kerravonsen | The Santa Conspiracy (Reply)

Saw an article on kuru5hin today (Tis the Season to be Dishonest) which reminded me that I'd been intending to say something about this topic anyway. Why is it that in Western culture there has been this collusion, this conspiracy to deceive generation upon generation of children? Not only telling them that Santa Claus exists when they know that he doesn't, but coming down hard anyone who dares to say otherwise.

(Florida)
Teacher tells kids Santa is 'make-believe'

Kindergarten Teacher Tells Class Santa Doesn't Exist

(Canberra)
(Teacher tells six year old children Santa Claus doesn't exist)

A teacher is banned for telling the truth. What sort of a warped society do we live in?

There can be no justification for lying to your children. None. Not deliberate, elaborate pre-meditated deception, which is what the Santa "myth" is.

But the supporters of the Santa conspiracy protest vehemently when you point out this sordid truth.

What are you all worked up about? It's just a myth, like all religions.
This is usually said by atheists, who equate religion with lies. However, the significant difference between the Santa Conspiracy and religions is that the proseletisers of religions actually believe what they are saying, while the Santa-speakers are knowingly and deliberately lying. A deliberate lie is not a myth.
It isn't a lie, it's a white lie.
Well, of course, white lies are just as much lies as "black" lies are. But even apart from that, the Santa Lie isn't even a "white" lie. A white lie is a lie told to spare someone's feelings, to be polite. The elaborate Santa-"myth" hasn't got anything to do with politeness.
Oh come on, you're not giving kids enough credit. They'll figure it out, and be none the worse for it. Don't you think they know the difference between truth and fantasy?
Of course kids know the difference between truth and fantasy, between the real world and "let's pretend". But statements like this make me wonder if the people making them actually know the difference between fantasy and untruth, as if to them, there's no difference between lies and fiction. Maybe someone told them once too often "Don't tell stories!"

If Santa were played out as a global "let's pretend" game, that wouldn't be a problem. The problem is, that parents are telling their kids, not that Santa is a game or a story, but they are telling their kids that Santa actually exists. This is a lie, not a story. A lie, because they are passing it off as true.
Oh, I suppose you tell your kids the horrible unvarnished truth about everything, scarring them with things they don't need to know?
Er, how can you equate "refraining from lying" with "telling kids things they're too young to know"? Except, of course, that if you buy into the conspiracy, kids are obviously too young to know the truth about Santa.

Well I guess that depends on how you tell it. My parents told me about Saint Nicholas, how he loved children and gave them presents. Is that a horrible truth that children shouldn't know?
If you don't tell them about Santa, you're depriving them of the wonder and magic of Christmas, stunting their growth and crippling their imagination.
Well, no, I'd say that kids have plenty of imagination and wonder -- the world is a wondrous and amazing place to a kid, to all kids, whether you give them the Santa Lie or not. The world is full of wonders, like flowers that go to sleep at night and open in the morning, like snow flakes and sea shells and polished rocks and glinting crystals, like birds feathers and sparrows' nests and TV remote controls (my youngest nephew, a toddler, is absolutely bonkers about TV remote controls).

The problem is the reverse -- if you give kids the Santa Lie, you are stunting their growth and crippling their imagination, because when they learn the truth, they may toss out the baby with the bathwater, and consider that imagination, and wonder, and miracles are only things that naive little kids believe in.
They gotta learn about the Real World.
Betraying the trust that a child has in their parents by telling them an elaborate fabrication as Truth, in order to prepare them for the lies of the real world, is on par with beating up your children in order to make them "tough". They're already going to get plenty of knocks and lies in their life without having you deliberately and pre-meditatively destroy the one thing they thought they could rely on -- the trustworthiness of their parents.

Note that most of the people who give this response are atheists. Doubtless they figured that if Santa isn't true, then God obviously has to be a lie also. Baby => Bathwater.
It provides a moral foundation. Threatening kids with Santa Claus makes them behave.
If your moral foundation is based on a lie, you're in real trouble. To borrow a metaphor from a famous wise man, it is like a house built on sand. Dumb. Real dumb.