The only reason kids believe in Santa Claus is because parents lie to them. There's no two ways about it -- even if you are convinced that childhood belief in Santa is harmless or even beneficial, it is still founded on lies. You can't shove responsibility on to the rest of society; parents have to actively participate in and support the deception for the belief to take hold. No sincere defense of teaching belief in Santa can avoid this. So is it justified?
A forum member writes:
A coworker mentioned that her 8-yr-old niece has discovered that there is no Father Christmas, and says that she can no longer trust her parents because they lied to her. So, I agreed with the kid. My colleague disagreed with me, and said that telling kids about Father Christmas wasn't lying.
So I ended up stating what I think is the bleeding obvious: If you tell a kid something you know isn't true, you are lying. I said that I don't think parents should do such a thing, for the (demonstrated) reason that it destroys trust. I don't get why she didn't see this, but it seemed to have something to do with the 'magic of childhood'.
The only other argument she had was the idea that if your child is the only one knowing the truth, they might upset the other kids by telling them. This translates as 'lie to your kids because everyone else is', which isn't exactly convincing. But I didn't say that bit. Anyway, why do people think like this?
People may come up with fair reasons to perpetuate the Santa story, but it's incredible that they would rationalize it so far as to deny that it even qualifies as lying. Call it a justified lie if you want, but it's still a lie.
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