Is Santa Real?
Related on OB: Lying to Kids The Third Alternative
My wife and I are planning to have kids, so of course we've been going through the usual sorts of debates regarding upbringing. We wondered briefly, will we raise our children as atheists? It's kindof a cruel experiment, as folks tend to use their own experiences to guide raising children, and both of us were raised Catholic. Nonetheless, it was fairly well settled after about 5 minutes of dialogue that atheist was the way to go.
Then we had the related discussion of whether to teach our children about Santa Claus. After hours of debate, we decided we'd both have to think on the question some more. It's still been an open question for years now.
Should we teach kids that Santa Claus exists? This isn't a new question, by any means. But it's now motivated by this thread about rationalist origin stories. Note that many of the posters mark the 'rationalist awakening' as the time they realized God doesn't exist. The shock that everybody, including their parents, were wrong and/or lying to them was enough to motivate them to pursue rationality and truth.
If those same children were never taught about God, Santa Claus, and other falsehoods, would they have become rationalists, or would they have contented themselves with playing better video games? If the child never realized there's no Santa Claus, would we have a reason to say, "You're growing up and I'm proud of you"?
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Comments (58)
I have to wonder what else you'd be teaching them alongside Santa, as a necessary corollary, that might not come unstuck when Santa himself does. At that young age, you are helping them create some pretty basic ground-state assumptions about reality.
I'm aiming for:
My oldest child is six. She has always been taught to distinguish 'real' from 'pretend', and encouraged to decide which is which herself.
She seems to have no problem discovering that something she previously believed is false - at this age there is still so much to learn, and her world view is updating pretty constantly.
What does seem to be distressing for her is finding out that some adults believe things which she has placed solidly in the 'pretend' category. Her teacher's belief in god is particularly perplexing for her.
My experience is that most people claim to have suffered no trauma from eventually finding out that there is no Santa.
It is also my experience that 100% of the people who claimed they weren't harmed were also irrationalists, in that they not only had no concern for rationality but actively embraced rationality-incompatible worldviews and methods.
Does that mean anything? I don't really know. You likely already know my position of its effects on me.
One bit of advice, though: I think you're really dealing with two questions: Should we tell our child that Santa is real? If not, should we tell our child that Santa isn't real?
If your goal is to encourage inquiry and doubt, never mentioning anything about Santa until you're asked is probably a good way to do so. Then when the kid is exposed to the idea, hopefully they'll be doubtful and seek confirmation.
One of the reasons parents often give for the Santa myth is that it is "fun" and it's good to give children a sense of wonder and joy. This is not a trivial argument.
I don't have children yet, but this post has made me wonder if a strictly no-lies-about-basic-reality policy wouldn't lead to just as much wonder. Is Santa really that necessary, even for the stated junior-level purpose it's given?
There are lots of fantastic, amazing things to wonder at, as a child and as an adult:
Everything in our universe may have started in the biggest, most gigantic-est explosion ever! BLAM!
There are millions of tiny critters living inside your tummy right now and they are helping you every day to eat your food! YUM!
All 7 billion people in the world are the great-great-great-(....)great-great grandchildren of one large-sized family of people who came from Africa! WOW!
That's great stuff. I feel like I should be taking notes.
Whatever your opinion on Santa Claus, I hope we can agree that the woman in the link handled the issue badly. The girl believed in Santa because her mother said he was real, then disbelieved because her mother said he wasn't. Of course she cried -- she was powerless from beginning to end.
Parenting Beyond Belief gives a much better Santa disillusionment tale:
I grew up knowing that Santa didn't exist. My parents had to then explain to me that I couldn't tell certain kids about this because their parents wanted them to still think Santa was real until they were a bit older. I still remember being quite shocked that these parents were lying to their kids, along with grandparents and other family members, and then expecting even me to join in. I was further shocked by the fact that most of these kids never worked it out themselves and had to eventually be told by their parents or a group of their friends (being told by one or two friends usually wasn't enough.)
So, while I never experienced the shock of finding out that Santa wasn't real, watching these parents lying to their kids about Santa again and again certainly left a strong impression on my young mind.
So kids can just look at other people's deceptions. Good point!
That is a good point.
Interestingly, this is related to a question of whether being religious is a good thing because of the various associated benefits, even if it brings certain grave flaws, and an objection that certainly religion with all its lies can't be anywhere near the best thing to practice, that one can greatly improve on the status quo. But guess what, it's hard to improve on the status quo, it may be a right thing for the humanity to try, but it may be an impossible thing for a person to try. So, you need to choose not between the status quo and the best thing that's theoretically possible to construct, but between the status quo and the best thing that you, personally, can construct.
