Faking Santa

When I was growing up, my parents were into the whole “faking Santa” thing, and they were really, really into it. We were constantly reminded that we needed to be good if we wanted Santa to bring us presents. We were fed all of the songs and television specials about Rudolph and Santa and the north pole and the magical helper elves. We were dutiful in leaving an offering for Santa on Christmas Eve in the form of milk and cookies. On one occasion, a few days before Christmas, my father went to the window and exclaimed that he had just seen a sleigh land and slide down the street from our cul de sac. He ventured out into the snowy Anchorage night while my mother frantically told us to stay the away from the windows; I was too naive and trusting to regard this injunction as suspicious. A few minutes later, my father returned with Santa himself. Santa had a big bag of presents and wanted to give each of us an early Christmas gift. It wasn’t until years later that I would realize that “Santa” had been our neighbor two houses over, dressed up in a Santa suit, and that my mother had been insistent on keeping us away from the windows so that we would not see “Santa” exiting his real home.
I was sad when my older brother told me that Santa was not real, that the entire thing was a hoax perpetuated by our parents. I cried. I told him to take it back, to tell me that he was lying, and eventually he did and went back to re-affirming the Santa mythos. But I never really believed in Santa after that. I saw the pieces that didn’t fit: that “Santa’s” handwriting on the presents was the same as my mother’s, that “Santa” had a strange penchant for using the exact same wrapping paper that the gifts from my parents’ were wrapped in, that “Santa” seemed to give the wealthier children more presents and the poorer children fewer presents, that “Santa” somehow managed to be visiting multiple malls and department stores around Anchorage at the exact same time.
I got over the disappointment pretty quickly, and by the next year, I was assisting my parents in wrapping presents and perpetuating the Santa mythos to my younger siblings. There was something exhilarating about seeing the look on their faces the next morning when they saw the huge pile of presents and believed Santa had come. I realized that while the “Santa” thing may have been a lie, it was still a labor of love.
Once Harley was born, Paul and I began to discuss the Santa thing, and found that we’re in disagreement on the matter. I would much rather skip the Santa mythos and center our holiday traditions around Advent and the birth of Jesus narrative, with a nod to Saint Nicholas of Myra and a discussion of who he was and how the Santa mythos grew out of the legends about him. I think that there’s plenty of magic and excitement associated with the holidays without Santa, and I think that belief in Santa Claus tends to distract from observance of the Christian aspects of Christmas. Paul thinks that faking Santa is fun for the kids and Christmas isn’t the same without Santa. I told him that I would go ahead and put some “from Santa” gifts in our present stash and leave the faking Santa routine to him.
As it turns out, we haven’t had much room for faking Santa in our Christmas routine due to our daughter’s disabilities. Last year, when Harley had still shown little interest in potty training at 4.5 years of age, we began telling her that she could select a present from the Christmas stash every time she successfully went potty in the toilet, but every time she went in her diaper, we would take a present away. That girl got potty trained fast. Christmas presents motivated her in a way that nothing else could have or would have. This year, we’ve made the same deal with getting herself dressed as the reward activity. As such, she has a huge pile of presents already stacked around the tree, and has seen the entire present stash multiple times. Not much room for faking Santa in that.
This morning when Harley came into my room, I rolled towards her in bed and said, “Sweetheart, do you know what day it is today? It’s Christmas Eve. Tonight you can open one present, and tomorrow you can open all of them.”  She gave me a double thumbs-up, then started clapping with excitement and saying, “Yay, Christmas Eve!” There seems to be plenty of excitement and anticipation in our Christmas preparations without much help from Santa.
Tonight we’re going to do our customary opening-a-present-on-Christmas-Eve, then attend the 11 PM candle-lighting Christmas Eve service at DeerGrove Covenant Church. Tomorrow morning we’ll open presents, then go to Sacrament meeting at Paul’s ward at 11:30 AM.
Merry Christmas to all!

Comments

Faking Santa — 7 Comments

  1. We tell children that they just “have to believe” in Santa Claus and that his magic helps him to deliver presents around the world, but we aren’t angry when children eventually figure out this is a ruse. Why is it that we teach children that they just “have to believe” in God through faith? Why is it okay for an adult to accept God without proof but not okay to accept Santa without proof? I understand that it feels good to believe in God, but it feels good to children to believe in Santa.
    If you are going to say that there is a super powerful invisible spirit being controlling the universe, you need to show conclusive proof of something that wouldn’t exist if such on invisible spirit wasn’t real (and if you say the universe needs a creator, you’d better come up with a logic explanation for why the creator doesn’t need a creator). Accepting things without proof is dangerous and too many people have died fighting over which invisible being should be worshiped.
  2. I don’t teach my daughter that she “has to” believe in God or Santa, through faith or otherwise, and I think it’s a little bit sad that you tell your children that they “have to believe” in either.
