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I must admit, I did let her write a letter to the snow fairies. And we've been playing like we see Pookas all winter...
Somehow, fairies seem more like an acceptable item of childhood faith than Santa Claus.
I can't afford the doll, anyway.
I probably will put out a gift for her Christmas morning "from Santa". We've always done that. But she's always said "thank you" to Mom and Dad; she knows it's us.
I wonder what she's really thinking. I think maybe I'll just follow her lead this Christmas. Maybe Santa won't get her what she really wants because Santa is really mom and dad playing the Santa game, and they have a budget. But the game is special and fun, and it's fun to play it.
My little girl has been playing with faith and belief quite a bit this last 6 months. I suppose everyone has to work out their own Paths through the mysteries. I'll make sure she knows that her gifts come from her loving parents, but if "Santa" as a god is part of her celebrations, I won't ruin it for her.
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My parents didn't raise me to believe in Santa. Anyway at the grocery store, shortly after Christmas I mortified my mother when I was about three.
Nice little old lady: So what did santa bring you for Christmas?
AJ: Santa didn't come to my house, he went to Jennifer's instead.
AJ's Mom: <turns embarrased shade of pink>
Mom then had to explain that Jennifer across the street had had a kids Christmas party that I went to, where there was a Santa handing out candy canes, but that they didn't think it was right to lie to your kids and therefore hadn't encouraged the whole Santa thing.
quote: Well, do you want to teach her that the things she chooses to believe in are real, regardless of whether they're ACTUALLY real or not?
This gets back to the heart of the matter. Does having faith in Santa better prepare children to have faith in (for a practical example) getting your expedition out of the antarctic alive (like Ernest Shackleton). Or will the probable disillusionment harm their ability to exercise faith?
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quote: Faith, not in Santa Claus, but in the goodness of people, is what the kids find in that fat old elf. In religious terms, Santa is a bit of "The Garden" that arrives once a year, and that jaded, tired, adults will kill themselves in order to perserve for thier children.
Once you quit believing in Santa, your time in the Garden is over. Slowly, painfully, tearfully you are thrust into the real world, the cruel world.
Dan, you are quite awesome. Very well said. We have a world where at one end of the compass there exists Anne Rice's 'Savage Garden' and at the other end we have Wilde's garden for children. Excellent. Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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I believed in Santa up until I was 10 or so (I think--my time memory is poor), scientific outlook on life completely aside.
Of course, it seems to have had something to do with an incident that occurred when I was five or six. We had Christmas at my grandparents' that year, and they lived in an old house with a real fireplace and chimney, albeit one that had gone unused for years.
That morning, I awoke to find the screen over the fireplace and the couch in front of it had been shoved aside. Ashes were tracked onto the floor, and a new broom had been left as a present. Perhaps I should have questioned why it had happened that year and not before or after, but it took me a long long time to get the idea that it was all a put-on.
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Okay, I think I've figured out my problem. Santa Claus is Darth Vader. Reading Homeless in Hell helped me to understand him. It was a wonderful Speaking, as it were. All the bad feelings popped up to the surface where I could see them.
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I never believed completely in Father Christmas. BUt I could never get my parents to admit it. It is an unspoken thing in my house. And that was enough, because I knew that even if Father Christmas wasn't there, my parents cared enough to pretend that he was, and pretended every year, even though we get older and older and we once calculated the speed FC would have to go to deliver presents to everyone who wanted them. It's the thought and pretense, not the acutuality, that makes Father Christmas for me...
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I can remember, at about age four or so, debating with another kid in my preschool about the existance of Santa. He was pro-Santa. It just devolved into him saying "are you calling my mom a liar", and me saying "I'm not saying she's a liar, I'm saying that she's wrong" (while thinking that she was a liar.
It wasn't that I'd arrived at Santa's non-existance myself though. I'd actually wanted to believe in him, but my parents explained to me that he was "pretend, like Frosty, or the Tooth Fairy, or God". My father now claims he would never have said such a thing, but he did. Made quite an impression. I was an bitter radical materialist for the longest time. Used to love baiting Evangelical types. I got over it.