So, the Santa Claus lie has a benefit of pervasiveness in the culture, everyone repeats it. You can't fake this for a different, improved lie.
I believe that you have an unexamined assumption in your post. Namely, can you have any effect on what your child believes?
A book by Judith Rich Harris called "The Nurture Assumption" makes the case that it is not parents that shape a child's attitudes and beliefs, but the child's peers. Parents impact on children tends to be primarily genetic and in the basics (no abuse, well fed and clothed, and choosing the general environment where the child is raised.) For a more detailed look on Harris's argument, see Malcolm Gladwell's article at http://www.gladwell.com/1998/1998_08_17_a_harris.htm .
If you agree with Harris's argument, you might rethink your attitude towards your child's belief in God or Santa Claus. They will probably make up their own mind about it despite your best efforts.
Hope this contributes to the discussion.
David
Good point - but it depends who counts as the child's 'peers'. In a harmful environment like public schools, the child is artificially sequestered with same-age children for most of the day (and in most households, then exposed to 'age-appropriate' television for the rest of it). Of course parents wouldn't have much impact in this environment.
My children will be unschooled - that may be relevant.
JRH is mostly talking about the long term. Parents have little effect on their children's adult beliefs and behavior. They have an enormous impact on what they believe and how they act as children. One of JRH's examples that she brings out several times is what language is spoken fluently as an adult. We tend to assume kids get it from their parents, but that's a spurious correlation. Nearly all normal children are exposed to parents and peers who speak the same language, and the children end up matching both. When parents and peers speak different languages, children end up speaking the same language as their peers, once they move out of the home. While still at home, they continue speaking to their parents in their parents' language.
Similarly, the Santa question is about what your child believes during the formative years. No one continues to believe the Santa story beyond 15, so that isn't a question of peers vs. parents.
Hrm... I'd say try to raise them, well, to think rationally. If you actually do decide to give them a "easy obstacle to train on", make sure you're otherwise getting them thinking rationally, and if they ever start calling you on the inconsistancy, or get suspicious, don't try to "cheat" or otherwise discourage such. Heck, maybe the correct thing is to do such, but to right way admit it when called on it, no hesitation at all.
Or alternately, if they ask "if santa's real", explicitly suggest it to them as an exercise, as something for them to try to figure out a way to actually test or otherwise determine.
I say don't bother with Santa, unless you really think the shattered emotional engagement is necessary for some reason. Instead, come up with a technique similar to the one used in My Favorite Liar. Although much less complicated, of course.
Unless you're going to cloister your children until the state forces you to release them into the world, they're going to encounter plenty of irrationality without your needing to deliberately lie to them. I would try leading by example, rather than hoping for an epiphany that may never come.
What do children learn that counts for the same test as Santa Claus?
The lie of Santa Claus may be a learning experience, but it isn't actually a test per se -- every child finds out the truth one way or another.
What about ghosts, the supernatural and everything else of that kind they'll encounter in movies, television, cartoons, etc? The only difference with Santa is that most people grow out of it, whereas many adults continue to believe in ghosts, but that's because Santa is childhood-specific myth. If the same adults who think Santa is absurd were supposed to believe in Santa I'm sure they'd have no problems rationalizing it.
The phraseology "raise them X" suggests to me inculcating deep, emotional, childhood-locked belief in X. The only X for which that seems supportable is rationality itself.
There's no way you can teach a child any particular definition of rationality that's true enough to be locked in that way.
Hell, there's no way you can teach an adult that.
You could teach them to respect the truth... but no matter what you teach them, sooner or later it's going to fail them, and the best you can do is try to deliver that warning.
Raise them many-worlds.
Don't you mean "raise them to believe in a collapse postulate"? And isn't that a little too strong a test?
It might be useful to teach the Santa Claus myth in order to teach fantasising. It is necessary to know the difference between reality and fantasy, but fantasy is where one can explore how one might Like the world to be, and then begin to plan a way towards it; and fantasy can lead in to lateral thinking.
If you find yourself classifying the goal for where you want to bring the world as "fantasy", you either should update your estimates of what can be real, or exclude the fantasy goal. Don't waste hope on unreal things, but see the real potential in absurdly good things to come (to do). Explore how you'd like the world to be within what's possible, and make sure that your model of what's possible includes the wonders that are possible. That will make your worldview that much brighter and that much saner.
Children need pretend. Don't squash their play. That's not to say that you should tell them things that are false. They'll generate plenty of fantasy on their own.
Well, one thing to keep in mind is that most kids aren't taught about Santa because their parents are trying to set up a rationalist epiphany opportunity for them. Rather, they're taught about Santa because, well, the parents themselves were probably taught about Santa (and God, for that matter) when they were kids, and they probably just figure it's one of those things you do when you have children.
