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.
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.
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.
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"?