Why Santa? Why Lie to Children?
Saw a recent comparison posted by a militant Atheist between Santa Claus and God, trying to show that the two are nearly identical and doubling that with a comment stating that he makes no distinction between imaginary friends when I mentioned deities other than the Christian God listed in the chart. However, something else I mentioned and which he didn’t appear to have a witty comeback for was that, regardless of whether their beliefs make any sort of sense or not, the adults who try to pass on a certain religion to children usually believe what they’re saying, but those who propagate the Santa myth do so while being fully aware that they are lying.
The question is, why is this behavior not only acceptable in our society, but actually encouraged? Why is something that’s such a major cultural aspect of childhood in a large part of the world based on an obvious lie? I mean, I do keep saying that if most people would stop believing in any sort of magic, in anything greater than themselves, in anything beyond this mortal life and this physical plane of existence, the world would be very sad and hopeless, far more so than it is now, but shouldn’t this magic at least be possible? Shouldn’t we only stick to what’s not undeniably proven false, not to mention to what’s not clearly known as being false by just about everyone who ever claims it’s true?
For a while, this was supposed to be a much bigger post, dealing with what the above paragraph implies on a wider scale, so another rant about fair and unfair belief systems, including that stating that there’s nothing to believe in, disempowering religions, conspiracy theories, our search for meaning and the probable harsh reality of it all, as well as determining right and wrong with and without the promise of a reward or the threat of punishment. However, it quickly became obvious that I won’t be able to write that, so I’ll stick to the Santa conspiracy for now.
Of course, this is hardly the only big lie fed to children, but it does seem to be by far the most widespread and both a symptom and a key ingredient of why adults behave as they do and this society they create is as rotten as it is. On top of appearing to be this worldwide conspiracy aimed at making an entire category of people believe a clear lie and then most probably suffer significant disappointment when they’ll finally learn the truth, it is also, alongside a whole slew of other lies used by parents and other authority figures, a means of persuading children to behave in certain ways through yet another reward and punishment system. I mean, why attempt to encourage creativity and independence while instilling a sense of personal responsibility and ethics based on a developed ability to discern right from wrong when you can just lie left and right in an attempt to get children to just obey whatever you say should be right and wrong, right?
