The Muslims have entered the fray now —
one crazy lawyer, Anjem Choudary, is calling Christmas evil. How can we godless top that?
The very concept of Christmas contradicts and conflicts with the foundation of Islam. Every Muslim has a responsibility to protect his family from the misguidance of Christmas, because its observance will lead to hellfire. Protect your Paradise from being taken away – protect yourself and your family from Christmas.
Have no fear. We can say something much, much worse. Here’s an elementary school teacher who told her class that Santa wasn’t real. The reaction from the parents is amusing.
My lad was nearly in tears and so was everyone else in the class – especially as it was so close to Christmas. I thought it was wrong.
He was distraught about it. He’s only seven-years-old and it’s part of the magic of Christmas to him.
We told him that she did not believe in Father Christmas because of her religion and he’s fine now.
I found it shocking. She has done it maliciously.
So, seven years old … I wonder how many of them actually bought that Santa nonsense at all? Looks like some smart-aleck kids saw a ploy to disrupt class, make a teacher suffer, and get extra-special sympathy from their parents.
Wait a minute.
Are you saying Santa is not real?
hahahahaha. Love it.
Better fire that teacher before Easter or the shit’s really gonna fly.
The very concept of Christmas contradicts and conflicts with the foundation of Islam. Every Muslim has a responsibility to protect his family from the misguidance of Christmas, because its observance will lead to hellfire.
Holy Jeeeeeez, the Submissionists will just have to celebrate Hanukkah then.
Never went with the Santa story with my son, or rather, we always told him it was just a fun story with no reality behind it. He knows some people believe, and that’s fine. He knows other people believe things that we don’t.
Parents often get outraged when other adults refuse to lie to their children.
Atheists just like to pretend there’s no such thing as Christmas so that they don’t have to be held accountable for being gay.
Richard I’m getting you a copy of The Gold Bug for beermas.
The fragility of Paradise is always amazing. Almost as if it were a threatened wish….
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Richard #6
Christians just like to pretend there’s no such thing as the shortest day of the year so that they don’t have to be held accountable for asshats.
Priceless! Gotta be an Edgar.
*belly laugh*
When I was about 5 I figured the Santa story was a big ruse but I noticed that my older sister, who said she didn’t believe in Santa didn’t get as many toys as I did (she got yucky clothes.) So, I pretended to believe in Santa to keep the toy booty coming in.
Yes Richard! Finally someone who has successfully psycho-analyzed me (did I just write anal? lol ZOMG!). You are sooo right! We are ALL gay. I wish I’d known sooner. My girlfriend’s going to be PISSED.
Atheists don’t pretend there is no Christmas. That would be a bit delusional (almost like believing there’s an invisible persona with the time of eternity and the power of the universe who really cares who humans have sex with and if they gather wood on a certain day of the week).
No, unfortunately, there IS a Christmas and 3 people have been killed this season so far because people can’t get enough of the wonderful deals! (Hell of a way to celebrate the virgin birth of a man-god! Forty Dollars off an iPod? Talk about a miracle!)
Sorry Rich, you lose.
There’s a great lesson to teach your kid. If anyone says something you disagree with, just ignore them: they must be of a different religion. Even when the topic you’re discussing has no relevance to religion (like Santa Claus). [/sarcasm]
oooohh nnoooo
woops, there should be a “being” before asshats.
I post once and I still can’t get it right.
*puts on asshat and quietly slinks away*
God’s gonna be pissed at that teacher. Everyone knows Santa is a gateway drug to theism. If they don’t buy the weed at Xmas, how can anyone expect them to buy the crack year-round?
Love it! Your religion is shit! No, your religion is shit! Your god is shit! No, your god is shit, and besides it doesn’t exist! How could shit not exist when it is all around us? You just think it is all around us, but it is really imaginary! Then what the hell is that awful smell? Hey, don’t get me started!
Before Choudaray jumps on other similarly idiotic religious nutjubs, he should check his own ranks first. The Alawis, an Islamic sect based largely in Syria and Lebanon do celebrate Christmas as well as Easter. Of course, in their interpretation, the relevance given to those days falls about equal if not less than Islamic holidays, but yet, their views remain. If Choudray wants to sue someone he can start with the Alawis. The ultimate point however is no matter how you choose to fight the war on christmas, it’s an imaginary day that’s better celebrated in any way you like. Whether it’s Jesus, Mohammed, Allah, Moses, and the rest, they’re all most likely imaginary figures used by individuals who crave power and money to control people’s thoughts. The poison that is religion will remain, and the best we can do is use those holidays that are supposedly religious to celebrate it any way we like.
My sister nearly punched me when I said something about there being no Santa with her kids in the room. Years later they confirmed my suspicion that they knew there was no Santa at the time, but if they kept up the pretense, they thought they would get more presents. It’s all about the bling bling.
Didn’t Hitler and Ghengis Khan begin their careers by telling kids that Santa wasn’t real?
I think I read that in Reader’s Digest, or maybe the Watchtower…
In my 5th grade class there was a kid named Floyd, and when the teacher said something about Santa being as made-up as Batman, he said: “Batman isn’t REAL?!” And fled into the boys bathroom in tears and tried to hide there for the rest of the day. Wild.
We raised our kids with the Santa myth, but we never lied to them about it. When they asked about it, I always gave some evasive answer, and they caught on real quick. They knew there was no Santa, but that it was fun to pretend there was, and why would you want to spoil that fun?
Why is the first story even newsworthy? Guy from one religion says his followers will go to hell if they follow another religion? Is this anything new?
As for the second story, I wonder how many of the children would have cried if the teacher had told them that Jesus isn’t real?
Oh my Cats. The poor teacher was disciplined for saying that Father Christmas doesn’t exist? It’s going to be a bit difficult following National Curriculum guidance on developing critical thinking skills if teachers get disciplined whenever they challenge a childhood belief with no evidential basis.
If I have any children, I hope that I can instil such enthusiasm for exploring the real world that when someone says, “It’s your parents who leave out presents on Christmas Day” like that teacher, they say something like, “Yeah, I know. I got out the fingerprinting kit they gave me last birthday and checked the plate of mince pies, and Santa’s prints match the ones on Dad’s laptop!”
Good to know he’s such a good Muslim.
But what about a Christmas ham? Ah ha, I bet he didn’t think about that one!