Plus (and I think there might have been an OB post about this once), many adults find ignorance/innocence of certain types in children to be "cute" or appealing in some way. I think the appeal of the Santa mythos for some parents is that it feels to them like they are giving their child a chance, if only a brief one, to live in a world where "magic" actually exists.
In any case, I got in trouble on multiple occasions growing up for talking about how the Easter Bunny wasn't real, how Minnie Mouse (at Disneyland) was a human in a suit, etc., in front of younger kids. That probably confused me more than anything else, more than the fact of having been told things that weren't true to begin with -- I felt like I was being pressured to perpetuate some weird group fantasy and had a terrible time figuring out what I'd supposedly done "wrong". I mean, you can still hunt for Easter eggs and exchange presents and have fun at a character-themed park with full knowledge that actual humans (and not supernatural entities or magical anthropomorphic animals) are behind the whole thing.
All that said, I don't know if it's possible to extrapolate out the role being taught Santamyths and Godlore as a child might play in someone's adolescent and adult rationality. I haven't looked to see whether a large scale survey has even been conducted, but I bet the results of such a survey would be interesting.
In my own limited sample set (consisting of myself and various people whose upbringing I know a little bit about), there doesn't seem to be a major correlation between the type/level of Santa mythos they were exposed to and how much they value truth, how much they appreciate/understand science, what their thoughts are on evolution (for example), etc. What seems to be a far more influential factor is whether the kid has opportunities to actually confront reality without necessarily being sheltered by privilege or convention in certain respects -- e.g., the more spoiled kids I went to elementary school with seemed totally uncurious about how things physically worked, what they were made of, etc.
So while I probably wouldn't personally tell my kids (and I don't have or want kids, but we're talking hypothetically here) that Santa was real -- I'd feel silly and fake if I did -- I don't think parents wanting to raise little rationalists need to dwell extensively on the Santa question so much as make sure their kids actually learn about things like cause and effect and basic physics and such through experience.
"I felt like I was being pressured to perpetuate some weird group fantasy and had a terrible time figuring out what I'd supposedly done "wrong""
Yes! A thousand times yes!
We stress the importance of distinguishing between fantasy and reality, but then people actively try to confuse their children as to what's real and what isn't - all the while thinking less of children because they're supposedly not good at it.
Nice link - thanks. My daughter's going to be Santa Claus age soon enough. Maybe I'll print this out for future reference. Probably unbearably saccharine to the childless, but hey, they may have some crumbgobblers of their own someday, and then it will make more sense.
Seems to me (maybe I'll report back on this in, say, a decade) that the "Santa Claus shock" won't be as bad as a "God shock" because people who lie to their kids about Santa Claus know they are lying and every kid finds out the truth sooner or later; whereas theists don't think they are lying, and some people never come to believe they're wrong. So the "God shock" is a double whammy, finding out your parents are both wrong, and well, liars. In that sense, then the Santa Claus shock is going to be less harmful, as it were. But I think it sets a good precedent with your kids to be as honest as you can with them on the Big Questions while at the same time teaching them a lesson in consideration - don't go telling all the other kids at school that Santa Claus isn't real. Part of teaching them to be members of a tolerant free society.
Some 4th grader did that at school when I was a believing kindergartener - that was may more painful than finding out my parents knew Santa Claus isn't real.
Telling someone not to report a fact which they know to be true has no bearing on teaching them to be members of a tolerant free society that I'm aware of...
I mean to say, "tolerance" and "freedom" have nothing to do with not telling your Christian classmate that his religion is a fairly transparent myth.
I'm talking about from the perspective of a child, MBlume. We live in a society where lots of folks teach their kids lots of silly myths. It isn't your job to teach your kid to go around exposing them all the time. At least not unless you want to raise an intolerable pedant.
Honestly, I'm gonna have to back down from this one -- I never went to elementary school as an atheist, and I have no idea what it would be like. The more I think about it, the more it sounds pretty difficult.
I did. It wasn't especially difficult at all - but then, the subject of religion was never brought up by the teachers and rarely by the students, so no one knew.
I can easily imagine that it would be difficult in a school and a culture in which public declarations of religious affiliation were accepted and encouraged, even mandated.
Me neither. My daughter's going to be a test case, though.
Then I wish you luck.
I hope you'll be willing to share with the community how that goes. We want to learn how to build rationalist societies, and societies start with their children.
Thanks.
I certainly will. She's only 18 months, though, so it's going to be a while before the reports start flowing.
