There
are Christian parents who think it’s immoral and/or spiritually hazardous to
teach their kids that Santa delivers the Christmas presents on Christmas Eve.
Let’s clarify the parameters of my post. Some Christians
don’t even think we should celebrate Christmas. They take the Puritan view of
holidays. That position moots the debate by denying a necessary presupposition
of the debate. If that’s your position, then my post isn’t directed at you. I’m
not debating the merits of celebrating Christmas. This post is for Christians
who take that for granted.
In addition, I’m not defending (or opposing) the Santa
tradition. I’m not discussing what Christian parents ought to do. Rather, I’m
just evaluating what some Christian parents think they ought to do.
i) One thing I’ve noticed is that the issue is often
oversimplified. For instance, there’s a distinction between telling your kids
that Santa exists, and telling your kids that Santa doesn’t exist.
For instance, it’s possible for a parent to be silent on the
status of Santa. To the extent that Santa is part of the pop culture, belief in
Santa is something kids could pick up through cultural osmosis. So the question
then is not whether the parent should tell them that Santa exists, but whether
the parent should correct that belief.
Now, there are probably Christian parents who think they
have an obligation to do both. I’m not going to evaluate that position. I’m
just pointing out that these are separate questions.
ii) Apropos (ii), suppose you, as a young parent, don’t
believe in the Santa tradition, but your mother does. Suppose your mother
teaches her grandkids that Santa brings the Christmas gifts on Christmas Eve.
What’s your duty in that situation?
Christian opponents of the Santa tradition typically argue
that this custom ultimately undermines parental authority, or the equivalent.
When the kids are old enough to realize that their parents “lied” to them, they
become disillusioned in their parents. At least that’s the claim.
Yet in this case, if you disabuse your kids, you are
undermining their trust in their grandmother. But if undermining childish faith
in parents is damaging, so is undermining childish faith in grandparents. So
that situation poses something of a dilemma.
iii) Apropos (ii), is it inherently wrong to undermine
parental authority? Suppose two unbelievers marry. Before they have kids,
suppose the wife becomes a Christian.
In my opinion, she has a duty to raise her kids in the faith
as best she can under the circumstances. But that may create situations in
which she must undercut paternal authority by telling her kids that their
atheist father is dead wrong about God.
Now, perhaps you’d say the justification for undermining
parental authority in that case is quite different from the trivial case of the
Santa custom. I agree. But I’m just probing how far some Christians are
prepared to take the appeal to parental authority.
iv) There’s a popular atheist meme using Santa. Infidels
have promoted a deconversion narrative involving Santa which allegedly
parallels Christian apostasy. And, oddly enough, many Christians buy into that
meme.
According to this deconversion narrative, young children
believe in Santa because their parents teach them Santa exists. But as they
age, children begin to harbor nagging doubts about Santa’s existence. They
raise practical questions about the logistics of Santa delivering all those
presents one night out of the year And maybe their domicile doesn’t have a
chimney. What if they live in a high-rise apartment complex? Likewise, can
reindeer fly? How fast? And so on and so forth.
So there comes a point when they reason themselves out of
believing in Santa. And that coincides with the shocking realization that their
parents “lied” to them. Having lost all faith in their parents’ credibility,
they systematically doubt everything else their parents told them. One thing
leads to another and they turn their back on God.
v) I wonder how factual that narrative really is. For one
thing, is this based on actual memories or reconstructed memories? When we’re
very young, we don’t remember as much about what happened to us. So how much of
this is based on genuine recollection, and how much is based on the suggestive
power of the narrative itself? Are we remembering what happened, or is this
deconversion narrative, which we learned much later in life, rewriting our
recollection of events?
vi) Apropos (v), I’ll use myself as an example. I have a
good memory of my childhood. But when I think back on it, I don’t clearly and
distinctly remember believing in Santa. I also don’t clearly and distinctly
remember my parents telling me that Santa existed.
I think I probably did believe in Santa when I was very
young, and my parents probably conveyed that belief to me in some fashion. But
I’m skeptical about the confidence with which both atheists and some Christian
parents presume to trace what they believed at an age when we don’t remember
much of anything.
I also know, at a later age, that I didn’t believe in Santa.
But I don’t recall a conscious process of transitioning from belief in Santa to
disbelief in Santa. I expect that belief in Santa slipped away without any
cognizance on my part. If you asked me one year whether I believed in Santa,
I’d say “yes,” but if you asked me the same question two years later, I’d say
“no.” There was no crisis of faith in Santa.
I couldn’t pinpoint how old I was when I lost my belief in
Santa. I couldn’t pinpoint a discernable tipping-point.
In addition, I certainly didn’t connect loss of faith in
Santa with loss of faith in my parents, or vice versa. I didn’t associate
disbelief in Santa with my parents one way or the other. My disbelief in Santa
was a discrete, compartmentalized disbelief. It didn’t trigger disillusionment
in parental goodness. I don’t think I even put the two together.
That’s probably because my parents were far more real to me
than Santa ever was. It doesn’t necessary take much to stop believing in
something that isn’t real to begin with. That can fade from consciousness, fade
from conviction, without any effort or awareness. To the contrary, it takes
continuous effort to believe in nonentities.
By contrast, my parents were overwhelmingly real. Their
goodness was indubitable.
Now, I don’t pretend that my experience is necessarily
representative for anyone else. There maybe grow-ups who can describe painful
stages of doubt in Santa’s existence. It’s quite possible that I’m
misremembering my own experience, but that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? How
good is memory at that tender age?
But I’m quite sceptical about the Santa deconversion
narrative popularized by atheists, and aped by some Christians. That’s strikes
me as quite artificial. Too pat. Too schematic. I suspect losing faith in Santa
is a generally subliminal process.
Is there really a stereotypical way kids cease believing in
Santa? Suppose you have a number of siblings. Your older brother or sister
outgrows belief in Santa. What then? Well, one of two things can happen.
On the one hand, your older sibling might seize the
opportunity to prove how grown-up he is and how childish you still are by
triumphantly announcing to you that Santa doesn’t exist!
On the other hand, he might collude with your parents to
perpetuate the Santa tradition. That would make him feel grown up too.
Moreover, most folks lie some of the time. Surely most kids
have caught their parents in a lie at one time or another. Maybe their parents
didn’t lie to them. Maybe they overheard their parents lying to someone else.
Even if that was momentarily shocking, are we to seriously
believe the bottom falls out of a child’s life when he catches a parent in a
lie? I don’t think so.
After all, children are prone to lying. If they catch their
parents in a lie, they realize that their parents are doing what they do.
Children make allowance for their own lies. They don’t think that makes
themselves wholly untrustworthy.
Children keep on believing in their parents because they
really don’t have a choice. As long as they are dependent on their parents,
they have to believe in them most of the time. Of course, if their parents are
chronic liars who constantly break promises, constantly let them down, that’s
different.
Am I saying this to justify parental lies? No. But I’m just
questioning the hysterical narrative in which finding out your parents “lied”
would cause your little world to collapse all around you. That just isn’t realistic in the
main. For one thing, it credits children with too much innocence. But children
have a cynical streak. They don’t fall apart that easily. Not as a rule.
