Is Santa real?

       I stood in the garage, staring down at my blue and white plastic toy bin, filled to the brim with a zoo. It was a Noah’s ark of stuffed animals, but this ship was setting sail to never return. I was there to say goodbye to my imaginary friends, but no one really talks about how bitter [sweet] saying goodbye to your childhood is (Except maybe Toy Story 3). I was far older than I should have been, still playing with my family of fur, each and every one of them with their own unique personalities. They all had vivid relationships with one another, and they were far more real to me than my real human friends. I needed to let go. But how could I? How could I forget them? They were a part of me.

Spoilers, kids.

       To tell or not to tell. A tale as old as time: the conundrum of whether or not to tell children Santa is real or not. A few weeks ago I heard someone say something this Holiday season, and it got me thinking about the Santa dilemma again in a new way. Maybe we should concern ourselves not so much with whether or not to tell, but rather with what we are telling through telling, and how that in turn affects the next generation.

I overheard the parent (30’s) talking to an associate (20), and though I was intrigued to join the conversation, I bit my tongue and simply listened in. Paraphrased, this is what the young parent said:

“I think it’s a good thing to tell your kids that Santa is real. I don’t see it as lying. I see it as a lesson in faith...”

The parent, a dedicated Christian, went on to say that this lesson in faith was in essence an early practice for kids believing in Jesus, their Lord and Savior, and thus, believing in the teachings of the Church. What bothered me about this conversation had very little to do with the belief and practice of their religion (which I think can and often does bring incredible beauty to the world), but rather with the skewed definition of faith and what it actually teaches children indirectly. Because “the road to hell is paved with good intentions,” and often what we mean to teach our kids through certain teachings is not at all what in the end the kids learn.

       To use another quote in response to this quote, I will use one from the seventh season of a Showtime show. I think Dexter says it best,

“Christmas is a time of expectations. If you’re good, a red suited fat man will break into your house and leave you presents. But Santa Claus doesn’t exist. The most wonderful time of the year celebrates a lie.”

First off, I laugh out loud every time I hear that first part. That’s ridiculously funny to imagine that visual, because I never thought of it that way before hearing that. If we take the mythology literally, Santa is breaking and entering every residence on the damn planet, but at least he isn’t stealing. Right? ::Lol:: Quite the opposite. He’s leaving gifts! Well, on the condition that you weren’t bad this year, in which case its coals for your stocking.

But the Santa myth is just that. Santa isn’t real. So to say otherwise, is this lying? Let’s be fair and not assume this right away. Cause maybe the parent was correct in saying that it isn’t lying, but rather that it is an exercise in faith. Let’s look at some definitions.

Lie (N): a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood; an inaccurate or false statement. (Verb) to speak falsely or utter untruth knowingly, as with intent to deceive; to express what is false, convey a false impression.

Half of these definitions suggest that lying involves the intent behind it, but the other half do not. But, whenever in doubt about a definition, I look at its opposite. The antonym of a lie is truth.

Truth (N): the real facts about something, the quality or state of being true, statement or idea or belief that is or is accepted as true, in accordance with fact.

So honestly, when we tell kids that Santa is real, do we actually believe what we are saying? I would argue we do not. Just because you lie for a “good reason” doesn’t mean it isn’t a lie. And to tell children that Santa is real to give them a sense of joyful mystery is still just parents perpetuating an elaborate prank.

       However, to counter this stance, I shall point to an idea that I have presented in previous posts. In academic religious studies, scholars acknowledge that “truth” is relative to each belief. Certain aspects of a belief don’t have to be factual to be true [in essence]. So truth can be a bit hazy, because it doesn’t always have to be concrete fact, but can also be abstract and profound in nature. How can this be?

I think this gets at the heart of debate for parents that chose to tell their kids Santa is indeed real. To stay along the lines of religious upbringing, I will use an example from the books of the Bible. In the four books of the gospel, Jesus of Nazareth is accounted as telling parables (in some more than others). However, Jesus isn’t suggesting that these parables are factual. They are stories, quite possibly fictional. He’s making these stories up on the spot to answer questions or to pose new questions to his followers [and to those that disagree with him]. In a way they are propaganda, but for Jesus they were paradigm-shifting tales that laid down the moral foundations for his radical movement. His listeners even know that these parables are not factual, but that Jesus is getting at a deeper truth. And this is the point of stories, I would say. Stories are make-believe. They are lies framed around realities to tell a deeper truth.

So in some instances, lies can be good. Now, obviously I believe that this subject about lies and truth or bad and good aren’t so black and white. There are shades, like the differentiating spectrums of the color frequencies of a rainbow (blue and green are relatively close together (yet still unique and different), while there is a far greater difference between green and red). But my point is this: fabrications are not bad inherently. However, it depends on what is actually being learned. And I would suggest that telling your kids that Santa is real is different from Jesus telling his followers parables.