    I believe in God because of what I discussed in my previous post on the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. And if my daughter ever questions the existence of God, I won’t tell her that she just “has to” believe in him and that’s that. I’ll point her to the tools she needs to decide for herself whether she believes in God and why.
    If you are going to say that there is a super powerful invisible spirit being controlling the universe, you need to show conclusive proof of something that wouldn’t exist if such on invisible spirit wasn’t real
    This statement is not logical. “You cannot believe the entire universe and everything in it exists because of a sentient entity unless you can show me something that would not exist without that sentient entity.” Don’t get me wrong; I’m not one of those Christians who thinks Kalam is the be-all end-all of arguments for the existence of God. It isn’t. But what you’re saying here is nonsense.
    In any case, people believe in things and act on them in their day-to-day lives without conclusive proof all the time, and I don’t just mean supernatural things. Your “show me proof or you have no right to believe in it” paradigm strikes me as hopelessly impractical and more than a little naive.
    Accepting things without proof is dangerous and too many people have died fighting over which invisible being should be worshiped.
    Yes, if only there were someplace on this planet where the government was officially atheist, atheism and agnosticism were the dominant forms of belief among the people, and parents were forbidden by law from teaching their children those dangerous theistic superstitions. Surely such a place would be a bastion of peace and happiness.
  4. Thank you for taking the time to seriously respond to my post. Here is my response. I know this comment is long, but I would be interested in your thoughts about the issues I raise here.
    I’m not accusing you of forcing your child to believe in Santa or in God. What I’m saying is that both Santa and God are presented to our children in our culture as something that is good to accept without asking too many questions (Doubting Thomas is actually belittled in the gospels for asking for reasonable proof). We offer children simplistic answers that don’t really respond to their questions (“How does Santa fit down the chimney if he is so fat?” “Well honey, Santa has magic that allows him to slip down the chimney”. “If God is all powerful, why did he let that earthquake kill all of those innocent people?” “Well honey, sometimes God works in mysterious ways. He has a plan for us.”) While we expect children to eventually figure out that Santa isn’t real, for some reason we are happy with the same types of non-answers when it comes to the existence of God)
    I should be more specific about what I was talking about in regard to proof of God. Basically I was trying to make a comment about Occam’s Razor. For example, if you see a very sick person get better, should we believe that A) a super powerful invisible being exists that has non-material powers that were used to heal this man without anyone seeing the being do it or B) sometimes the body heals itself in even severe cases. Occam’s Razor says that the simplest explanation is most often correct. We have verified scientific examples of bodies healing themselves whereas we don’t have verified scientific examples of super powerful invisible beings with non-material powers. The reason why we know that people are wrong when they say that the moon landing was faked or that the holocaust was faked or that the government planned 9/11 is because the amount of evidence that would need to be hidden (that somehow only the conspiracy theorist knows) is enormous. It is far more likely that the evidence we have that the moon landing happened, the holocaust happened, and 9/11 was caused by Al Qaeda is actually accurate.
    Now some might say “Okay we have no evidence that God has interacted with humans, but maybe there is a Deist God who created the universe and stepped back.” And it is true that while string theory suggests that there may be multiple universes that give birth to new universes, including this one, scientists haven’t gotten physical proof of this yet. While I’ll admit that we still have a lot to learn about the creation of the universe, I think the difference between string theory and God theory is that while string theory has at least the mathematical backing to it, God theory does not even have that.
    You are right that people believe things on a day to day basis without proof, but the difference is that those people could get proof if they wanted to while people can’t do that when it comes to faith. For example, teachers can trust their students not to cheat on a test, but they can, if they want, check to see whether the students cheated or not, either by walking around the room to check for hidden answer sheets or by using new computer programs that check submitted papers to see if there is considerable similarity to papers on the web or papers that other students submitted. There is no test you can do to test God’s existence. Simple tests like “God I’ll believe in you if you appear to me in physical form right now”, though simple for an all powerful God to do, are denounced by the church as “testing God” as if that’s a bad thing. You can’t prove that God doesn’t exist, but you can’t prove bigfoot or fairies don’t exist either (they could be hiding somewhere). We can’t go around believing in all the things that we can’t absolutely prove don’t exist. Instead we should focus on believing in the things that we can prove exist.
    Yes, China has a record of brutality, but the often repeated claim that Conservative Christians make that Atheism is somehow responsible for this is clearly false. China and other Communist nations were following the teachings of Communism. There is nothing in Atheism that calls for religion or society to be oppressed by the government. For a better example of what an Atheist country might look like, look at Europe. There almost every country is a Democracy where people have freedom of religion but many people chose not to follow any faith. In France, for example, one out of every three people is an Atheist (that’s why so many Mormons, such as Mitt Romney and Elizabeth Smart, were sent to prosthelytize there) Despite this large influx of godlessness, society has not collapsed. In fact, Europe has some of the world’s best records on civil rights when it comes to race and gender, some of the richest middle classes, and some of the lowest levels of gun violence. Much of the problems with violence that they do have are due to recently immigrated fundamentalist Muslims. So I think the idea that a society needs religion to be peaceful is bunk.