I was raised atheist, and it wasn't difficult at all. In fact, I only know the religion (or lack thereof) of one of my childhood friends, which I learned not because he made any statements of belief per se, but rather via his complaints about having to learn Hebrew. As for the rest of everyone I went elementary school with -- we did have occasional critiques of Santa, but it never occurred to me to extol atheism because the topic of religion never came up. When I eventually learned of the great quantities of deluded people around, I had to infer that some of the kids that had never mentioned religion probably were religious, but it didn't seem important enough for me to actually ask to determine which ones.
I don't think I grew up in any great rationalist enclave, maybe my school was just really serious about separation of church and state?
I share your experience.
I am opposed to the Santa Claus myth, mostly because I hate lying.
Simply because it's false? Or because you aren't convinced it leads to more rational adults? Or some other reason?
Mostly because it's false, and I have a very powerful aversion to knowingly telling a falsehood (and to the general practice of doing the same).
I also hate to be lied to. I don't like "white lies" and I refuse to tell them. If you ask me "Does this dress make me look fat?" I really will give you an honest answer - and I hope that other people will do me the same favor. If I didn't want an honest answer, I wouldn't have asked in the first place.
Curious, are you proud of how difficult you find lying?
Yes. (It probably comes from playing Ultima IV during my formative years.)
I do admit to being a "truth twister" though - I won't tell false statements, but I am willing to omit relevant information, imply false conclusions, or simply refuse to answer awkward questions. (And yes, I agree that there is a certain degree of hypocrisy involved in this practice, but it serves as a reasonable workaround for my inability to lie the way other people seemingly have no trouble doing.)
This is ridiculous. A "truth twister"? This isn't hypocrisy. This is lying. To yourself, mostly. Unless you live in a cave, you tell white lies every day. Ever say Good Afternoon when you didn't feel like it?
This sort of moral highhorsing gets us nowhere. Stop it, please.
I think I'm similar to CronoDAS in being a "truth twister", but I don't know the exact details of how much truth (s)he is willing to twist, so I'm not sure how similar we are.
I'd like to make a point here. When someone says "Good morning" to you and you reply "Good morning" back to them, the information you are communicating is that you are greeting them, not that you actually think this morning is a good morning or anything like that. So in this sense, I wouldn't consider it a lie to say "Good morning" even if though the morning were particularly bad.
"This isn't hypocrisy. This is lying."
Lying is making a false statement with the intent to deceive. Refusing to make a statement isn't lying unless silence is itself a statement.
Deception, now, is a different matter. All of the things CronoDAS mentioned are certainly deceptive, but they're not lying.
More than one of my doctors has patient notes saying not to ask me "How are you doing?" which I asked them not to do, because I dislike giving the standard nonanswer "Fine", because sometimes I'm not actually fine.
Crono, stay on that moral high horse!
I stopped lying, to the best of my ability, years ago. I've found, though, that as my lying skills have degraded, I have also partially lost the ability to consider my words before I speak and I have lost the knack for social pablum (although I may never have had that to begin with; tough to say).
When someone asks me how I am, I always answer "same as always." I would like to say that I do it so that I don't need to commit to a position with which I disagree, but the truth is that the words come out before I can figure out the normal, polite response.
Overall, I think that lying is a very valuable skill. Maybe it is like self-defense; something that you hope that you don't have to use, but is always good to have available.
Saying you're "Fine" to a doctor, when you are not, would be a little foolish, would it not? As opposed to your standard workaday white lies.
It seems to me that with a complicit surrounding culture, you could get the full "santa experience" without telling any explicit lies.
"Daddy, how does Santa do X?"
"Well, some people think Y -- do you think that's a good explanation?"
and then patiently wait for the day Y is rejected as nonsense.
"A wizard may have subtle ways of telling the truth, and may keep the truth to himself, but if he says a thing the thing is as he says. For that is his mastery." -- A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Leguin
And in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, no one trusts the Aes Sedai, because after they vow to always tell the truth, they learn how to twist their words to get what they want anyway.
Someone who would tell the truth in a way that they knew would not convey the truth would not hold my trust.
This seems to me like "status quo bias" at work.
If there were no "Santa Claus" meme, you surely wouldn't try to invent new things to lie to your children about, would you?
I'm not going to assume that outright. If we take the 'rationalist origin stories' at face value, then it seems like it might be better for children to be lied to about seemingly important things, so that they have the epiphany that it's important to care about the truth. In the absence of Santa, maybe theism would be the only option? Or pastafarianism?
The prosecutor's fallacy seems to be in play here -- Pr(rationalist | lied to as a child) is not necesarily equal to Pr(lied to as a child | rationalist). (And that's not even getting into the swamp of causality...)