If I ever had kids I wouldn’t tell them the Santa Claus myth. There might be good reasons for maintaining the myth but I can’t think of any myself, it just seems so unnecessary and deceitful.
I guess I don’t understand why you can’t just express love and gift-giving in an honest way. If you love someone, tell them. If you want to give someone a gift, give it to them. I see no reason to have it hide behind some mythical figure. I don’t know if this is a reflection of our society which somehow sees love as something to be hidden away and shameful, or perhaps it is just a tendency to default to tradition instead of challenging norms. I don’t think telling kids about Santa harms them, I was raised with the Santa myth, but I am not sure it helps them either.
There is a religious argument to be made for celebrating Christmas but not Santa. In fact, it strikes me as strange that religious Christians use Santa at all. It is inconsistent with Christ’s teachings and against the traditions of the church. There certainly is no “war on Christmas” but it is difficult for me to take Christians seriously when they claim this war while telling their kids Santa delivered presents. I think it is actually possible that Christians pretending Santa is real may actually do harm to the faith of their children. If a child is raised with Santa, the Easter Bunny, and God but is told two out of the three aren’t real why would they believe the third is real?
I guess it is kind of a non-issue for me though, I have no intention of having children. It just seems strange and has been on my mind this holiday season. Our world could use more hugs, more love, and more honest conversations about how we feel. Filtering our love through a commercialized tradition just seems to open the doors to more harm than good.
Wandering Oak 