I've long entertained a dubious regard for the practice of lying to children about the existence of Santa Claus. Parents might claim that it serves to make children's lives more magical and exciting, but as a general rule, children are adequately equipped to create fantasies of their own without their parents' intervention. The two reasons I suspect rest at the bottom line are adherence to tradition, and finding it cute to see one's children believing ridiculous things.
Personally, I considered this to be a rather indecent way to treat one's own children, and have sometimes wondered whether a large proportion of conspiracy theorists owe their origins to the realization that practically all the adults in the country really are conspiring to deceive children for no tangible benefit. However, since I began frequenting this site, I've been exposed to the alternate viewpoint that this realization may be good for developing rationalists, because it provides children with the experience of discovering that they hold beliefs which are wrong and absurd, and that they must reject them.
So, how did the Santa deception affect you personally? How do you think your life might have been different without it? If your parents didn't do it to you, what are your impressions on the experience of not being lied to when most other children are?
Also, I promise to upvote anyone who links to an easy to register for community of conspiracy theorists where they would not be averse to being asked the same question.
Perhaps. I will note that I did receive other gifts, typically from grandparents who went with relatively safe choices in clothing, which were infrequently a recipe for being pleasantly surprised.
I do not experience much anticipation or suspense with regard to Christmas, and that may be a real loss. But I find the tradeoff strongly preferable- I do not seem to experience a need for novelty in my material possessions. The people I know well that have such a need seem much worse off because of it.
I also think the calculation that the value of surprise is greater than the lost value in inefficient gifts is mistaken (and the guilt and social hardships that can result), or at least only has a positive result for some subset of the population. I think a view of gift-giving as costly signalling is more accurate and less optimistic.
The non-Grinch part of my message is: there are better places to find pleasant surprise than gift-giving rituals. Indeed, detaching gift-giving from ritual occasions seems to increase the surprise.
I'm sure it would increase the surprise, but it also decreases the anticipation, which is part of it.
Personally, the gifts that I got the most enjoyment out of were usually video games; I'll revisit a good video game many times, even after the system has become outdated. Whereas I've bought most of my favorite books myself, most of my favorite games were given... (read more)