Wait…
;)
Sincerely,
Hawse-Hole Ethel (also completely prohibited by Allah)
HELP!!! For the past few weeks I’ve been advocating rationality and atheism on a forum in Southern Illinois (right in the Bible Belt.) The locals have tossed out just about every stupid justification for their “beliefs” that I expected them to do, but so far I’m the only one arguing against them. (They’re so SHOCKED that someone could actually deny the truth of their wonderful beliefs!) The URL for the site is: http://community.cnhi.com/eve/forums?a=tpc&s=935104&f=351104611&m=3311080561&r=3861081761#3861081761 – please come and HELP.
I dunno. I do agree that the whole Santa story should not be propagated, but since it’s the parents that feed that bullshit to the kids, it should be the parents who should tell them the truth. I think the teacher was out of line, because 7 years old is not too old to believe in Santa.
However, I’m sure the kiddies will get over it.
When I caught on about santa being fictional, I was real unhappy, not about santa, but because all those adults had conspired to play a trick on me.
That turned out OK though, because right after that I realised santa and god have a lot in common.
HELP!!! For the past few weeks I’ve been advocating rationality and atheism on a forum in Southern Illinois (right in the Bible Belt.) The locals have tossed out just about every stupid justification for their “beliefs” that I expected them to do, but so far I’m the only one arguing against them. (They’re so SHOCKED that someone could actually deny the truth of their wonderful beliefs!) The URL for the site is: http://community.cnhi.com/eve/forums?a=tpc&s=935104&f=351104611&m=3311080561&r=3861081761#3861081761 – please come and HELP.
Feh. Any god that frowns on giving gifts and eating ham and drinking egg nog is just a big fuckhead anyway.
“Atheists just like to pretend there’s no such thing as Christmas so that they don’t have to be held accountable for being gay.”
FINALLY! I’ve been asking every drive-by loony who barges in here with the BS line about how we’re atheists because we don’t want to be accountable for our sins just what sins they think we’re all guilty of. Now I know, we’re all fucking the wrong gender! Thanks for clearing that up, Poe! Good thing God keeps track of the really important stuff.
I agree with Sklrgzyk. I don’t think it was a conspiracy from 7 yer olds to get attention. I did more simplistic things at that age to get attention. I don’t think the teacher was right for saying that. However, I think the parents’ reaction was terrible. “We told him that she did not believe in Father Christmas because of her religion and he’s fine now.” Oh come on. If it was me, I’d not complain to the school; but I’d mention it in Parent Teacher conferences. Though, I do not have children right now.
“Feh. Any god that frowns on giving gifts and eating ham and drinking egg nog is just a big fuckhead anyway.”
Heh. Funny.
Dan @ 29 – I jumped over there and had a look at the site, but for some reason it wouldn’t work for my comments.
That Muslim wouldn’t dare say that about Muslims!
I grew up in the 70s, when mass media was less cynical, there were no intertubes, and Christmas TV on all three channels was run by Rankin-Bass and Charles Schultz, and I still didn’t believe in Santa by the time I was seven years old. I just can’t imagine a kid these days doing so.
I do, and let me tell you, Ill be bloody disappointed if they still believe in Saint Nick at age 7.
I am a substitute teacher, and I dealt with the santa issue this week as well. A few second graders were arguing about whether or not there was a santa. I ended the bickering by telling them that it was ok for them to believe in santa if they wanted to, but that they didn’t have to believe in santa. I weaseled out of a direct answer because I am aware that upsetting kids and their parents about santa just isn’t worth the grief.
Granted, these were 7 year olds. They were puzzling out the reality of santa for themselves, otherwise they would not have asked.
If the kids had been older, my response would have been much more cynical, because it would be obvious that they were angling for attention.
Isn’t there something like this in the news every year? Someone tacklessly shatters some little tykes dilusions and they freak out. Not because santa isn’t real so much as they are afraid they won’t cash in on Xmas.
In spite of my earlier reservations about it, I’ve decided that letting my kids believe in Santa Claus is good for them. It teaches them not to believe everything they’re told, even if it seems like the entirety of Western Civilization says it’s true.
@33
Yah, you have to register
I was never popular at my family Christmas lunches as a child after I told my cousin Emma that Santa wasn’t real.
Emma and I were both eight at the time. I was frankly astonished she hadn’t worked it out already.
The next year I was in even more trouble when I told her that people died.
Fortunately for my reputation with that particular aunt and uncle, her sex-ed told her where babies come from before I managed to break the news.
Dan,
There are only 24 hours in the day. A handful of creotards repeating the same inane nonsense that has been refuted for years can keep dozens of reality-based hominids busy. Not to mention make us pull our hair out and try making garrotes. But, sadly, they are ineffective over the Internet.
Repeat this to yourself as many times as necessary each day to help maintain sanity:
Disappointing but not surprising.
Then quietly back away.
Meh – IIRC, 7 was when I figured out the truth about Santa. Then I had to keep my mouth shut for the next few years while my sister caught up/on.
My husband’s been more enthusiastic about the whole Santa story than me. We’ve already had a discussion about the tooth fairy; my daughter had figured it out, but didn’t want to tell Daddy as it would hurt his feelings. I’m guessing that Santa will be history very, very soon.
Of course Santa is real! I knew that the minute I caught him humping the tooth fairy under the tree!
If Santa isn’t real, who got me that bike when I turned 10?
There is an interesting parallel between Islam and the christian puritan movement of the 16th century.
Both were opposed to Christmas celebrations. Both placed importance on modesty and sobriety. Both had strong iconoclastic policies in that they deplored icons and idols. Sunni ideas of predestination are somewhat Calvinistic.
Didn’t Hitler and Ghengis Khan begin their careers by telling kids that Santa wasn’t real?
No no no, they started after being told there was no Santa. If Santa isn’t real, then maybe Jesus isn’t real, and if Jesus isn’t real, then you may as well become a mass-murdering atheist. It’s the logical progression, y’see.
Anyway, see you tonight at the 8 PM rape-and-pillage meet.
Shocking!
The school should put out an official statement chastising the teacher, unequivocally declare its belief in Santa Claus, and force said teacher to do many hours of community service in Santa’s workshop.
Kel #45:
Your parents, most likely.
Wouldn’t it be easier to tell them to come here?
Stop the war!
Comment #49 has been declared a Humor-Free Zone.
That is all.
who got me that bike when I turned 10?
The Easter Bunny, and he hurt himself laying that thing, so I hope you treated it well.
@Dan #26
I read the first few pages of that forum … <*YIKES*!) I'm dealing with a similar-minded wack-a-doodle (who also happens to be my youngest sister) on my blog. Drop by and join in the fray on the religion issues. :-)
LMAO!
#53, on the other hand, was pretty funny.
OT:
In important news – the boobs have been found:
http://www.watoday.com.au/national/missing-inflatable-breasts-found-20081210-6vgf.html
Whew.
