There's another pressure that we're beginning to feel in our family: the pressure to Santa.
Image (c) Coca-Cola (r) company, c. 1963Santa is an interesting entity. He has several godlike attributes: he sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows if you've been bad or good... (you know the rest)
It seems as the years pass that Santa is becoming the god of presents. We erect little (or enormous and inflatable) Santa idols in our yard, though nobody specifically bows down and worships him. We lay out little offerings to him on Christmas eve in the form of biscuits and milk (no wonder he's so portly). Our children write prayers in the form of letters to petition Santa for the presents they want. We tell our children that they have to behave a certain way, or Santa won't bless them with the goodies they've asked for. With overfull credit cards, parents sometimes hope that Santa will really deliver the gifts they need for their kids.
I know. You'll say "It's only a bit of fun!"
At SRE, I hear differently. The way some children talk about Santa is the way others talk about Jesus. In the minds of children Santa is as real as Mum and Dad, except better.
The question I ask is: are we doing our kids damage when we talk about Santa in similar ways to Jesus? When they hit 11 or 12 (or earlier) and find out that Santa's a myth, will that lead them to question the veracity of all the other unseen figures that their parents have been teaching them about? Or am I just being a party pooper and spoiling the world of imagination for kids?
Love to hear your thoughts...
5 comments:
I have santa ambivalence too. last year, at 2, sparky worked out santa wasn't real, so I told him he was right..........i'm not sure whether he remembers that though. I didn't deliberately let him work it out, but on the other hand I didn't make a big deal of santa being real either. he seems quite happy about santa being another kind of character, like thomas, or bob, or charlie and lola. so he will have the same positive feelings about santa he has for fave characters but aware not real. I think that works.
I haven't spent any time talking to the firstborn about Santa. Instead, pretty much all he has learnt has come from pre-school. I don't really want him to know yet that Santa's not real as he has no idea how to keep a secret, and would spoil it for all the other kids there.
Ambivalent is the right word, Meg! :)
I know how you feel, Prue. I don't want to upset parents by having my kids be the killjoys, but then I don't want to give Santa a big place in Christmas. We tend to focus on the fact that it's Jesus' birthday party, and have activities like Advent calendars to link in with that.
We just say that Santa is a fun part of Christmas, but we know that presents really come from Mummy and Daddy (heck, I did the shopping, so why let a fat man in red steal all the glory???). Then we say that some people like to pretend that he's real, but we know he's not, but if they think he is, we won't spoil it for them. It's worked so far..
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