post, I think promising and giving children presents “from Santa” conditional on them behaving well is one of those parenting techniques where the issue isn’t so much the presence or absence of this particular parenting technique but how it’s applied and what the goals are; it’s OK if it’s applied benevolently, it’s bad if it’s applied abusively.

the santa claus discourse that’s stretching across my dash (in the form of one very long argument two of my mutuals are having) is making me flames-on-the-side-of-my-face incandescently angry

but like, I know for most kids who celebrate Christmas Santa probably is just a Fun Pretend Game that gently teaches life lessons about consequences, as opposed to A Tool Of Manipulation

and that for most people the word ‘consequences’ does not bring to mind a decade of gaslighting

and that there really is no point getting into any of this, because a) Your Experiences Are Not Universal and b) people generally do not like remembering that there are a lot of deeply flawed parents out there and many commonly used parenting techniques can do a number on a kid when used poorly

but i have just enough of a migraine that i can’t let this one go without kvetching about it

This seemed worth sharing, I hope you don’t mind me reblogging it. My condolences on you having this experience (sorry if that sounds weird, I can’t think of a better way to say what I want to say).

For anyone worried about me, the OP here doesn’t reflect my experiences; the people who raised me were good parents, and I have good associations with Christmas. As I said, it just seemed a perspective worth reblogging to me.

honestly the whole santa mythos kinda slaps from a theological perspective

like the fact that it’s overtly a fictional mythos intended to teach moral lessons, getting around the problems inherent in religious literalism. the way it takes concepts from christianity and just does whatever the fuck it wants with them. saint nicholas, a real person who lived in turkey in the late 200’s to early 300′s AD, now lives on the north pole, with elves (possibly an elf himself?????) and rides in a flying sleigh pulled by magic reindeer, one of whom has their own sub-plot. unironically love it. do this to all the saints. joan of arc lives in the center of the earth and rides a sasquatch.

santa has no right to pass sentence on children and his watered down christian morality of its ok to deprive people of good things and punish them if they do bad things is insidious and a horrific lesson to give to children

i hate when i am punished or rewarded. no one has the right to punish or reward me

insidious and horrific lesson to teach children that if they do bad things, they may experience consequences. we should teach children that if they do bad things, they’ll be fine. this is both something which will adequately prepare them for interacting with other people, and also is a principle that, if realized, will create functional societies which are enjoyable to live in.

This but unironically

I pray to god this person never has children wtf

Nobody needs to be “taught” that their actions have consequences. Actions do that all on their own! That’s just how actions work, they don’t need any help from petty tyrants! It’s like teaching people dropped objects fall by grabbing them the moment someone lets them go and slamming them to the floor

And without fail people who talk about teaching others that their actions have consequences it is the flimsiest cover for exacting degrading and pointless tyranny over people they look down on as lesser

here’s the thing: a lot of the consequences of actions are in fact, socially constructed, and indeed socially constructed incentives for actions are a major part of what allows society to function. for example, if a kid is going around bullying other kids, it might be prudent to in some way discipline the kid so they stop bullying other kids. just standing back and saying “well no reason to interfere, their actions will have consequences all on their own” is an abdication of responsibility and is cruel to the children being bullied. it’s not “petty tyranny” to introduce social disincentives to discourage children from bullying each other and to educate children on what the nature of those incentives are.

absolutely fucking absurd for you to imply i shouldn’t have children because i don’t think the concept of santa claus is evil. go outside.

Crazy how consistently the idea that children should be treated like people gets people on this website to pull the “go outside” line

Anyway don’t lie to your kids and especially don’t lie to your kids to scare them into getting into line how the hell do people need to be told this it’s insane

actually, being told that your actions may be rewarded or punished, is an extremely normal part of being a people. 

you know the funny thing is i’m actually pretty sympathetic to the idea that it’s better to just overtly present the whole santa thing as a pretend game loosely tied to some vague moral concepts, but i’m not going to go around telling people who want to tell their kids santa is real that they shouldn’t have children, because i am mentally healthy and socially well-adjusted.