My seven year old still believes in Santa, although he is in the process of figuring it out. He’s already asked how Santa can live at the North Pole when there’s no land up there on which to live, and how his reindeer fly if they don’t have wings. I respond with, “Well, how do you think that is possible?” He admits it doesn’t make any sense, he just hasn’t quite made the connection that “doesn’t make any sense” means “it’s a fun pretend story.”
Well then, for Festivas will you wrestle me for the test of strength?
I’ve been dressing up as santa for my brother’s child(ren) for the past six years. The last years I’ve wondered whether this is a good thing. On the one hand, I would like the children to realize that santa is a fairy tale, exposing them to critical thought. On the other hand, it’s so exciting to watch their excitement about santa coming for a visit. I think by seven, most children should be able to tell that santa is, in fact, a fairy tale. I think the oldest of the children (now 7), has realized that it’s just her uncle behind the fake beard, so I don’t think it’s much of a problem. Any comments would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
“In important news – the boobs have been found”
xmas is saved!!
I remember when I was like 6 years old I wanted to meet Santa (I wasn’t buying that the guy at the mall was the real deal). So after my parents tucked me in I snuck out of my room, grabbed a sleeping bad and slept by the Christmas tree. I was disappointed in the morning when I found out my plan didn’t work. Later I just flat out asked my mother if Santa was real and she told me ‘no’. I wasn’t distraught or anything. I just went ‘oh’ and then went to play some Super Mario Bros.
Anytime one of my young cousins ask me if Santa is real I just say “Ask your parents”. Yeah it’s a cop-out, but it avoids trouble.
And here I was hoping the Somali Pirates had stolen them. Yar.
Fucking morons…all of them.
All these comments about xmas and (dear) Santa not being real, and yet not 1 comment about atheist Grinches? Hmmmm…. something’s fishy.
AJ @60–
Enjoy it. Acting is fun. Watching people act is fun. Some people believe it is real. Other people realize it isn’t real but still get into it and enjoy it.
When I was a teenager some of our family friends had a neighbor who would play Santa and at a time arranged by the parents he would come barreling through their house saying “Ho! Ho! Ho!” and dropping off a few presents the parents had given him ahead of time. Even at ~16 I was totally jealous.
130,000 boobs have been found?
When did the entire ‘Church’ of Scientology go missing?
My son told me when he was 4 that Santa wasn’t real. I said OK, but I guess that means no more presents from Santa. He did a 180 trying to convince me he was just kidding and he was a true believer.
Christians operate the same way only instead of no more presents they are threatened with eternal damnation.
@62
Anytime one of my young cousins ask me if Santa is real I just say “Ask your parents”. Yeah it’s a cop-out, but it avoids trouble.
You don’t have to tell them, but you could help them reason it out.
The first question would be “Why are you asking me such a thing?”
The second would be “Well, why doesn’t that make sense?”
Fine. If that’s the way you all want it.
You’re all getting a piece of coal.
Dan:
I dinnae want to join that particular group – sounds like a PITA. You might just want to pose a couple of things for the bible punchers to think about…
Why do virtually all mammals have the same limb configuration? Why do whales have wrists as well as an ulna and a radius?
Why do vertebrate embryos have pharyngular pouches?
Why do mammalian embryos develop yolk sacs?
What’s with the vestigial tails of sea lions?
Why are human spines so poorly designed?
Not show stoppers, but I have found these questions effective with some folks.
Lotsa luck.
BTW – thanks to the drive by troll for helping me figure out my sexual orientation – I’ve been doing it ALL WRONG!!!Too late to change, I guess.
You fool! Jack Chick warned us about this, but you wouldn’t listen! Now it’s too late!
Yes, PZ, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no PZs. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
At least for a 7 year old.
That’s better than switches any day.
If Batman isn’t real, then how come there’s so many movies and comic books about him?
I suppose next you’ll say that Freddy Kruger doesn’t kill children.
I find this conflict of either upholding the deception that Santa really is for real, or rudely telling a little kid that “Santa is just a stupid myth, you fool” a bit distasteful and unimaginative.
I think his conflict can easily be avoided by adopting the Scandinavian tradition of Santa actually delivering the goods in person, coming in through the front door, rather than sneaking in through the chimney at night. – “Ho! Ho! Are there any kind children here?”, he asks when he arrives, while uncle Sven unfortunately is away to the store buying the newspaper or something.
Or at least have an “of course Santa is real (wink, wink)” attitude about it.
My son has a conspiracy-theory stage in his growing skepticism about Santa. He just hasn’t quite pegged it on the old ‘rents yet. Basically, he’s decided there can’t be a single Santa, that’s absurd, right? But how do the presents get under the tree? A vast, gift-giving conspiracy, clearly. He can’t figure out how the perps get into everyone’s houses yet, but he’s working on that. It makes me smile.
Mess with the reindeer, get the horns. For you I’ll make an exception. Switches it is.
From Invader Zim’s “Most Horrible Christmas Ever”:
Mr. Sludgie: “…But Santa wasn’t destroyed that day. Santa lives.”
Adorable wide-eyed girl: “In the hearts and minds of us all?”
Mr. Sludgie: “No! In space, gathering power! Every year he returns to destroy us. That’s why we live under this protective dome.”
@53:
Easter Bunny, my foot.
It was obviously BATMAN.
#68, that’s pretty mean, I would probably give him more presents for thinking for himself.
Allen N @71–
After they asked “What’s a mammal?” Or “What’s an ulna?” they’d all just spout Goddidit! for the trump. Then you’re back to square one or square four – depending on how you play the game.
Now where’s that link to the Creationist playing chess? King me be-itch
Ever play whack-a-mole? Imagine it with one player and 1,000 moles and you have Creationist-Whack-a-mole. Fun for a little while then very, very tedious. At least here we can share the burden. And I like to imagine them speaking in a Chipmunk’s style with helium-like voices when I read their posts.
No, it was me. You’re welcome.
In this economy? Ill take it.
Isn’t that Black Peter’s job.
You movin’ in on his territory fat man?
Wow, you all knew Santa was a myth by age 7? It took me until 10. I feel a lot less rational now.
I’m going to my room.
Glad to see you were keeping a-breast to the story. I wonder if some semen came across them? That could have taint-ed their image about implants.
Hehe….and I thought Christmas only cums once a year.
Allen N, #71
You forgot my favourite: why do men have nipples?
@DrBadger #81
“#68, that’s pretty mean, I would probably give him more presents for thinking for himself.”
