A few years ago I asked an acquaintance what Santa was bringing her kids for Christmas. “Oh, we’ve told our kids Santa isn’t real,” she said, in a tone of grave seriousness. “We told them it’s a nice story, but it’s not true. We don’t lie to our children.”
I think I managed to stop my jaw from dropping open in horror-struck astonishment but the fire in my eyes would have told a different story.
First of all, we lie to our children all the time. Or at least we do if we’re good parents. If your child asks, “Why are you sad, Daddy?” are you really going to say it’s because some bastard at work is making your life miserable and you fear you’re going to lose your job? No, of course not. You tell your child you’re just a bit tired, you give them a smile and you say, “Do you want to kick the ball around?”
But new research has given encouragement to the Santa haters and their joyless, heartless delusions. It seems that believing in Santa could “undermine their trust in their parents and leave them open to abject disappointment when they eventually discover that magic is not real”.
What is wrong with these people? Why is scientific study being wasted on finding reasons for humourless people to justify their Santa denial? It seems the kind of modern parents who spend a fortune on drama classes to encourage their children’s imagination, are also sometimes oblivious to the phenomenal imagination driver that is Santa Claus.
Do they tell their kids bedtime stories, then add, just as the child is about to fall asleep, “They were just lies, darling, they’re not true. The wicked witch is just an anti-woman stereotype, Snow White wasn’t real, and if she was, she was very cruel to little people, and while big bad wolves do exist, they’re not going to blow our house down. In fact, I’m sorry I told you any stories at all. Sleep tight, drama class tomorrow!”
Thankfully, there are far more experts who understand the power of Santa than those who seem to think every lie is morally equivalent. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing for kids to believe in the myth of someone trying to make people happy if they’re behaving,” said Dr Matthew Lorber, a child psychiatrist at Lenox Hill hospital in New York. “Imagination is a normal part of development, and helps develop creative minds.”
Australian author Robert Macklin says when he discovered Santa was not real, he felt betrayed by the knowledge that the adults he trusted most had lied to him for years. But he also says his Santa discovery led to his success as a journalist and writer. “Along with a fierce sense of disillusion, there arrived unbidden a counterforce – an overwhelming, insatiable curiosity, a desperate desire to discover the truth behind every aspect of our world and its wonders.”
That sounds to me like a very good reason to be resolutely pro-Santa, but Macklin implores parents not to let their children believe in the man from the North Pole.
Thankfully, there is a much older tradition of journalists realising the rapture of believing in Santa. In 1897, eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon wrote a letter to the editor of New York’s Sun newspaper, asking “Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?” The Sun printed an editorial, written by Francis Church, which has since become legendary. “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,” Church wrote. “He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.”
The editorial ended by saying: “A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, Santa will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.”
I’m a middle-aged man and I still 100% believe in the power of Santa Claus. Those who don’t should find something more important to worry about, rather than trying to spoil the fun for billions of children and adults.