       When someone goes to read a new fictional book, they might go to the bookstore (I grew up in the 90’s when that was a thing) or order it online. When you search for the book, you find it in a very specific section. The book will even be labeled as this. Fiction. It doesn’t pretend to be something else.

Would you tell your children that Hogwarts is a real school, and if they work hard that they could be little wizards or witches too? That if they go into a train station and run into the brick wall somewhere between the ninth and tenth platform, they’ll find their way there?

Maybe you would, and maybe you wouldn’t. If you did play off that elements of the Harry Potter stories were true and real, I would guess that you would only pick certain things to mention were real, purposefully not mentioning other things [to avoid things like your children running into brick walls at train stations or jumping off your roof with a broomstick].

There’s a line that we draw between the real world and the imagined one, or else we’d be making some pretty dangerous decisions in the real world based on the imagined one. And you may know where that line is as an adult, but I’d suggest that kids don’t always. If I tell a kid that some elements of Harry Potter are real, avoiding mentioning which ones aren’t, then the child will assume that all the elements are real. Kids are trusting. They’re not so quick to catch the exceptions to the rules.

       Imagination is important to foster. I think it can be fostered differently (which I will get to soon). If you teach your kids to imagine things such as Santa is real with his magical reindeer and elves and that they better be good or he might not give them gifts, then you are teaching them at a very early age to cross the line between imagination and reality without warning them what mental mind games they are embarking on. Which isn’t too bad, until they find out that their parental figures, their guides and role models in the world, are lying to them. As a kid, it is traumatic. If Daddy and Mommy lied about this, what else could they be lying to me about? Is there anything else they’ve taught me that is a lie? This can lead to a few things: distrust or acceptance of delusion. I’ll let you consider the ramifications.

So is imagination the same thing as faith? I’d guess you’d disagree, and so would I. Then why are they often treated the same way?

I would say that the main reason that parents tell their kids to believe in things such as Santa Claus is because they want to foster the youthful joy of imagination. I think this reason is a beautiful intent. However, I don’t think we need to teach our kids how to imagine or believe. That comes all too naturally for them.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BELIEF

       There is a well-studied theory that suggests we are predisposed to believe. That it is in our very psychology and biology to believe in the supernatural; we are drawn to explain the unexplainable. Not so convinced? Let’s jump down this rabbit hole and see how deep this chimney goes (yup, mixing up my analogies).

Teleology is the tendency to ascribe purpose to things in the assumption that they exist to serve a goal, even if such objects or aspects are trivial in the natural world. Recent research suggests that kids between 4-5 years old think in very teleological ways, often suggesting that lions are meant to “go to the zoo” and clouds are “for raining.” Also according to studies by Boston University psychologist Deborah Keleman (PhD), young children ages 7-8 years old were asked why prehistoric rocks are pointy, and they’d respond with such statements as “it’s so that animals won’t sit on them and smash them” and “so that animals can scratch on them when they get itchy.” These teleological cognitions cause us to perceive the natural world as a place of intentional design. The reason? Though these evolutions in our psychological tendencies have a side effect on religious thinking, they rather naturally occurred to serve our adaptive purposes.

These cognitions’ disposition have developed due to the social intelligent advantages of being able to think about what other people are thinking about and perceive their intentions and goals. If we are always thinking about the intentions and goals behind things (people, namely), then we are able to relate and even predict situations.

This frame of thinking also helps us in a more primal way. For example, we may perceive the sound of the wind rustling leaves in a forest to be a potential predator, so we may feel that we are being followed. Our brain operates in such a fashion as to consider every random occurrences as being caused by something or someone, because it is beneficial for us to be hyper-aware of our environment, ready for any possible threat. As a species, this overactive agency detection function in our brain keeps us safe and better helps us to survive and reproduce. Seeing random events in the lens of causality is one explanation why we believe in things such as ghosts. If you hear leaves rustle, but no one is there, you still feel as if someone is there. That’s an incident where the function of our brain affects more situations than it’s intended to. Faulty hard-wiring, you could say.

       We are also drawn to connect the dots, even when there is no pattern. It is an innate behavior for people to try to find meaning in things. We rationalize natural occurrences that we don’t fully understand with some pretty bizarre explanations. For example, societies invoke mythology for this reason. People in ancient culture didn’t understand why the sun rose and set every day, so they concluded things like “a chariot pulls the sun across the heavens.” So you’d get people explaining the occurrences of a drought or why a child was stillborn as caused by the supernatural.

We don’t deal well with things being random and without purpose, and so it is much easier for us to process them by explaining them in a different, intentional light. In a 2008 study in Science (Vol. 322, No 5898), Jennifer Whitson (PhD) and Adam Galinsky (PhD) found that people were more likely to see patterns in random dots if the researchers first caused the participants to feel like they had no control. This suggests that people, on a very basic cognitive level are primed to see patterns and signs in the world around them, and thus are biased to a certain kind of thinking about supernatural things (pre and afterlife, invisible beings, ghosts, gods, etc).