Of course we filled him in on it. He was laughing the whole time as he tried to persuade us he still believed and we laughed with him. At 13 he is as brightly skeptical as always and we proudly encourage his independence of thought. And he still gets presents form Santa…
I’m not going to lie to my kids (they’re <5) about something so stupid, they know that Santa is just pretend. I’m saving the lies for something more important.
It should be entertaining when they ruin the whole Santa thing some of the other kids in the neighborhood.
Wow, that’s rather bold of Jack Chick. He must realize he never actually gives anything convincing separating Jesus/God from Santa, the tooth fairy, or the Easter bunny.
The whole celebration of belief for belief’s sake bugs me. Teachers regularly show the Polar Express in class, and while the movie is nice in some respects the message of “Believe” for its own sake is a horrible one.
Then, of course, there’s the famous letter to a somewhat dubious eight-year old, printed with a response in a newspaper editorial in 1897. This paragraph is usually left out when people reprint it today:
Oh, dog forbid one stop believing in fairies dancing on the lawn.
Posted by: Wowbagger | December 10, 2008 6:25 PM
“why do men have nipples?”
So we can pierce them and wear nipple rings, of course.
http://www.newseum.org/yesvirginia/clipping.htm
For the reference
I was “Santa” at the age of 10. Since the neighbour was ill at the hospital, I felt someone had to cover for him, so I took it on me to do his job.
See here how everything
Lead up to this day
And it’s just like every other day
That’s ever been
Sun comin up and then
The sun it’s goin down
Shine in my window
And my friends they come around…
Sorry. Different Black Peter.
Different fat man, too.
Oh, and Ben Franklin at #73 — you just quoted part of the article, but you somehow missed the part about Santa existing just as certainly as lawn fairies.
I think you underestimate 7 year olds. Most are happy to know their parents love them, and really couldn’t care less about a mythical fat man they’ve never met.
Someone blew the whole “Santa” gig for me when I was in first grade. I approached my mother guiltily with my doubt, and she informed me that “If you don’t believe in Santa, he might just stop coming,” which made me reconsider my asantaism really quickly.
In the end, grandma was the one who played Judas to santa-claus.
“Did you thank your mom for that?”
“But grandma, SANTA brought that!”
“Yeah. Uh. Right. Santa. Did you thank your mom anyway?”
@Andres #72,
Maybe I’m being Captain Obvious here, but the father in the strip reminds me a lot of Hitler….
dinkum @19…
Now I have this silly mental image of Ghengis Khan as Santa, and at the head of the sleigh is Rudolph the Red Nosed Yak.
CrypticLife
My point is that it should be OK for a 7 year old to believe in fantasies, and even faeries dancing in the yard. Last year my (at the time) 13 year old son spilled the beans to my (at the time) 8 year old son, but the younger one was already beginning to suspect.
Those flights into wild imagination can serve children well.
For adults like Ken Ham, mmm, not so well.
I mildly disagree with the anti-Santa sentiment, and it’s a creative leap to assume that Teacher was just peed off at disruptive kids. Kids grow out of Santa, and I don’t deny the fun that mine have with the fat red guy.
The big guy in the clouds though? He’s fair game.
He still knew it was a sham. After all, if it wasn’t, why would he need to convince YOU? edit: Oh, I see your later post. Knew it.
DooShabag, my 8-year old son has entirely skipped disappointing classmates about Santa. He goes straight for God. I’m really proud of him.
Marc @ #86
I strongly suspect that my three year old doesn’t actually think that Santa Claus (or Father Christmas as he is better known here in England) is real.
I don’t recall ever actually thinking that Santa was real, either. For sure it was a great story packed with promise, but actually believing that it was real? Unlikely, though childhood memories are rather fickle so perhaps I am deluding myself.
Children enjoy great stories (as do adults) and seem to have a little bit of trouble appreciating the significance of the difference between fact and fantasy (which is where we adults are supposed to score rather better). I’m pretty sure that as kids we knew the difference, just that we don’t appreciate the significance of that difference. Does that make sense?
OK, I’ve only got one child, and I’m second guessing her inner thoughts, plus my own fickle memories, so I can’t exactly publish a paper on the subject fit for peer review.
We’ve certainly never said to our daughter “Santa doesn’t really exist”. Why should we? She’s perfectly capable of figuring it out for herself, and I’m fairly convinced that she never believed Santa really existed in the first place. Not because she’s a child genius, but because children aren’t generally that stupid, are they?
Dammit, #90 should have read
Stupid less than sign.
CrypticLife:
We haven’t even introduced the concept of God yet, and we hang out with a lot of atheists / non-religious people so it hasn’t come up – at what age did you do that? Mine are 4ish.
My parents had a “don’t say anything either way and let him figure it out for himself” attitude about both religion and santa.
So of course I understood santa to be the same as Scooby Doo and the other stuff on TV – fun make believe. Same as the stuff on Davey and Goliath. Then I heard the Jesus story but was shocked to find out that some people actually BELIEVED that stuff.
It soon became clear from friends and TV that the way to get parental approval was to “say your prayers” and all that, so one night I tried it, told my parents I was going to.
No approval, no disapproval, no acknowledgment whatsoever. Well, that was a failed experiment, never bothered with that crap again.
A little later I was surprised to discover that my friends thought Santa was at least plausible. Footprints in the soot in the fireplace, etc. Clearly parents liked you to believe in Santa.
So I left out cookies and milk one Christmas night. No response. Another failed experiment. So much for Santa.
That was the extent of my religious and santa flirtation. Only as an adult did I find out that my father is an atheist and my mother isn’t, the “don’t say anything either way” was I think an uneasy truce between them.
Jesus is Santa for adult children.
I still haven’t found the secret to parental approval though.
Is this some kind of idiocy contest?
We didn’t bring it up at all. The first time he heard it was in kindergarten, at five years old. It bothered me quite a bit, because for a while I wasn’t even aware it had been brought up. The natural instinct of many atheists is to let their children make up their own minds, but you don’t account for other people actively proselytizing at such a young age.
Fortunately, he puzzled over it for a bit and has come to the conclusion that deities don’t exist without a lot of prompting from me.
Seeing the tactics of the religious, however, I’ve since changed my mind. My second son will be quite aware of my beliefs on the topic well before others get to introduce it to him.
I don’t ever recall thinking of Santa as real. I mean, really, a guy flying around the world and visiting *every* house in one night? Flying reindeer? It’s slightly less believable than Noah’s ark and the Garden of Eden. I tend to agree with Mark @ 103, I think a lot of kids don’t “really” believe.
I don’t really have a problem with having fun with the idea of Santa. Heck, adults do that and we all fully realize it’s fantasy. If a child asks a direct question, though, I think it’s irresponsible to answer them directly in the affirmative.
