<p>Should we encourage the belief that kids have in Santa Claus?</p>
<p>Go.
Start brainstorming.</p>
<p>I say yes.</p>
<p>No. However using Santa Claus to represent christmas, but not claiming him to be real is alright imo.</p>
<p>Driftwood: It’s all right. That’s, that’s in every contract. That’s, that’s what they call a sanity clause.
Fiorello: Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! You can’t fool me. There ain’t no Sanity Clause!</p>
<p>Yes. We should reinforce the fact that a mythical man will come down from the skies to bestow favors on us if we believe in him and are morally good. That sounds original… oh wait.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>They may not want this Christian holiday dominated by belief in a pagan symbol. They also may want to emphasize that Santa often steals the thunder of the birth of Christ, and takes away from the true meaning of Christmas.</p></li>
<li><p>Other families are opposed to encouraging kids to believe in Santa Claus because they feel this is an outright lie to children. They feel they break their children’s trust by telling them a lie that sooner or later will be discovered by the kids. They may remember the disappointment of finding out that Santa didn’t exist when they were kids and do not wish to inflict the same disappointment on their own children.</p></li>
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<p>Chedva- The quote was not from thread, but it was from an online source.
Thank you.</p>
<p>My family never did… Everyone in our family always plays the game (“look! Santa came!”) but from about 2 years old they know that he isn’t real.</p>
<p>Note: My family never did the whole Santa thing, so I’m probably biased.</p>
<p>I don’t think that adults should encourage kids to believe in Santa because of trust issues. Sure, St Nicholas was a real person, but he does not exist as a mythical toy deliveryman. When the kids find out that their parents lied to them, it might create untrusting feelings.</p>
<p>I always talked about Santa (and the tooth fairy) as a kind of joke, but I knew all along that they weren’t real. I don’t know how it feels to believe in Santa and have that illusion taken away, so I can’t really give an opinion. I think if the child figures out for him/herself that Santa’s not real, rather than having to be told, it’s less traumatizing than your parents coming up to you one day and saying, “By the way, that awesome guy we’ve been telling you about for the past x years isn’t real.”</p>
<p>I just realized that I probably destroyed the Santa illusion for some of my friends when I was a kid. Whoops.</p>
<p>I think so. I don’t have a problem with it. My brother and I believed in Santa until we were in about 4th or 5th grade, and we’ve turned out ok. You eventually just grow out of it, I guess. It wasn’t traumatizing or anything like that. No trust issues, etc.</p>
<p>Yes. Why shouldn’t we? It’s not like it’s the biggest lie we’ll ever tell our children.</p>
<p>“Mom, Dad, after all these years, I realize that you weren’t actually wrestling those times I would accidentally stumble into your room.”</p>
<p>Wait… Santa isn’t real? T___T</p>
<p>The past 18 years has been a LIE! </p>
<p>//seriously:
My parents always told my brother and me that Santa wasn’t really coming down the chimney and such, perhaps because we might have gotten mischievous thoughts to try to catch Santa (hehe…) and I DEFINITELY destroyed the illusion that there was really a Santa to a bunch of my friends… oops?</p>
<p>What the heck is wrong with you people? Just let the kids have a freaking childhood and let them believe in Santa Clause. Santa is magical to little kids. Their childhoods are already cut short as it is, let them have a jolly old man who brings toys.</p>
<p>Sheesh.</p>
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</p>
<p>:rolleyes:</p>
<p>i couldn’t agree with romanigypsyeyes said more! the thought of a santa claus made christmas more fun, and i wasn’t emotionally traumatized when i heard santa wasn’t real. santa claus is just part of childhood.</p>
<p>I never believed in Santa, but I remember being shocked when my cousin told me that there was no tooth fairy in 2nd grade. Not devastated, just shocked.</p>
<p>I think the benefit of the lie being shattered could teach children that the ‘real world’ is different from theirs. It’s a transitory discovery: At 5 everything is made of light and colors, at 8 you start to stop believing in those lights and colors (at least on a non-ethereal, material level), and at 10 (maybe earlier, maybe later) you realize that there are starving people in the world and others who die painfully and/or early without doing anything to deserve it.</p>
<p>The tooth fairy’s pretty obvious though. One person comes to school saying they got $10. Another says they got $1 or even 25 cents. Hmm…</p>
<p>The whole “trust issues” thing is ridiculous. Seriously, you want to rob children of anything magical or special in their christmas? I had been speculating about whether or not santa was real, and when i was 6, i asked my mom. She said no, santa wasn’t real, and then explained why parents told their children that he was real [so that they could have something a little magical in their christmas, etc]. There were never any trust issues, and I actually liked knowing something that other kids in my class/my younger cousins didn’t know.</p>
<p>
Because no one younger than 5 has ever had anyone they loved die? Or suffered in some other way? Most children are aware of the evils in the world as soon as they are aware of the good in it. They hardly live in a world suffused with color and light. There’s never not been at least some darkness in the lives of most. Though children may not understand what is wrong in the manner that we do, children’s experiences shouldn’t be disregarded on account of their age. I knew what death was when I was 5. My sister knew what abandonment was when she was 4. Some of my cousins knew and know pains that I will likely never be able to imagine. Our suffering was not diminished on account of our age.</p>
<p>Anyway, my sister intended to raise her child sans-Santa, but everyone else figured that, being a kid, she believed in Santa. My niece liked the idea of a Santa and my sister didn’t want to tell her that such a nice guy wasn’t real. So, now my niece believes in Santa. Or maybe not anymore. I mean, she is 8.
I wouldn’t have minded being raised without Santa, but I loved St. Nicholas’ day. I never knew that it was a saint’s day or anything, I just knew that one day in the winter, when we took off our shoes and went for a nap in the 3 to 5-year-old classrooms, there were candies in our shoes when we woke up. I find it odd that this doesn’t happen to everyone in America.</p>
<p>^I’ve never heard of St. Nicholas’ day. Hm. </p>
<p>Anyway, Santa Claus is an integral part of many peoples’ childhoods. When I was a kid I had fun keeping up the secret with my little brother, and I look forward to it again once my other brother is old enough to understand the concept of santa. I look forward to it with my own child. Santa is fun for everyone, and the story helps keep Christmas magical [for everyone].</p>
<p>lol @ Gryffon</p>