With Christmas being celebrated, it’s a good time to critically review the American custom of parents encouraging their children to believe in Santa Claus, a generous and jolly benefactor who stays at the North Pole except for one night a year when he visits every single house in the world.
Does it occur to any of them that they might possibly be underestimating the intelligence of first graders?
Leading up to Dec. 25, kids see multiple versions of Santa Claus in shopping malls, on street corners, in parade floats, and on TV.
And while adults think they’ve concocted a good alibi for the hundreds of Santas, calling them Santa’s helpers, do you think a first grader ever wonders why they all look exactly alike?
Or why, for example, a random Santa once traveled 4,000 miles to the Evergreen Park Shopping Plaza to ask me what I wanted for Christmas, having apparently ignored a detailed list I sent in the mail a month earlier?
I mean, I wasn’t even considered a “gifted” child when I was 6 years old. Yet, I knew something was rotten in Denmark when my parents gave a rather shaky explanation as to why I had to thank Grandma and Grandpa for the Tonka Truck that appeared under the tree: “It was Grandpa who sent money to Santa’s elves who made the truck.”
Really, Dad?
Granted, I may have had more cause for doubts and questions than most other first graders. That’s because in our household, several times during the year, including summer, Santa would suddenly emerge from the basement door to scare the bejeesus out of my brother Kenneth and me. His visits seemed to occur most often after a particularly egregious act of disobedience or malfeasance on our part.
During these surprise home invasions, Santa was usually possessed of an uncanny wealth of information about our crimes, as he interrogated and scolded and ultimately threatened us with sanctions, if we didn’t start doing our chores in a timely fashion, or stop stealing Tootsie Roles from the top kitchen cabinet.
Even as shocked and as inexperienced as I was, I couldn’t help notice that Santa’s eyes had the same amber, knowing gleam as my mother’s. But I was also sufficiently scared not to bring this up, as it seemed important to my welfare to humor all the adult playacting.
Which leads me to my main thesis: Since Santa Claus seems to be a concept, similar to Little League baseball, in which adults re-experience their own childhood fantasies and traumas at the traumatic expense of their own children, isn’t it time for reform?
Writing in Psychology Today, Dr. David Kyle Johnson asserts that perpetuating the myth can be harmful: “It’s an unjustified lie, it risks damaging your parental trustworthiness, and it encourages credulity and ill-motivated behavior” — the latter doubtless a reference to Christmas gifts as a reward for “being good.”
So, how about we stop lying to the kids? What’s the harm of coming clean?
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Of course, there’s the whole, ‘Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” philosophy, as embodied in the editorial reprinted annually in nearly every paper in the country. The thinking is that it there’s nothing wrong with children believing in Santa as the embodiment of the kind and generous spirit in human beings.
Fine, then. Explain to the kids that Santa is not real, but just a cartoon character, not unlike Spider Man or Wonder Woman, who symbolizes goodness, generosity, and imagination for children both young and old. So, we sing songs, give gifts, and even dress up like him, similar to Halloween.
Think of all the unnecessary machinations of deception we’ll be able to dispense with. And think of the shock and horrible disillusionment we spare the children from, when they do not have to endure the crushing discovery sometime in third grade, that there is no Santa.
Naysayers will call me a Scrooge, claiming I’m destroying a fantasy that inspires and captivates childhood.
Humbug. I was wildly captivated as a child, inspired by Superman, a.k.a. Clark Kent, though I knew from the outset that he was not real. News Flash: Children are experts at pretending and using their imagination, even when we give them the cold facts.
Sure, you probably think this is easy for me to say since I am old and no longer have young children. And you’re right. Now, all I have to do is convince the parents of my grandchild that it’s the right thing to do.
David McGrath is emeritus professor of English at College of DuPage.