Doo Shabag:
Introducing the concept of god(s) to young kids is easy. Read them myths of every different type that you can. Make sure you start with Norse and Greek myths, that no-one will tell them are “real”.
Then clump a few types of stories together from different traditions, like creation myths, or flood stories. No special status for any of them.
They will no longer be ignorant about the OT god, but will have a sense of perspective as well.
Cryptic Life is spot on. You do not want to let your kids hear about “God” for the first time from someone who believes.
OT from the war on Christmas but certainly not from the war on science by the current Rethuglican Administration.
To PZ Myers and all the good readers of his Blog,
South Florida Needs your help!
As resident of Hollywood Beach Florida, as a diver and long time visitor to the coral reefs along the coast here, all I can say is that this really sucks!
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/search/content/local_news/epaper/2008/11/28/a5c_coral_1129.html
Just this past summer in July The United States hosted the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium in Fort Lauderdale just south of the area in question. Apparently the government of United States has decided that science and scientists should be ignored once again. Thank you so much fine members of the Bush administration.
If any of the readers here at Pharyngula would like to express their disapproval of this permission for the wealthy and greedy to destroy a little more of what is left of this precious natural heritage of ours,
Which they say does not even exist… (bullshit because I have those corals with with my own eyes!) Then please send them an email at:
Cyber dot Fish at noaa dot gov
or contact http://www.reef-rescue.org for more information about these critically endangered coral reefs.
Thank you, and have a very Merry Squidmas!
Fernando Magyar
That muppet Choudary appeared on Irish radio a few times. If he loves his religion so much why doesn’t he move to an Islamic country?
Telling a bunch of seven year-olds that one of their favorite fantasies isn’t real is rather churlish. It’s the kind of thing a smart-ass eleven year-old would do.
-jcr
I believed in Santa when I was seven. Couldn’t figure out how he got to every house in the world and it kinda fell apart from there but then there’s the mass world conspiracy theory about parents lying to kids that didn’t make a lot of sense either.
I couldn’t figure out how the dinosaurs figured into creationism either and got kicked out of Sunday school because I kept asking.
I wish a 7 year old kid would see through the Santa thing. I fight with my wife about this every year. She tells them Santa is real and gets pissed when I try to tell them different (I’m spoiling the fun, or some other b.s.). I thought my 10 and 8 year old kids were over this last year, but, the’re falling for it again this year. I decided this year I’m going to wait until the wife’s not around and clue them in, like it or not.
That’s odd; so do I!
You know what might be a good idea would be a link in the Post a Comment section that explains the html rules for comments.
Someone is forever using [i]the wrong brackets[/i] or asking about blockquotes or messing up a post with greater than or less than characters.
PZ, please? Though it aught to be scienceblogs wide.
@Brownian #116: Mrowr! Behave or I’ll have to tie you up.
Telling the child that they’re going to hell if they don’t believe in Jesus Christ is the kind of thing a cretinous bullying thug would do. It’s those kind of tactics that mean I have no regard for the feelings of parents who want their kids to believe in Santa.
If a kid asks me, I’ll tell them the truth. That their parents love them, and want them to have fun with a magical story, want to given them presents without feeling guilty about giving too much, want to engage in the pageantry and tradition of doing things like hanging up stockings and wrapping presents rather than just bluntly giving a box and saying, “here”. That their parents know they’ll figure it out eventually and have the best intentions in deceiving them.
If you don’t want your children to know the truth, discourage them from asking. If you’re religious, I’m sure you know how to do that. Be glad I don’t stoop as low as the religious and tell children unbidden.
I still remember how I killed Santa, I must have been about 7 year old.
It was a few days after Christmas, I was with my younger sister and we were both fiddling in one of those forbidden cupboards in the kitchen. I don’t remember exactly why we were interested in searching this cupboard, but there it was, Santa’s red costume with the big pointy hat. At first we thought Santa might have changed himself after work and left his uniform in our house, but what really puzzled me was the long white beard. I couldn’t understand why Santa would have left his beard in our house, I always thought beards were really attached to people, so it was smelling fishy. Then I went to my parents and asked why Santa would leave his beard in our house. I can’t recall the exact reply, but it must have been so unconvincing that Santa was already dead.
As I recall, I made myself believe in Santa till I was about 10 or so. It was a valuable experience for me, because I learned from it how easy it can be to “make yourself” believe something absurd as an act of faith, or will power. I remember dancing across the top of the idea, allowing it to get vague in the specifics, focusing on the charm of the story, seeing myself as the “sort of person who believes” and feeling rather sweet and honest and smug about it all. I believed in Santa because I believed in Belief in Santa.
So now when I deal with pseudoscientists and fundamentalists, I can empathize a bit with how a person can think and feel their way into believing something that they would, in most cases, dismiss as absurd — but there’s something special about being a believer, so you convince yourself you believe. You can lie to yourself so convincingly that you actually buy into it. It’s as if you analyze things with a different part of the brain than usual — the part that tells stories, perhaps.
They may not really being doing the exact same thing I did at 10, but I think it’s analogous, at least in some cases.
Thanks for the thoughts folks. I really like this idea:
Does anyone have any recommendations of good myth books for kids?
Holy Fuck! It’s Christmas, and it’s coming right for us! Run!
I have a hard time understanding what’s so fucking hard about giving children clear enough hints about Santa so that they can’t avoid figuring it out, but not breaking the make-belief by spelling it out to them in a blunt way.
“Of course Santa/Jesus/Xenu/Garden fairies are real! No, stop looking over there! PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN.”
Silly adults.
I second JohnnieCanuck’s request for a link to a short list of relevant html code, and ask that it include the proper way to put in links. I’ve been just pasting in the whole URL, and that’s ugly.
Hey, watch it with the Santa-hate, PZ. Don’t you know he’s the reason for the season?
links
<a href=”http://www.cnn.com”>CNN’s Website</a>
Geez, it’s about time. I was wondering whether I was going to have to post my phone number here before I got some offers for that slutty action everyone’s always going on about.
My daughter is 7. While she has a lot of skeptical questions, I think she still believes santa is real. She’s getting there tho. She now realises *elves* arent real, and that Santa probably lacks the time to deliver all the presents in 1 night…. but Santa is smart enough to work around it :)
Id be slightly annoyed if a teacher dropped the bomb like this, but Im surprised some other kids with older siblings havent told her already.
In the end, I dont think she’ll care – Xmas is all about *presents* after all :)
With an intro like that, I thought we were going to get a really good story. :^)
“Santa is dead” — Nietzsche, at age 5
Increased comparable store sales growth percentage is the reason for the season, silly ducks!