Absolutely bonkers that someone calling for a murderous insurrectionary workers’ Revolution will just be like “Oh yea well everyone is doing the whole punitive authoritarian justice thing so it’s actually highly normal and okay”

Anyway if I had a partner who would withhold gifts as rewards for being nice to others and punish me with coals for being naughty I would run for the fucking hills and yet you think this is somehow okay to enact against children wtf

I sympathize with where you’re coming from, I really do, but I think some amount of negative reinforcement is usually an inevitable and necessary part of parenting? Like, a human is basically a smart monkey, of course they’re going to occasionally have inappropriate impulses! When they’re a child these inappropriate impulses may be things like “I like this candy and I want to eat all of it!” when they have a sibling who also wants some and you can’t casually get more, or “that other kid is ugly and I want to bully them!” during recess at school. When they’re an adult these inappropriate impulses may be things like “I want to have sex with this person who isn’t sexually or romantically interested in me!” or “my neighbor’s homosexuality squicks me out and the discomfort their proximity makes me feel makes me angry and my anger makes me want to hurt them!” A human is going to have to be socialized into controlling their inappropriate impulses sooner or later, and I think that process is usually going to have to involve some negative reinforcement. It’d be really nice if it could be done entirely through positive reinforcement and philosophical arguments and so on, but I don’t think most people work that way, especially when they’re children?

And also, I really get that you shouldn’t be your child’s first bully, but people who aren’t socialized to control their inappropriate impulses inside the home will often get punished for not controlling them outside the home, often in much more brutal ways.

Like, trying to cultivate habits of good behavior and using conditional promises of gifts as incentives to that end doesn’t seem inherently bad to me? Especially as “Santa’s” gifts actually come from the parents, so in a way what’s being implicitly modelled is reciprocity; I think “if you’re nice to me I’ll give you something nice, but if you’re mean to me or make my life difficult I’ll spend that money on something I want instead” can be an appropriate moral lesson; a lot of human interaction more-or-less looks like that and that sort of conditional reciprocal altruism is a major part of what holds society together! Of course, children shouldn’t be made to feel they have to earn food, shelter, clothing, little pleasures that make them feel more than simply alive, etc., but I think occasionally reminding them “people will be nicer to you if you are nice to them, and your parents are people too” is OK. Admittedly, this reciprocity modelling would be clearer if you just cut out the Santa part and were honest about the gifts coming from the parents.

I think this is one of those cases where the issue isn’t so much the presence or absence of a parenting technique but how it’s applied and what the goal is. “If you’re nice to your sibling and to the other children at school Santa will be more generous at Christmas” is OK, “Your access to any minor luxury you might want is conditional on you submitting completely to my petty tyranny” is bad.

Jewish, Muslim, and other non-culturally-Christian kids shouldn’t have to lie about Santa.

It’s time for me to get more anti-Semitic hatemail! With a topic very near and dear to my heart: The way so many Non-culturally-Christian (NCC herein) families and tiny little children have to bend themselves in order to carry the lie Culturally Christian families want to maintain about Santa. 

If you are here to tell me “We tell our kids that Santa is a part of MAGIC, and he’s about the SPIRIT of Christmas, and so he IS real for some people, and then we teach about NICE LIES” please rest assured that I do not care. I also do not care for you to tell me how non-religious your Christmas is, if you have Santa, you’re still doing Christian culture. Just, stop. Please, I’m begging you. 

If you do Santa, please listen to me, because this is written for you, in a lot of ways. 

I feel so sad this time of year because all my Jewish groups are full of parents strategizing about how to keep children that are around THREE TO FIVE from “ruining Christmas magic” for others, and how much have we bought into assimilation that we believe this is our JOB? That our very small children with whom I would not expect to keep something a secret between dinner and dessert are meant to carry the burden of this cultural albatross for a culture that already overwhelms their every day? 

My fellow NCC people: If you really want to participate in the Santa Lie, I’m not going to stop you. This is your choice, choose your life, choose your choices. A great many people I respect give their kids some song and dance about it being a “fun pretend game” that Christians play, and while I might quibble that a fun pretend game means both sides know it’s pretend, that’s your choice. 

But I also want you to ask yourselves: Why should we feel like we have to? Because we clearly do! If we didn’t feel like we had to, you wouldn’t be putting so much emotional energy into it, I wouldn’t be writing this knowing I was gonna get some more fun comments about being a kike, and our kids wouldn’t have to worry about telling the goddamn truth. I cannot be the only NCC person who feels this way, and I can’t even be the first one to SHARE these feelings, but I’m telling you, so you know: You do not need to pick this up for your children. 