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Teshi, the speed calculations leave out the fact that he's got time travel, so he takes a good part of the year to do one Christmas Eve. I'm not even sure how long-lived he is, or if he doesn't really spend many years of his subjective time doing one Christmas in our time. I'm not really sure what species he is, but I think he is a whole lot smarter and more capable than a normal human, at least, anyway. His technology is so far in advance of ours that I wouldn't be surprised if he had constructed his body to his own specifications. So it might have all sorts of capabilities of which we are ignorant of the possibility, even. That's why those calculations of how he would have to exceed the speed of light, and so on, to do what he does, are flawed. They don't take into account his superior technology.
[ December 16, 2003, 04:34 PM: Message edited by: ana kata ]
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I can't remember ever really believing. I do remember being about 4 and thinking that the 'from Santa' tags looked a lot like my mom's handwriting (Mom used Santa mainly as an excuse not to wrap presents. They just showed up with a plain scrap of paper as a label.) My folks never told me he was real, and they never came out and announced that he didn't exist, either.
I'm kind of similar with my own daughter; I try to treat it as a fun fairy tale, but I would never try to convince her that he's Real.
Back to the OP, I'm LDS, and I can't recall ever running into other Mormons who Encourage Santa Claus. Am I missing something? Is it regional?
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I'm not sure whether Anne Kate is LDS, but her level of faith in Santa Claus is characteristic of the folks I am referring to. They hear the bells, they put out the cookies, they see the reindeer tracks.
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And I've never met Mormons who didn't do the whole Santa Claus thing. I always assumed that it was something that almost everyone did, regardless of religion.
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Hmmm. That reminds me that I keep wanting to make a Christmas movie thread, but it's too painful to think about.
JB insofar as Santa believing is characteristic of American Materialism, and cultural "mormons" list toward American Materialism, I think that is the case. I'm totally against the commercial aspect of Santa. But I don't think anyone on this thread has defended that. My idea of commercial Santa is "let's wallow in the fact that we are the most priviledged culture on Earth". Materialistic Santa is more like the Calvinist idea that if you are good, you get material reward.
I'm trying to understand what Santa is about, if it isn't commercial santa and it isn't Materialistic santa and it's not Usurp the celebration of Jesus' Birth Santa.
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Maybe I should ask myself what I got out of believing in Santa. I think it made Christmas a little more magical. I think Santa sets an example of selfless giving. I think it also helps children to learn to be good. Let's face it: most children aren't selflessly good. But I think giving them some rewards for being good will help them learn to be good without rewards.
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quote:And I've never met Mormons who didn't do the whole Santa Claus thing. I always assumed that it was something that almost everyone did, regardless of religion.
I think I may have worded that wrong. I don't know anyone who doesn't do something with Santa, you can hardly avoid it, but I meant I don't know of many Mormons who really push a belief in Santa, with bells and hoofprints and whatnot. Or maybe all my neighbors do, and I just don't know!
I have a close friend who was 12 or so before she figured it out. Her parents had a guy who came over every Christmas Eve as Santa (the same guy every year), with bells in the distance and all. This strikes me as completely twisted, but she seems to have fond memories. She was raised nothing-in-particular religious-wise, though.
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Ah. Gotcha. Yeah, I think it's cruel to try to force the belief when they're old enough to discover otherwise. I'm amazed that people can make it into junior high still believing in Santa. That's just asking to be teased.
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Anna, that may be where most people who would say it today got it. However, I remember that many years before The Nightmare Before Christmas, I was reading a Spider-Man comic. In the editorial section, there was a little pic of a card with Wolverine disguised as Santa. Part of the text said "have a taste of my Santa claws, bub!" So it's at least as old as early 80s, when that comic came out.
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I remember very clearly finding that receipt in my parents bedroom one January. That was a painful moment. I second the reference to being thrust out of the childhood garden and into the cruel world of youth limbo.
Though, I'd never want to go back to being blissfully ignorant again, as fun as it was at the time. I just have this need to know...
The character in the Matrix who wants to be reinserted into the matrix and forget all about the "real world" is beyond my ability to comprehend. How could someone intentionally give up knowledge, no matter how bleak?