Telling the child that they’re going to hell if they don’t believe in Jesus Christ is the kind of thing a cretinous bullying thug would do.
Did I advocate anything of the kind?
-jcr
If he loves his religion so much why doesn’t he move to an Islamic country?
For someone like Choudary, it’s more about hating people than loving his religion.
-jcr
When I was a little kid, in Spain in the 1960’s, there was no Santa, and Xmas day was a day to go to church. Presents arrived in January 6th, brought not by Santa but by the Three Kings.
Sigh, no doubt that’s changed since then, given the pervasive influence of American culture. I know here in Oz we’ve had halloween dressup in the last few years – what a pain.
Nope, and I’m not saying you did. However, many who would complain about an education in Santa have no objection to attempting to proselytize to children who aren’t their own about deities. Some would even support such morally repugnant acts as mandated prayer in school, “Under God” in the Pledge, or declarations to the effect that the US is a Christian nation. If you characterize telling children Santa isn’t real as “churlish”, then you ought to recognize the difference in scale and seriousness of the offenses.
But there was another reason for the rant. I don’t care about the feelings of the parents, that doesn’t mean I don’t care about the kids. If they’re told in the right fashion, it’s an honest adult talking to them, not a smart-ass 11-year old. The churlishness isn’t in what’s done, but in how it’s done.
Incidentally, one of my kids’ favorite fantasies is Iron Man. Just because he’s not real, doesn’t make him any less a favorite fantasy.
I think Choudary has already lost his battle, judging from the Muslims I’ve known (a large number, though mostly of Iranian descent), who all say that Jesus is one of Allah’s prophets, though not Allah’s son. Though none that I know celebrate Christmas, so perhaps he can still try to convince them on that score.
As for Santa, personally, I can’t remember if I ever really believed in a fat old man bringing presents down the chimney, but I know that by 7 I’d figured out that he was a game I played with my parents. It wasn’t traumatic; my parents, after all, weren’t going anywhere. Christmas, despite being completely secular in my family, is still loads of fun. I think that the parents who have their kids so convinced that Santa is real that the kids burst into tears when they hear the truth may be doing something wrong.
Of course, I’m working on my second university degree and my parents still sign gifts “Santa”, which would be so much more plausible if we didn’t all share a distinctive familial form of chicken-scratch handwriting.
Mr. Choudary, please explain: what is the Correct Muslim™ view of Santa Claus?
If Santa isn’t real then how did my sister become pregnant last year?
Poe or not, it’s neither insightful nor funny. Goodbye troll.
Posted by: Feynmaniac | December 10, 2008 9:02 PM
“Santa is dead” — Nietzsche, at age 5.”
He found his nietzsche at a young age.
Posted by: John Morales | December 10, 2008 9:56 PM
“When I was a little kid, in Spain in the 1960’s, there was no Santa, and Xmas day was a day to go to church. Presents arrived in January 6th, brought not by Santa but by the Three Kings.”
Same here in Buenos Aires. Now they get gifts at midnight on Dec 25th and on Three Kings Day. The greedy little secular bastards.
I’m gonna go with what the kids are saying, and take their word for it when they say they believe in Santa. Some are probably lying, but nothing more than some.
If you characterize telling children Santa isn’t real as “churlish”, then you ought to recognize the difference in scale and seriousness of the offenses.
It does not follow that because there are worse things than being churlish, that one should go ahead and be churlish.
-jcr
I don’t get the whole “don;t deprive the kids of the fun” bullshit.
I’m sorry this will probably sound rude, but if you think your kids need to be deliberately deceived by the adults they trust in order to enjoy the holiday… and if you think that children need to actually believe in nonsensical things, and fairies and magic – in order to have fun, be creative and have good imaginations, then you’re a fucking idiot who doesn’t understand children and who doesn’t remember childhood.
I NEVER believed in that shit, and yet I had fun, I was imaginative. One of my defining characteristics is that I am a creative person.
Children understand make-believe, they KNOW it’s not real, and they have fun with it anyway. When I was a little kid and liked to pretend to be a dog, crawl around and bark and insist my mother call me Spot, I didn’t actually THINK I really was a dog, and it wouldn’t have helped me have fun and made me more creative for my parents to tell me straight out that I did indeed become a dog when I was playing make-believe.
The reason parents like their kids to actually believe in Santa is because its fun for the PARENTS.
Kids would be (and are) fine with conscious make-believe the same way they can idolize the Little Mermaid and love her and yet know she’s not real. They can be comforted by and love their teddy bear while knowing that it’s really just a toy.
You are really horrible parents you know – there’s an infinite number of possible imaginary gift-giving magical beings, and you’re depriving your kids the fun of having been conned into believing in all of them except one.
Of course, there’s a valuable lesson in being the kid who doesn’t believe in God and who doesn’t believe in Santa while all around you do. You learn to think for yourself and not trust authority figures who tell you what’s true when your own eyes are telling you it’s not… and you learn early on just how silly and gullible most people are.
We’ve taken a middle route – taught our daughter that “Santa” is a role and an idea – the pleasure of giving and receiving– and that the role and idea are real. We talk about being Santa for the people we make gifts for, for the Coats for Kids stuff we do, and things like that. She knows that the myth of Santa is a myth we pretend is true to celebrate gift giving and receiving, and to remind us to fill the role of giver to others, and to be gracious receivers.
The primary goal behind doing this was to avoid the whole “learning Santa isn’t real thing” — my husband was a fervent Santa believer, and when his older brother told him Santa wasn’t real, it broke his heart. I mean, we’re talking serious trauma here — decades later when we got together, my husband still couldn’t talk about Xmas or Santa, and if you could get him to, it usually ended in tears. Once he turned tail and fled a Sears store because we’d shown up on their talk-to-Santa day.
So it’s a shift in knowledge that can be damaging, though my dear husband is a rather extreme example.
On a side note, a completely un-intended consequence of the tack we took with our kiddo has turned out a child who’s pretty well balanced between wanting to get, and wanting give gifts. Most of her cousins the same age are all gimme-gimme-gimme, but she’s not. I like.
Oh one last thing about the fun of believing in imaginary things…
I’ve seen the joy and fun it can bring to children first-hand. My sister is religious, brought up my 4 nieces to belief in God and Jesus and Santa and the Tooth Fairy.
One day while I was visiting my niece came home inconsolable, bawling her head off, couldn’t be comforted. She had lost a tooth that day, and it had fallen out of her mouth and she was unable to find it.