       I could go far more in depth into how we are predisposed to “believe” and how this affects us in so many ways (culturally, behaviorally, etc), but that’s neither here nor there. My point for this discussion is simply this. Belief in the supernatural (gods, religion, spirits, demons, ghosts, afterlifes, miracles, imaginary friends, monsters, etc) comes natural to us. We don’t need to raise our kids in such a manner that flexes those mental muscles, because they’re already bulked up. In a world that focuses on exercising upper-body muscles (blind faith), we need to stop missing leg day (critical thinking). We need balance so there aren’t so many people walking around looking like cones.

VALUES

       I think we teach our kids how to lie. Not that they wouldn’t learn this on their own, but that parents so deliberately mislead them, that their kids become confused by the mixed messages. We teach them different values than we intend to.

For example, the narrative of Santa Claus gets all tangled up in religious narratives as they are being taught to kids simultaneously, which ends up teaching them behaviors that are dangerous.

“You better watch out, you better not cry, better not pout, I’m telling you why: Santa Claus is coming to town. He’s making a list, and checking it twice; gonna find out Who’s naught and nice. Santa Claus is coming to town. He sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!”

This is the birth of the prosperity gospel. The concept of Santa gets mixed up with the concept of God, as a figure that is either a bringer of blessing [if you have ‘behaved’] or a bringer of wrath [if you ‘deserve’ it]. If you are good, you get rewarded. But then this teaching gets more confusing when some parents (possibly wealthier or with more credit card debt) spoil their kids with expensive gifts. Then other kids (possibly of poorer families or with parents that are more conservative with their finances) get lesser gifts. When these two different kids meet [whether at school or in public], the possibility of discrimination rises due to such teachings. Not to mention all the consumerism that peaks its nasty head from “the most wonderful time of the year,” which is also ironically the time of the year that suicide rates reach their highest point.

These are just a few examples, but there are many ways that such teachings can actually teach bad values indirectly for our next generations. Is this how we should raise our kids?

       If anything, we should train our kids to NOT think this way as much. We should teach our children truth and values directly rather than trying to teach values indirectly through deception and delusion.

Let me be clear before I continue. I am not against Christmas. The holiday is celebrated across the globe in hundreds of different countries, all with an assortment of different versions depending on the cultures. Christmas is glorious in the sense that it unifies the world in holiday joy with similar themes while celebrating the beautiful cultures steeped in unique, divergent traditions (If you want to learn more about the many Christmas traditions across the globe, check out these awesome sites: http://www.lone-star.net/mall/main-areas/santafaq.htm#StNicholas and http://www.whychristmas.com/cultures/ ). I’m not even saying that we should abolish the mythology of Santa Claus. We should keep the joy and mythos a part of the holiday. I’m saying we should reconsider the usefulness of lying and pranking our children.

       So how to raise the future generations? Is there a better way? How can we pass the baton in such a way that truly creates a better tomorrow? We should find a balance between creativity and critical thinking. We can tell stories like Jesus of Nazareth did, where those who listen are made aware that the tales are fictional but tell a far deeper truth. We can tell our kids about Santa Claus in the same way we read them bedtime stories or books like Harry Potter. Kids can believe in fictional stories without believing that they are real, but emotionally these stories are still very real to them. They still fall in love with these characters, and even sometimes imagine what it’d be like if they were in these characters’ magical worlds. We can tell our kids the mythology of Santa Claus, and then tell them the true origin tale of St. Nicholas. We can get creative in how we tell the truth and how we tell mythology without mixing up the two.

Children are predisposed to believe and to trust. We should honor their trusting nature by being honest with them, but also teaching them the dangers of blind faith, training them with new skills (critical thinking), and fostering things such as creativity and good behaviors. We can teach them the difference between faith and imagination, mythology and deception. Imagine a generation of teenagers making more informed and logically thought-out decisions in the face of their emotionally-charged adolescence because their parents taught them these skills. One can dream, right?

       So though Christmas has come and gone, there’s always the next one. So how will you answer the question…is Santa real or not?

A boy on the brink of becoming a young man, I stood alone in that garage, mourning over the thought of saying goodbye to my family of imaginary friends. They would never die. They would never betray me. They never would leave me, I thought as I sealed them beneath the play-bin lid.

But I left them. I had to. It was time to say goodbye to my youth. It was time to be a grown-up. It was time to stop believing in the fairy tales as if they were more real than the real world. I would never say goodbye to their memory. I would never forget how they had been there for me when I needed them most. How they had taught me so much…about myself. They weren’t just a part of me. They were me.

So how could I leave them? I was not saying goodbye to my imagination. No, on contrary. I was learning to embrace my imagination…and reality. I was learning to distinguish the difference between the two, and to cherish both for what they were. But it didn’t feel like that. It felt like I was betraying a best friend. To say they weren’t real felt like the greatest insult. But really, I would come to realize that I was acknowledging them as far more real than the real world. Their power and presence was far greater than what could be seen, for what can be seen can be killed and swept away, but what cannot be seen is invincible, for it is a whisper in the wind. Or is it just the wind?