A NYTimes article on telling kids about santa (or not).

What gets me is the pure meanness of some of the comments. Mostly from Santa Story Supporters, which doesn't make any sense to me. I mean, I've been told several times this year that people who don't think the traditional way of handling Santa is dishonest lack Christmas spirit, right? But if they're so chock-full of the spirit of the season, shouldn't they be nicer about it? I mean, it's okay for me to be a scroogy grinch, but they do Santa, so... yeah? Did I miss something?

Some of these comments (on all sides, really) are hysterical though.

( Nobody should care, the earth is dying!!!!111 )

( People are only commenting because if you read the news, you become cynical and mean )

( I HOPE SANTA BURNS YOUR HOUSES!!! YEAH! )

( If you don't believe in Santa, you go on the naughty list. St. Nick doesn't support freedom of thought or the scientific method )

( I have no sense of irony. And you're all mean. )

( My daughter honestly believes she's a cat, and I encourage this and make her say meow a lot. Or something )

( Obligatory intentional humor )

( Telling kids the truth about Santa is overprotecting and shielding them )

( A good first paragraph marred by more unintentional irony )

( The author is clearly delusional because of her beliefs )

( Santa is anti-Christian. And evil )

( People who don't believe in Santa are anti-Christian. And evil )

( It doesn't matter one way or another, but don't expect my kids to lie to yours just because you do )

( Being told to believe a fabricated lie does not build imagination. (Well, duh!) )

( A middle way! )

Whew! There's more where those came from, and they're only a tiny sampling of the commentary out there. Most people are at least marginally sensible, but some people get really upset on both sides. Right now, I'm a bit irritated that the overlying message in popular culture seems to be, for kids "Disbelieving in Santa is bad". I wouldn't mind "Santa is real", but the mutation I see is... troubling, to say the least.

This year, we all winked a lot. Ana likes winking, and Evangeline doesn't get any of it yet anyway.

On Santa and imagination.

People do keep saying that Santa is good for imagination. I don't quite understand this.

I see the nieces and their friends making up stories every day. This is wonderful. They come up with the most amazing things, ideas I would never have thought of, ever. Some of their ideas I can see came from bits and pieces of their own lives or stories they've been told, some I can see if I squint, and some they seem to make up wholecloth. Even if they're just pretending the most simple things, like being the mom and dad, or going to work, they add their own bits that are clearly all them.

I don't see children doing this with Santa, nor do I see kids expected to do this with Santa. I see one basic story told to kids, the same for everybody, and not much variation.

When my nieces pretend, they know they're pretending. They know they aren't really eating people, that they aren't really superheroes, that they aren't really authorized to give me a time-out. And when I play with them, I'm pretending too. I don't tell them to believe me if I say this thing or another, and if they misunderstand me and *do* believe something intended to be pretend, I tell them the truth.

I don't see this with Santa. We pretended Santa this year, but so many people take it as a given that children must believe in Santa. I see people online going through absurd measures to "preserve the innocence" of children seven, eight, nine years of age. It seems scary to them that their child might actually know the truth. (This is another issue altogether than the normal level of Santa myth, of course.)

I don't know about Evangeline, but Angelique believes the most interesting things sometimes! She believes, for example, that we have to be eaten to be born! She constantly surprises me with comments out of nowhere - "Penguins are a type of fish, right?" or "I-e-s makes ice cream!" - and then she looks to me for an answer, and an explanation. She wants help putting the world together so it makes sense. And even when she's wrong, she's right in a way. I can see basic reasoning. "Penguins live in the water, so they must be fish" and "Babies come from tummies. Food goes in tummies when we eat, so babies are eaten to go in tummies" and "I hear i-c-e often before somebody gets ice cream, so i-c-e (mixed up the way she remembered it) means ice cream".

If she were to believe in Santa, it wouldn't be quite so fantastic. It wouldn't be something developed out of her own sense of reason, her own experiences, her own thoughts. It would be something imposed from the outside, and enforced with relentless media messages and maybe family messages as well - snow on the doorstep, bites out of cookies, bells rung in the middle of the night. (Sooner or later, this starts to get creepy. A story is a story, but the line has to be drawn somewhere, right?)

I can say "Santa Culture in our country has gotten out of hand" without saying "I don't like pretending", and that is what I intend to say.

Some articles

One, by Amy Harmon, on parents of children with exceedingly rare genetic disorders finding each other
It comes with an MP3 of the backstory of the article
And a video

( Read more... )

A Display of Disapproval That Turned Menacing

( Read more... )

I'm of two minds about that second article. On the one hand, harassing others is wrong, end of story. No, it doesn't matter why. On the other hand, though, if you choose to move yourself to a very religious community, where everybody is very concerned about religious rules, you can't be too surprised when the local twits take their opinions too far. It's not like you didn't know their very strict view of things before you moved there.

Edit: Similarly, if I moved to the Bible Belt, and everybody prayed every graduation and school meeting - yes, it's wrong, and yes, I'm right to oppose it, but I would expect to make myself real unpopular real fast, and to then find that I had a hard time getting a record to take to the authorities. It's still wrong, but this sort of thing is why I'd think twice before moving into a new place.