Unable to find it to place under her pillow, which meant that the tooth fairy wouldn’t be coming. After about an hour of reassurance and promises that tooth fairies “know” anyway, she calmed down a little, but it was a traumatic couple of hours for her.
What fun.
Doo Shabag-
D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths. It’s oversize, colorful, has all the best-known stories, and really wonderful lithographs. (My kids think that all the winged evils flying out of Pandora’s Box are really cute!)
Now I could use a really good book of Norse Mythology for them. Any suggestions?
Posted by: Dan | December 10, 2008 5:09 PM
HELP!!! … The locals have tossed out just about every stupid justification for their “beliefs”
I liked this one
I spent years in a family that had cars and saw no proof that GM or Ford really exists!
LOL.
mayhempix @142, :)
Craig @148, nice example – religious belief writ small.
I googled this Islamic authority on Xmas in would you believe a FATWA BANK!
Ubi Dubium @149,
I’ve got The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Mythology, which, though terse, has some great illustrations and is wide-ranging throughout the ancient world. It includes Norse mythology, but more of the same won’t hurt :)
re #153, I meant Greek mythology. Heh.
This was the giveaway for the 7-year-old me too. Would JCR call my parents churlish?
I doubt that the teacher that dropped the dime on Santa was an atheist only because I come from a VERY religious family and several of my cousins were told by their parents that Santa Claus didn’t exist. They didn’t want the Santa myth to distract from the Jesus myth you see. I guess that the promise of goodies from one white bearded man is a BAD thing but the promise of eternal hellfire from another is…good? Must build character.
Anyhow, I remember setting traps to catch Santa when my brother and I still believed in him. I’m not sure what we were planning on doing if we DID, but knowing my brother it probably would have ended up with us dragging Santas lifeless body outside wrapped up in his toy sack to hide in the field behind our house then dividing up our hard won loot. And the eight flying magical reindeer – TOTAL WIN!
@82: (on creationists)”And I like to imagine them speaking in a Chipmunk’s style with helium-like voices when I read their posts.”
Lulz!!
Thanks for the tip. That’s going to make reading them much less headsplodey.
Sven@ 95:
Is it a coincidence that Jer Bear looked like that? Hmm?
Lucky me, here in Austria there is no Santa Claus to not believe in… Its the “Christkind”! In our family my wife is responsible for the folk-lore and I follow a no-lying policy, so when my 5year-old asks why christmas is on the 24th, I tell him its because of the winter solstice and old celebrations where co-opted by christianity. I think, he now only believes because he wants to and thats ok, its part of the fun.
And I agree, telling kids about other myths is a good preparation. I read a childrens book with him once where the lotos-eaters from the Odyssey where mentioned and I had to explain why Odysseus had to go on his round trip: For desecrating the altar of Poseidon. Cue short story about the pantheon of the greek gods.
Oh, and for the 80th Birthday of his greatgranddad he wants to get a science book. I am so proud!
I know I’ve seen a great Norse Mythology illustrated kids’ book – can’t remember the name, though I’m pretty sure it’s called “Norse Mythology” (Amazon knows, I bet).
I saw “Clash of The Titans” when I was about 5, and after going on and on about Pegasus and Perseus, my mom gave me one of her Edith Hamilton books to look at and I was fascinated with the family tree chart of all the gods and half-gods and everyone.
Also when I was around 5, I became aware of the fact that “Jesus Christ” wasn’t just some nonsensical swear-exclamation that my dad,among others, would scream when he hit accidentally hit himself on something or was exasperated(brought up by a reformand a converted Jew), when some kid told me the basics. I was like “really. oookay”.
Damn there’s some pathetic jaded people on here who can’t see why that teacher was a total asshole for telling kids that.
When your own kid has an imaginary friend or believes in fairies or hopes that in some remote jungle or in the abyss there are still monsters, are you gonna ruin the fun by telling them that all that shit just ain’t real.
Part of the fun of being a kid is being allowed to believe in almost anything. It’s fun to figure out that stuff on your own, figure out there aren’t any monsters through exploring, that there aren’t any fairies through reading about folklore.
Whether you believe in the stuff or not, the people on here who think it’s fun to fuck with 7 year olds, and their belief in Santa, are a bunch of dicks.
The Usborne Book of Greek and Norse Legends. Great illustrations, quite readable.
I grew up on the book. I think I knew more about Loki than the God in the Bible when I was a kid, even with weekly indoctrination at church.
The nun who taught my kindergarten class told us that there was no Santa; it was Jesus who brought us the presents at Christmas.
Over a half-century later, and my mother is still a bit miffed.
Mike @161:
Instilling a belief in Santa is fucking with 7-year olds. It’s a barefaced lie.
Contrast your post with Craig @146 &148 and PennyBright @147.
Hihi
I’m not sure when I stopped believing in Santa, I was very young though, I remember being taken on a santa sleigh ride when I was 4 or 5 and being shushed because I noticed something odd and asked my mother if the walls were moving or the sleigh itself
Then again, my parents were very into forcing fairy tales on me and preventing me from talking to anyone who wasn’t in the church so it took me until I was 11 or 12 to realise the guy in the sky was also not actually there -.o
Speaking of that, my parents made me go out to be ‘saved’ when I was 5 or so, this makes me quite angry even now, there’s no way I understood what I was doing and everyone involved should have known that, it was clearly about them looking good to the other church members -.-
They also forced me into a baptism when I was 16 or so, knowing full well I didn’t believe any of it for the same reason and insisted I put up with the bullshit several times/week (three times on a sunday!) and basically said until I moved out I had no choice, then took up amateur stalking when I did move out, lying to people to attempt to force me back home etc.
Ah, religion, it makes such lovely parents -.o
Part of the fun of being a kid is believing in things that aren’t real? Gosh, I guess I missed out on all the fun as a kid then, because I never believed in anything that wasn’t real… and in the cases where I guessed wrong about something – when I found out I was wrong I was glad to know the truth but felt embarrassed for having been fooled.
I LOVED Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer… or rather his best friend, Fireball. LOVED him. Had a stuff reindeer I named Fireball. Never once believed he was real. Never had an imaginary friend that I actually believed was real.
Like I said – kids understand make believe. They read “Where the Wild Things Are” and love it and know it’s not non-fiction. It seems that it’s adults who don’t get that and who confuse the issue.
For me as a kid, fun was make-believe, which I understood to be make-believe… but fun was also fossil hunting on the creek near my house. Fun was my big brother explaining to me that the whole area where we lived used to be under a sea, and the fossils were the animals that had lived there.