Christmas runs, in the US, from late October to January. It’s the fucking fourth quarter. Those of you who are culturally Christian cannot possibly understand how aggravating and tiring this entire thing becomes, especially when you have kids and you have to deal with the fact that they are SATURATED with this feeling of otherness. When you get older, it’s easy to deal with, but when you’re tiny? It’s hard enough when supposedly non-religious schools are doing doves and trees and santa crafts, singing “holiday songs” (Christmas carols) and the like. I can’t pull my kids out of school for 6 weeks. 

And then we add them being villainized for telling the truth about Santa. Even though I tell my child the rest of the year that the truth is important. You cannot want diversity among your friends, and for your child to experience diverse friendships, and then hold that you deserve to live in a bubble every final quarter where your kids runs no risk of finding people who believe differently. Culturally Christian parents should not be holding NCC kids accountable for breaking the Santa myth. They’re literal children. It is not their job to construct this for you. 

But Doc, how would you feel if someone told your kids the Tooth Fairy isn’t real, or God? 1) We don’t do the tooth fairy, because I feel not great ways about that! 2) Jewlet will know plenty of people who don’t believe in God. 3) It is fucking HILARIOUS to me that you think Jewlet will not meet with a majority of people who don’t support and share our family’s beliefs. 

I’m asking all culturally Christian parents I know to do better. Please don’t tell me how worried you are that Jewlet will “spoil Christmas” for your kids. Please reconsider making children responsible for something you’ve chosen to set up, and don’t villainize kids who come from NCC families for telling the truth about what they believe. 

NCC families: You don’t have to keep doing this. I know it really feels like you do, especially if you have an interfaith family with cousins who do Santa. But you don’t. 

this whole thing is so fucking wild to me

culturally christian here

ukrainian

no-one I have ever met ever believed, or tried to make me believe, that Grandpa Frost (Santa Claus post-soviet de-chistianized version) is real

…admittedly this might be partially post-soviet legacy but

well, it is what it is, and I’ve grown up knowing that these were fICTIONAL CHARACTERS

there was actually this nice space of ‘i mean they are fictional but also *eyebrow wiggle* maybe not’ abt house spirits and the like, cute cozy superstitions

but actually maintaining lies like that? i dont think thats a thing at all and just

hi the magic of the holiday is 100% preserved without lies

children like games of pretend and are 100% down with consciously pretending they are being given presents by an old man in a winter coat who only comes around once a year

they also like when once a year in school/kindergarten one of them dresses up as that man and theres a whole play about it for New Year

its magical! its wonderful! its cool!

(it also completely doesnt need christianity i swear its 90% the same custom minus Jesus and THERE WAS SO LITTLE JESUS TO TAKE OUT ACTUALLY)

Tl;Dr if you want to lie to your kids, fine. But don’t require other people to lie and treat them as doing something wrong for telling the truth.

When other children (and their parents) get upset at me for saying that Santa was not real I let them know that I was happy to stay quiet about my opinion as long as they stayed quiet about theirs.

This is legit why I had few friends as a child. 

Yeah, I don’t think the central good parts of Christmas are contained in children having a literal belief in Santa Claus. As @lilietsblog said, children enjoy games of pretend that are openly acknowledged as games of pretend! I think the Santa mythos Christmas culture would basically work fine if we were all honest with children and told them the truth: there’s no literal fat guy in a red suit who lives at the north pole named Santa Claus, the presents from “Santa” are actually from your parents, Santa Claus is a metaphor and part of some fun games.

That would make it more like Halloween in a way, I think? I mean, with Halloween it’s pretty openly acknowledged that the monster costumes are just costumes, the Halloween decorations are just decorations, etc.; there doesn’t seem to be the same strong expectation that children will go through a phase where the think the pretend-play parts of the holiday are literally true, and there doesn’t seem to be the same culture of deliberately prolonging such a phase. Children have lots of fun on Halloween anyway! And from what @lilietsblog said, Christmas seems to work fine in countries that don’t have a Christmas culture built around an assumed childhood phase of literal belief in Santa Claus/the local Santa-equivalent.

I mean, if children are having fun believing in Santa I’m inclined to say let them have their fun, I wouldn’t go out of my way to correct them if they’re an age where a literal belief in Santa Claus is common and it isn’t causing any problems and they’re having fun ... but the OP describes a real problem and the way Christmas works in Ukraine based on @lilietsblog‘s description seems like a better equilibrium to me; the problem the OP talks about wouldn’t exist in a culture that handles this issue the way Ukranians do. The nice thing about telling people the truth right from the start is you don’t have to worry about what might happen if they discover the truth independently!