>She especially disliked the fantastic lies told to children – the tooth fairy and Father Christmas and stories with talking animals. She saw them as an indulgence on the part of adults:
"We are amused by the illusions, the ignorance and the errors of the immature mind, just as at a not very remote date we were amused to see an infant laugh when it was tossed up and down, a proceeding now condemned by infantile hygiene as wrong and dangerous in the extreme. In short, it is we who are amused by the Christmas festivities and the credulity of the child."
I mean it's pretty strong viewpoint to have but there is some validity to it. As a parent I have this low-level guilt to the day when we have to explain that or that they discover on their own Santa is a well intentioned fictitious character. It does feel like this Santa / Tooth-fairy thing is created for the benefit of adults with children getting some value out of the exchange (and some cost as well).
I went with the total honesty approach. It doesn't seem to have affected them negatively in my case. I mean, I still enjoy Santa Claus to some degree. I don't think thinking it's real is a critical component of the experience.
My kids enjoy the elf on the shelf sort of thing, and they were always fully aware the elf is not actually getting up to shenanigans at night. Nevertheless it's fun for the entire family, because it stretches us parents to be creative a little bit every night as well. Most recently the elf was starring as Batman in a three-night, three-act structure in which he menanced Joker, then the tables were turned with the Joker having hijacked the Batmobile and running over Bat-Elf, then there was a climactic showdown involving the Lego train tracks the next night. Nobody needed to think these adventures are actually real to enjoy them.
I come in in between; the stories are important for other reasons, but it is in no way mandatory to tell them they're real. Maybe in the 19th century it was less of a big deal, reality was more real in a lot of ways. But in a world of deep fakes, CGI, incredibly organized special interest groups comparable to the size of entire powerful medieval cities a few centuries ago, etc. etc. I need all the trust I can get if I'm going to train them to survive in the unbelievably hostile environment they're trying to grow up in now. Recently I was showing my kids how they're being targeted by video game gambling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMmNy11Mn7g and I was musing on the fact my parents had basically zero need to be concerned about this. I couldn't have screwed my life up that way if I had set out with the explicit goal of doing so. I need all the trust from my kids I can marshal in this century.
There were some fantastic anecdotes as adults looking back on the deceptions by their parents in this discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33863990 (If you unscrew your belly button, your bottom will fall off). Just in case you didn't see it.
In my circle of acquaintances with kids - there is nothing but happy memories of Christmas and Santa Claus and my own kids were happy to indulge in the fiction for a while. I think like many things the reaction depends on the kid (just like for some kids Montessori schools themselves can be a good or bad option).
In any case - one would think if the illusion of Santa Claus did cause some trauma in kids, they themselves wouldn’t generally grow up to fully embrace the experience with their own kids.
I've read two accounts of children who, upon learning that Santa Claus was not real, spontaneously concluded for themselves that God was not real either. Not necessarily a bad lesson! But probably not the one intended by the people who taught those kids about Santa :)
> I've read two accounts of children who, upon learning that Santa Claus was not real, spontaneously concluded for themselves that God was not real either.
This is not advice, just my experience... When our daughter was 1, my wife convinced me to be honest about Santa from the start. I was a little worried it was like taking away a key childhood memory. But our daughter (now 4) loves Santa as a character, and still has a magical experience on Christmas morning. Now it makes total sense to me—she knows Elmo isn't real either, but that doesn't make him any less important to her!
When our oldest asks about Santa Claus, we just ask her what she thinks and never answer with a "yes" or "no". When she can reach the logical conclusion that there isn't one then she'll know there isn't one.
At least at our kids' current age (8, 5 & 5), other kids alone telling them won't convince them about it. We do leprechaun pranks, which we tell them are just us, which their classmates don't believe in (they've discussed this), and they still believe it's real.
They also think faeries are real despite us saying they aren't - their older cousin likes to play "faerie" pranks when she visits. They think we think they aren't real because, since we don't think faeries are real, they never interact with us.
Well realistically, my wife and I have been very honest from day one about santa claus and the tooth fairy, etc.
In fact, we explicitly include our 3 year old daughter in playing santa for our 1 year old.
And the three year old, despite my wife and my insistence that Santa is not actually real, fully believes in it. I tell her almost every day that Santa is just pretend and she looks at me and says 'no he's not'.
Pretend and real don't really have any distinction in the minds of most children.
I have a distinct memory of talking to a friend about how the job of Santa, as presented to kids, was clearly a physical impossibility. I think I was 8 then. So, a small victory for our education and its use in analyzing a real-life poser.
My daughter still remembers when she realized we were lying to her for 7 years, I guess that is the best part of those lies, to teach the child to not always trust their parents (which I think its a good lesson).
"We are amused by the illusions, the ignorance and the errors of the immature mind, just as at a not very remote date we were amused to see an infant laugh when it was tossed up and down, a proceeding now condemned by infantile hygiene as wrong and dangerous in the extreme. In short, it is we who are amused by the Christmas festivities and the credulity of the child."
I mean it's pretty strong viewpoint to have but there is some validity to it. As a parent I have this low-level guilt to the day when we have to explain that or that they discover on their own Santa is a well intentioned fictitious character. It does feel like this Santa / Tooth-fairy thing is created for the benefit of adults with children getting some value out of the exchange (and some cost as well).