Lying to Children

[cassiphone]

Originally published at tansyrr.com. You can comment here or there.

This post from Penni Russon about her eldest child figuring out the Santa thing made my heart hurt a little bit.

Ah, the Santa quandary. To lie, or not to lie?

Our only defence is that we never told Raeli that Santa is a real person who flies around giving out Christmas presents.

Comments

[julietvalcouer]

I think, in the case of my hypothetical child (and it's sad I'd mostly like to have one for two reasons, 1) it means I'd have found a husband before menopause and 2) excuse to buy a pony!) I would want them to have the EXPERIENCE. They're going to forget most of the presents eventually, I certainly did, but I remember writing to Santa (we could ask for ONE present and one present only from Santa--stockings were stuffed with little things and anything above and beyond the ONE THING was from Mom and Dad), leaving out hot cocoa and cookies (it's cold here at Christmas) and carrots for the reindeer, and that video of the presents magically appearing (and my brother and I even UNDERSTOOD what stop-motion photography was, but we still loved it) and the thrill of Christmas morning. Stuff is just stuff, but believing in fairy tales makes life interesting.

I'm lapsed Catholic (being a Deist who halfway believes in reincarnation can mess with modern Roman Catholicism, also my overwhelmingly negative general opinion of most humans) but I have a creche. Doing Christmas without it would seem like doing Channukah without a menorah.

[cassiphone]

I like the one present idea - I do make sure that the presents we give her that are meaningful to US are labelled from Mum or Dad. So only a few from Santa. I think that's important as well because of the whole potential of kids comparing notes on what they got...