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Gonna do a late-night thread about Santa Clause.
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I found out the "truth" about Santa (more on that in a second) when I was 9. I was kind of Santa-agnostic for a year or two before that. I wasn't happy when I found out. I wasn't mad about being lied to, just disappointed.
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I didn't really think much more about it until I was on my mission and met a handful of fedora atheists who compared believing in God to "believing in Santa Claus." For them belief in Santa is the operative metaphor; everyone lies to you about this to make you feel good.
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Thinking to myself that the last thing I'd ever want my kids to become is a fedora atheist, I wondered if it was really such a good idea to teach kids to believe in one unseen being who *isn't* real, while also hoping that they'll believe in an unseen being who *is* real.
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The way a lot of people bridge this gap is that it actually helps kids' faith to believe in Santa because it teaches them to believe in something they can't see. But when the plan is to later tell them that Santa isn't real...that doesn't ring true to me.
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When my wife and I were dating we sort of agreed that we might not want to raise our kids to believe in Santa. Youthful idealism, I guess.
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Once the decision was actually upon us, I did a reality check: the vast majority of believing Christian adults I know believed in Santa as kids, so it couldn't be *that* bad.
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My compromise with my earlier youthful ideals is that I always said that I wouldn't outright lie to my kids if they asked. My oldest recently turned ten, and none of my kids have ever asked.
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When they find out the truth, I hope that they look back and have a Sixth Sense-like realization that the clues were there all along. Like when they ask if Rudolph is real and I say, "Well, people tell a lot of stories about Santa, some are true and some aren't."
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The oldest asked about the tooth fairy; all I said was, "You know that you go to sleep with a tooth under your pillow and wake up w money, that's all I'll say." He concluded that there's no way we could sneak the money under there because "I sleep with my eyes open." OK kid.
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So now my kids have reached or are reaching the age where I already knew "the truth" (I'm getting to it), and I'm torn between not wanting them to feel foolish (no kid should believe in Santa when he's in high school), and not wanting them to end this phase of childhood.
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Something that has surprised me as a parent is how long this phase has lasted. Not just believing in Santa, but being what I perceive as a "little kid."
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Of course every kid thinks they're bigger than they really are. But they still play make believe, they still sleep with stuffed animals....I certainly didn't do either at that age, but now I wonder how much of that was imposed socially by schoolmates (we homeschool).
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But in any event, I now see the light at the end of the tunnel. My son mentioned the other day that he "knows" we aren't Santa because "you wouldn't do that."
"Do what?"
"Well, let's put it this way: If I came out and saw you filling the stockings I'd be devastated."
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"Do what?"
"Well, let's put it this way: If I came out and saw you filling the stockings I'd be devastated."
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Well, that's exactly what I *didn't* want, so many years ago. I don't want him to feel devastated. Hopefully he'll follow the same course as most kids, that by the time we tell him about Santa he's already mostly figured it out.
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But also....I'm kind of hoping we meet somewhere in the middle. That is, as he starts believing in Santa less, I'll have started to believe in Santa more.
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I really like what Bruce Charlton wrote here:
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2014/05/is-hobbes-really-alive-or-is-it-just.html
It's hard to summarize, you should read it. But the idea is that Santa really does exist, and not just in a "Santa is within all of us" sort of way.
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http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2014/05/is-hobbes-really-alive-or-is-it-just.html
It's hard to summarize, you should read it. But the idea is that Santa really does exist, and not just in a "Santa is within all of us" sort of way.
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Bruce is a bit cagey about exactly *how* Santa exists, just certain that he does.
But I think my son may have stumbled on the solution:
18/ https://twitter.com/JReubenCIark/status/1335756425675489280
But I think my son may have stumbled on the solution:
18/ https://twitter.com/JReubenCIark/status/1335756425675489280
Maybe the "Spirit of Santa" is....actually a spirit.
The spirit of St. Nicholas himself, an actual spiritual personage influencing each of us for good, animating the spirit of Christmas in all of us, the ineffable force that makes us feel like Christmastime is magical.
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The spirit of St. Nicholas himself, an actual spiritual personage influencing each of us for good, animating the spirit of Christmas in all of us, the ineffable force that makes us feel like Christmastime is magical.
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I dunno if this is true, but I'm comfortable throwing it out there to the kids. There are weirder ways in which Santa could be "real" (and indeed I have never been to the North Pole and can't disprove the existence of cryptozoa like flying reindeer). This one feels solid.
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Other people have proposed telling kids "Santa is a game" and "you are now ready to become a Santa Claus" like it's an initiation. And I don't mind that, I think that you can throw out all kinds of ideas that could simultaneously be true.
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Anyway, all I'm really interested in is softening the landing so that my kids don't feel betrayed or disappointed. There's that period of immaturity where you're too old believe in Santa, but too young to understand the inadequacy of the visible world to encompass all truth.
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A follow-up note: I was so non-committal about St. Nick that I think the oldest was catching on a couple of years ago, but then they spent a few weeks at my MIL's house and she laid it on soooooo thick, extremely specific details about life at the North Pole, etc. Sigh.
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But in the end, things like reading scriptures and praying as a family have a lot more to do with whether your kids believe in Jesus as adults than anything you tell them about Santa.
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