What's up with Santa?

[Elok]

**If you want to troll religion, go to the threadjacked Defeating Homosexuality thread. It doesn't apply here because, even if religion is all hooey, adults who teach it to their kids typically believe it themselves, whereas I know of no adults who believe in Santa religiously. If there are such people, I'm not interested in discussing them here. This is purely a thread to discuss traditions of deliberate lies to children. Thank you for not being a douche.**

Also the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny, etc. Is it all a sick game to teach our kids cynicism, or does it just amuse us to fill their heads with lies and exploit their gullibility? It's not like any of these teach kids life lessons or anything. They're just random nonsensical traditions propagated for tradition's sake. Nor do they add any special sense of wonder; I, at least, regarded Christmas with the same sense of mercenary calculation both before and after I learned Santa was a fraud. I can't recall if I ever really believed in the Tooth Fairy, but my general attitude as far back as I can remember was, "Huh. Lost a tooth. Cool, another quarter tomorrow morning!" In every case, the magical trappings were just some boring logistics involved in getting me my loot. Were the rest of you any different?

Do they have this stuff in other cultures too? Like, do Chinese kids believe in the Summer Dragon King who hides candy around the house on Mao's birthday (I don't know what holidays they celebrate over there)?

[Asher]

There's nothing wrong with Santa, Easter Bunny, etc. Kids have an active imagination and these kinds of white lies lead to magical memories for most children.

If a child's world is shattered when they find out Santa isn't real, then they have other problems.

[OzzyKP]

I agree with Elok. Santa is a great tradition, but we shouldn't pass him off as real.

Lying to kids.

[Asher]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
I agree with Elok. Santa is a great tradition, but we shouldn't pass him off as real.

Lying to kids.

People who hate childhood.

[OzzyKP]

People who hate children.

[Asher]

If you loved children you'd let them be children. You'd have them work, vote, smoke, and sex eachother up at 5 years old.

[SlowwHand]

I don't see anything wrong with the innocence of childhood. A person generally has a much greater length of time to spend being jaded.

[OzzyKP]

Lying to them about things like Santa is what makes them jaded and cynical in the first place.

[Asher]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
Lying to them about things like Santa is what makes them jaded and cynical in the first place.

As I said, if that has had such a significant impact on a child's life, then they have far more problems than believing in Santa.

Additionally, there's something to be said about implicit trust being a bad thing with people.

[SlowwHand]

If you make a list of all the dangers to people in general and children in particular, and arranged them in order of importance, and included Santa Claus and the Easter Rabbit, I'd say those two would be at the bottom.
Go solve one thing entirely, then move down the list. By the time, many years later, you get to Santa Claus, I think you'll have decided that the importance of doing away with Santa is mice nuts compared to all the other things.

[Elok]

I'm not saying it's a huge problem or anything, just that it's screwy and pointless.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Elok
I'm not saying it's a huge problem or anything, just that it's screwy and pointless.

It's not pointless.

As I said, some of my best childhood memories involved the "magic" of Christmas time, Easter, etc. And I'm not religious either.

Santa, Easter bunny, etc all played a role in that. I'd hate for children to be robbed of that because people like you have no concept of emotion or wonder, and people like Ozzy want children to be sentenced as adults at age 5.

[Krill]

Asher

[Berzerker]

when I was about 13 the younger neighbor kids (brother and younger sister ~9 and 6) asked me if Santa was real. I said no, and about 20 minutes later their Mom showed up at our door to chew me out. The boy was old enough to find out, he was already questioning if Santa existed, but the girl looked disappointed. I didn't wanna lie I should have... I think...

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Berzerker
when I was about 13 the younger neighbor kids (brother and younger sister ~9 and 6) asked me if Santa was real. I said no, and about 20 minutes later their Mom showed up at our door to chew me out. The boy was old enough to find out, he was already questioning if Santa existed, but the girl looked disappointed. I didn't wanna lie I should have... I think...

If you check them out now, they are probably junkies, lawyers or hitmen for the mafia