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Old 08-07-2010, 03:45 PM   #3 (permalink)
telekinetic
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Location: Fauxenix, Azerona
I agree with Willravel on many of his points. The holiday season surrounding the winter solstice can be a special time to reconnect with family and friends, celebrate with good food and drink, and reflect on another year (hopefully) well lived.

However, there is enough to celebrate about this time of the year, when the short days finally start to get longer again, without indoctrinating the fertile minds of children with a batch of consumeristic 'cult' centered around Santa Claus, the patron saint of consumerism.

Engendering belief in Santa Claus has many flaws, both practically and philosophically. From a practical standpoint, the existence of a demigod whose only function is to reward 'niceness' with material goods has a lot of flaws, in terms of being useful as a pseudoreligion. It perpetuates a fallacy that lack of material goods is representative of naughtiness, and also that children should be good not for its own benefit, but because it will be rewarded--although this latter flaw is present in various forms in many of the NON-pseudo religions, and can therefor be excused.

As a minor deity, Santa Claus seemingly chooses to use his enormous powers of teleportation, time and space manipulation, self-cloning (mall Santas everywhere!), and matter replication for the greater good of ensuring that...Jimmy gets the new bike he wanted, and Tracey gets Betsey Wetsy. No mention is ever made to what he brings the starving children across the world, though someone capable of materializing train sets and X-Box games in living rooms all over America could surely conjure up a few tons of rice in various needy villages. Also, if little Billy is friends with someone outside their immediate social class (or even just with a child whose parents have very different ideas about reasonable credit card usage), important questions about bias and fairness immediately arise. Why did Santa get Ricky Rock Band 8: Almost Out of Ideas, complete with all nine inflatable groupies, AND a powerwheels Lamborghini Murcilagio, with real panty-dropping action, and only bring Billy Chutes and Ladders and a BMX? Is Ricky 'nicer' in some way? Should he emulate Ricky's behavior as close as possible in hopes of reaping a richer reward next year? Was there some element of naughtiness for which the meager rewards were a punishment? In the context of an omniscient ("he knows when you are sleeping...he knows when you're awake...he knows if you've been bad or good") demigod being the source of all of these various presents, none of these questions have an easy answer.

Outside of the practical questions about fairness, there are the philosophical concerns. I disagree with Willravel that Santa Claus has anything to do with imagination, and postulate instead that it has everything to do with belief in his specific supernatural powers. It takes no imagination to believe what you are told is true. Indeed, at this point the various "powers" and rules are well-documented by various books and movies, to the point where the Santa canon merely requires credulity, not creative thinking.

Furthermore, and more seriously, the supernatural claims are not compatible with any sort of rigorous belief system. Most mainstream religions claim a monopoly on the supernatural, and a large portion of the world is monotheistic, and to have a jolly fat godling capable of similar miracles as the most important prophets clearly cheapens the sacredness of their scriptural claims. Also, Christians specifically should (and do, in many cases) have problems with Santa Claus preempting the meaning of their penultimate holy day.

Religious conflicts aside, even atheists with no particular reason for indignation should seriously question what letting (or encouraging!) their children to believe in Santa Claus implies. It encourages accepting the supernatural as not just possible, but reasonable. It encourages accepting tradition over evidence, which is dangerously anti-scientific. Children can watch Discovery Channel shows explorations to the Santa-less North Pole, they can go to the zoo and observe reindeer (of the decidedly non-flying variety), and they can attempt an unsuccessful decent down their own chimney.

When children, curious and confused, bring these pieces of conflicting evidence to their ultimate authority on the truths of the world, their parents, what should those fonts of knowledge answer? It is my statement that a reply of "Ignore the evidence you have observed--It's magic!" is a betrayal of the trust a child has in a parent to help them learn about reality. Children's view of the world and how all of its components relate to each other is delicate and ever-changing, and I believe it a parent's job to help them filter all available information so that their reality is as accurate and pollution-free as possible. I feel it is more important that a child get an early start on develop problem-solving and evidence-evaluating skills than they get whatever small amount of forced good behavior and possibly levity they get from believing a magic elf brought them Madden 2012.
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