telekinetic

Willravel has led with a genuinely touching story about heartwarming gifts with personal meaning being superior to ad-based consumerism. I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment. However, he seems to have forgotten to further his point, as nothing in that anecdote suggests Santa Claus was in any way involved! A heartfelt gift from a loving uncle is a wonderful thing--would those gifts have had the same meaning if poofed into existence by a magic elf, with no sacrifice or personal thought involved? Wasn't the Apple more special because it was your uncle's Apple? Part of the 'magic' of gift giving is the thought behind it...a gift from an entity you've never met has all the deep emotional significance of winning a door-prize raffle.

As a useful tool in creating a link between material rewards and good behavior, Santa is subpar at best. For starters, except in extreme circumstances, you are not going to 'gift on a curve'...you love your children and want the best for them, and a season of giving is not the time to be punitive. The lack of conversations following the pattern of "Well Jimmy, Santa told me to tell you he WOULD have gotten you a Playstation 3, but your room is still a mess, so here, have a sweater" should demonstrate this quite clearly. Now, I fully support chore-conditional allowances backed up with age-appropriate penalties--like a scaled-down version of adult life, my daughter will have to earn her allowance, and there will be consequences for missed responsibilities that affect the family. However, if this formula is rigidly applied to Santa in any sort of rigorous manner, is the reward left truly a gift, or just payment due for duties performed? Again, an important lesson, cheapened or distorted by the unnecessary addition of The Claus.

Setting clever traps for Santa exhibits is a great example of rational thinking--extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and trying to capture this evidence is the hallmark of a burgeoning junior scientist. This is creativity, problem solving, and an attempted application of the scientific method--all very important to proper child development. However, application of the scientific method should be rewarded with increased knowledge of the world around them. If their experiments are rigorous, and not tainted with false positives (like the a redcoated bearded father, in the story), the evidence should point to their NOT being a Santa. Therefore, there are only two possible outcomes to a Santa believer's Santa trap, assuming they are still a believer (based on their parent's say-so) at the end of the experiment: They may collect false planted evidence, and have their belief in the supernatural nature of Santa unquestionably affirmed. Or, worse, they collect no evidence, and adjust their world view to explain away the supernatural 'failing' the test. This belief in the face of counter-evidence sets dangerous precidence, and amplified versions of that present in adults is responsible for such horrors as the Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, and (worst of all) the recent spate of Ghost Hunter/UFO Detective shows on basic cable.

I would argue, however, that setting a camera trap is not an example of imagination, which is what it was presented as. The trap-setter clearly wasn't aware that the entity for which the trap was set was imaginary, or the trap would not have been set in a realistic manner. Imagination is very important, and has blenty of benefits to a growing child. Reality-based imagination games like playing House, and Cops and Robbers, and Grocery Store, and Pizza Parlor and School all give children an important opportunity to role play social interactions. Fantasy imagination games, which involve creating imaginary worlds populated with fairies or aliens or robots or flying carpets, give children a chance to flex their story-telling and world-building muscles, particularly if they're played with friends. Setting up a camera to catch Santa Claus involved no more imagination than setting up a camera to catch the mail man, falls into neither category and imparts none of the benefits of the above.

I did not see much strong evidence presented that Santa Claus was compatible with mainstream religions (other than "most adherents are too apethetic to think about the implications") so I will not readdress impact to the religious. However, to the atheists, and more specifically to the secular humanists, I feel like the Santa Claus story does more harm than good. Atheist children will not need innocluation against the experience of finding out the superstitious beliefs they were raised with were false, as they will be raised with none. By the time they are old enough to consciously make the connection that belief in Santa Claus is an example of misapplication of Occam's razor ("what's more likely, a well-publicized worldwide conspiracy that everyone I know, love, and trustis in on, or Santa?") similar to certain aspects of religion ("What's more likely, that this all just happened by chance, or an intelligent designer?"), they are well beyond the age where belief in Santa is sustainable. Belief in Santa to the Atheist also removes a very very powerful tool from the parenting arsenal--assurance of reality. There is no monster under your bed, because monsters do not exist. The basement is not haunted, because there are no ghosts. Noone can get you through the shower drain, because that violates the laws of matter. Putting forth and sustaining a belief in an omniscient creature as powerful as Santa gives a parent no ability to reassure their child that their reality is knowable, and opens the floodgates of of possibility to every bogey, spectre, and Krampus that a wild childhood nightmare can concoct.

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twisted no more