    Humans are perhaps the only animal that can anticipate their own death. The fear of death as well as the trauma of loved ones dying makes a belief in the afterlife psychologically advantageous. It sooths us and helps us to avoid the existential conflicts that otherwise strike us. Belief in Gods or Goddesses helps to give us a sense that there is someone watching out for us and gives us hope when times are tough. People make the mistake of believing that the brain evolved to figure out the world. This is false. The brain evolved to help us survive and believing in Gods or Goddesses helped us do that in the past by providing us with a sense of optimism about the future that was needed to persevere. But what gives us optimism is not always the truth. If we want that, we can rely only on evidence not faith.
    I also posted a response to “How do Evangelical Know the Truth?” post that explain my views on your writing. I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on that comment too.
  5. TomW ~ While I appreciate the more cordial tone of your latest post, I’m not certain how long I’ll be able to continue this exchange. It sounds like you’re using my OP as an excuse to launch into an all-out attack on the existence of God, when the OP had little to do with the existence of God. I hope you understand. I’ll try to offer you some brief responses just the same.
    I can’t say that I understand at this point where you’re going with Occam’s Razor, string theory, etc. As with your first post, it sounds like you’re trying to preemptively respond to arguments that I haven’t even made. You obviously have a lot to say, but my time is limited and I really can’t defend hypothetical arguments that have nothing to do with my OP and I’d never even thought about making.
    Just because other people present simplistic arguments to their children for Santa and/or God doesn’t mean that I’m going to or that I think such is best, and I’m certainly not going to defend how people who aren’t me are raising their children. I’m not the kind of person who is happy with the kind of “non-answers” for God that you listed.
    You are right that people believe things on a day to day basis without proof, but the difference is that those people could get proof
    This isn’t true at all. Some examples:
    - I can’t prove that my husband isn’t sleeping with other women. I could try to watch him and catch him in the act if I suspected that he was, but the fact is, I can’t watch him 24-7. The best evidence I have that he isn’t sleeping with other women is that he’s given me his word, and he’s given me other reasons to trust that his word is good.
    - My father was diagnosed with a very rare and aggressive form of muscular dystrophy in May of last year. The doctors told him there was nothing they could do for him and he would probably be in a wheelchair by the end of the year. My father began looking around on the Internet and found some articles claiming that Vitamin E helps slow the effects of MD or improve symptoms. Other articles claimed that it wouldn’t help, and the doctors didn’t think that it would help, but he began taking Vitamin E supplements anyways. He says the results have been amazing. He’s still walking, he’s in much less pain, and he’s even optimistic that he may retain the use of his muscles long enough to retire in 8 years (!). Did the Vitamin E really help him? Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t.Someone could theoretically do more scientific studies and try to prove whether or not it’s the Vitamin E that’s helping my dad. But in the meantime, my dad has to do something. For all practical intents and purposes, he has to act on faith, without proof.
    - I don’t know for certain that I won’t be killed in a car accident next time I get into my car. I know that I’ve been on car trips thousands of times and only been in car accidents twice (once as a small child and once as an adult when I was driving). I know that I’m generally a pretty good driver who wears a seat belt and doesn’t take unnecessary risks. But that doesn’t mean that tomorrow won’t be my third car accident, and that it won’t be much worse that the last two. I still choose to drive on faith that I will get to my destination.
    they wanted to while people can’t do that when it comes to faith.
    People can obtain evidence for the Christian faith via prayer, miracles, and putting the principles of the Christian faith to the test in their own lives.
    I didn’t claim that atheism is responsible for the brutality in China. I only pointed out that there is brutality in China in spite of its prominent atheism. If atheists wish to hold religion responsible for the worst things that religious people have ever done, then I don’t see why they shouldn’t likewise be held responsible for the worst things atheists have done.
    My own position is that neither atheism nor religion causes evil. People cause evil. Religious belief becomes a tool when used in the service of evil. It isn’t a self-existent cause of it.
  6. I’m still torn on the Santa issue. I’d like to focus more on Christ. My little girl is five months, so I still have time to figure it out. I hope your Christmas was lovely!
  7. Hi Jack,
    The comments of Tom point to some of the exact reasons that I have tried to avoid Santa in my household! It is difficult to believe in God sometimes! I don’t want to tell my children about baby Jesus and Santa in the same breath, and then to have them question all I have told them later. As you have discovered there are plenty of magical and fun things to do at Christmas time, without any lying to the kids about Santa. I’m sure my youngest sort of believes in Santa from what is around us, I’ve not flat out denied him, but when we see him at the shopping centre, I always say – there is a man dressed up as Santa, and I’m sure to let them know that the presents are from Mum and Dad, not a stranger!
    So many more important stories and traditions to give to our children!
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