However, I still believe in Santa! Just not his physical reality.
quote: Your mistletoe is no match for my TOW missile!
That is the funniest line from anything I have ever seen...thanks for reviving it.
I tell my kids that Christmas is about Jesus, and we trade gifts to remind us of the gift God gave to us. Plus we make a BIG deal about giving gifts to the needy and other people we love, and we let our kids wrap and give the presents. We make most of our gifts to teach our kids that giving is about love. So far, my son only thinks of giving at Christmas, and if he ever gets to the point where he worries more about what he gets than what he gives, I SWEAR we will stop trading gifts at Christmas. That may seem extreme, but I don't think there is any measure too far to go to that keeps our kids caring about others more than themselves, and keeps them from developing greed. We can still give gifts, but we'll make a special day for that and keep Christmas just for Christ.
The Dutch do it right. St. Nick comes on the fifth and Christmas is reserved for Jesus.
We don't tell our kids that Santa exists, but we don't stop them from pretending. I have firsthand experience in the "being crushed when told about Santa" arena, and I actually had a tough time trusting my parents for a long time. Of course, my parents tried really hard to make me believe and went to great lengths to integrate him into Christmas. Blegh...it's giving me a yucky taste in my mouth.
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I was thinking of a different story when I said it made me sad. I loved Homeless in Hell.
I once read a near death experience where the guy saw a lot of early prophets and apostles working around in heaven. So the story implied, to me, that what they were doing wasn't useful. But... I don't know if OSC read that one or what the other near death literature is like.
I guess the thought that they couldn't help everyone kind of nags at my OCD. You know, why do the laundry if I can't clean the whole house ?
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pooka, yes I am LDS, though I'm a convert, so I'm not sure if that counts. I have faith in Santa because I know him well. And he's a trustworthy sort of guy. That's all. Now the tooth fairy can be sort of wacko sometimes. If she were human you might think she had a little touch of manic depression or something. But Santa is just a dear, kind soul.
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I hear the Easter Bunny has a touch of ADD, and is a bit claustrophobic, but is fairly nice once you get past that stuff.
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Yeah, being claustophobic is really bad for a rabbit, too. Makes you nervous in warrens. Otherwise I suppose he would just be like any ordinary bunny.
All the magnificent people are also broken. It's another one of the paradoxes of life, that we must be broken to grow big, like an eggshell, or a snake moulting, maybe. Like Dostoyevsky.
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After years of therapy, I've gotten over my disillusionment over Santa. Fortunately, I still have the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy to see me through.
Question: What does it do to a kid's "FAITH" (all caps) when faith in Santa is violated and proven false?
Should we rather teach children not to believe in unprovable myths? If that's true, then how would we train them to have Faith in God -- which is essentially unprovable through normal use of logic or experimentation.
Maybe it's better to have kids believe in Santa so that they can later learn the difference between a true belief and a TRUE belief? (One that is true for the society they live in, even after they are initiated into adulthood.)
I don't know.
I think belief in Santa is pretty benign as things go. I mean, I used to believe that inanimate objects had souls and it hasn't harmed me any. Sure, I feel guilty if I type too hard on the keyboard, and I just about died when I had to junk my last car, but other than that, no problems!
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I don't think faith is something you should try to train into someone. Figuring out what you believe in and what matters to you is as close to your core selfness as it comes. I think maybe the best thing is to just live as the person you are, and teach them everything they ask about, and offer them everything you have and know, and hope that will be enough.
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quote:Yeah, being claustophobic is really bad for a rabbit, too. Makes you nervous in warrens. Otherwise I suppose he would just be like any ordinary bunny.
Exactly! It looked like a curse back when he was still trying to fit in in the warren, but once he got out in the open air and landed that egg delivery job, things really took off for him.
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Yeah, whoever thought the poor unhappy fellow who never had a real home would end up as a mythic archetype of Spring? He's a shining light for us misfits everywhere.
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I'm shocked no one has said "It's okay to not believe in Santa, lady, because Santa believes in you." NOT. Posts: 18 | Registered: Dec 2003
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