Fun was imagining worlds I knew were make believe, and fun was imagining worlds I knew were real, worlds I had evidence in front of me for. Fun was reading books on dinosaurs, using my brother’s microscope to look at slides of pig blood and a crushed aphid.
Fun was understanding that I could understand. That there were amazing, magical things in the world that involved no magic but were real, and that I could understand and see and feel and touch… or read about. That the world was full of mysteries – not unsolvable mysteries, but mysteries I could solve. Me. I could do it. I could understand it.
I could have a skeptical but wondering interest in ghost ships and UFOs and nessie, and read about it and conclude that it was the wishful thinking of silly people at best and a lie and a con at worst.
And I could imagine things that aren’t real and read sci-fi and love it. I could do all of that.
THAT is what I got from having a family that respected truth and honesty and that respected my intelligence and who despite whatever other faults they may have had, taught me never to lie and never lied to me.
That is what I got from having a father and older brother who, when I came to them with a wonder or a question, told me the truth and showed me the fun and value and wonder in that reality instead of deliberately misleading me because it would be “cute” to have a misinformed little kid around the house… because it would be “fun” for me to be confused and to learn that you never can tell for sure when people you trust are shitting you.
seems like Craig gets it. Way to get in the spirit of the season, as it were!
My kids still believe the Santa stuff and they will figure it out on their own. Can’t wait for the moment they make me proud by telling they did so. If a teacher tells them, that’s perfectly fine with me. They won’t be shocked.
Also, I tell them nonsense on a daily basis, followed by ‘or am I talking nonsense?’. ‘Yeah, you’re talking nonsense’ is the answer I’m looking for. Even when I’m not talking nonsense, telling them about the wonders of nature and such, they’ll challenge me and I’ll have to explain. They know that their father is not an infallible source of knowledge, nor that there is any such thing.
I don’t think I ever really believed in santa. And I don’t know anyone who did.
In norway the tradition is a bit different from America. Santa actually comes and delivers presents “in the flesh” on the evening of the 24th. So there’s no great mystery involved with presents magically appearing during the night.
Usually santa is some neighbour or relative that has dressed up for the occasion. Another classic is that your father goes to the toilet, santa shows up and gives you presents, and then a few minutes later daddy is back, having just missed the whole show.
As you can imagine, recognizing your own father or uncle behind a cheap cotton-beard isn’t really all that hard, and so for the vast majority of kids, santa is just a fun game that everyone is in on. I’m guessing even most 3-4 year olds knows it’s not real.
My older sister triumphantly tore of my uncle’s fake beard at the age of 2, exposing the obvious fraud. So the santa myth never really had much chance in my family.
Translation: my “lad” was NOT in tears, and neither was anyone else in the class.
Translation: I don’t have any arguments, but I’m going to ramble on anyway.
Translation: he claimed he was distraught in order to get sympathy points from me. Or, alternatively: a bare-faced lie.
Translation: we told him that and *I* am fine now.
Translation: I am not fine after all. Also, I hate the teacher and will say anything to smear her good name now.
As an add-on to my #168 and in case anyone worried: among other things, my kids, aged 4 and 7, know humans are primates sharing a common ancestor with apes, have a basic grasp of evolution and know dinosaurs are extinct and never walked side-by-side with humans.
Very eloquent at #166, Craig. Too bad your first two sentences, where you showed you don’t get the difference between “part” and “all”, switched me into reading it as if you were going to be disingenuous. It doesn’t help that your point boils down to “this is how I was raised, therefore it was better”.
An eloquent opinion is still just an opinion, and someone can mock how you were raised just as easily as you mock how others were.
You may be smart people here in the comments, but you’re not very good at not hurting feelings…
I remember one year, around 4 or 5 years old, I put a letter for Father Christmas, asking for pet gerbils in mine and my mother’s house, up the chimney. ‘Santa’ wrote back saying that the gerbils at my father’s house would get jealous… Two days before Christmas, those gerbils gave birth and I phoned my mother to say that he must have been lying/joking.
After my first day of school (Roman Catholic – my mother was brought up RC and can never decide what religion she is, though I was only baptised so I could be put in this school that was close to her work), I came back home and said that the big bang was more sensible than God to explain the world. This must have been before I disbelieved Santa, which says a lot about religion.
I also had a letter written by the ‘Tooth Fairy’ once, explaining that she had found a tooth I had accidentally dropped down the sink.
I think I came out ok, despite being in correspondence with these imaginary figures. It may be to do with my father’s habit of insisting that sorts of ridiculous things were true, but then piling on the ridiculous details until they became self-evidently false, all the while INSISTING they were true. I could usually tell that he was joking, but it was tricky – when he told me that some people were born with tails, I believed him. Then he told me that one of his friends was born with a tail, and I believed him. Then he suggested I ask her about it. Her reaction made me disbelieve in human tails altogether. Eventually, I looked it up online and clarified the issue.
That’s the tactic I may eventually take. After all, it’s unlikely that a child will believe in Father Christmas until adulthood (there are no/few Churches of Santa), and if they’re not quite sure if one is lying, they’ll look things up themselves (though of course, one shouldn’t lie enough to make children uncertain about EVERYTHING you say).
I still do it now, trying to convince people of the ridiculous, until the charade is exposed.
Rather than always tell the truth, I’d rather often tell ridiculous lies that force people to discover the truth themselves. Plus it’ll give them training in debating creationists. No fantastical defence of Father Christmas could be as ridiculous as what they come up with.
Of course, this was coupled with my father’s love of science and curiosity about the world, so I wasn’t just dumped in a maelstrom of fantasy. But there’s more than one way to instill skepticism in people. Either teach them to question everything, or try to convince them of more and more ridiculous lies, until they realise what’s going on and start questioning things themselves. That way it also becomes like a game – there’s a point where you start asking questions, just to enjoy how silly the answer will be.
I don’t think telling a child that Father Christmas is real is in the same league as teaching them to be religious – they’ll grow out of it, it may teach them to question what they’re told, and it can be good fun (perhaps more so for the parents)… Though some of the traumatic moments of revalation recounted above make me realise that one should be very careful when ‘indoctrinating’ their children! That’s not to say that telling them he doesn’t exist makes you a wet blanket. Both are fun, each to their own; I’ve just always had a fondness for the ridiculous.
That gives me an idea… Maybe I could bring my children up to believe in God, but (with tongue in cheek) provide them with more and more patently ridiculous (yet genuinely creationist) information, until they realise it’s a sham. Rather than tell them there is no god, tell them there is, but show them how ridiculous religious claims are from the start, rather than letting them build up a ‘tolerance’ to such silliness.
Shit. I didn’t realise what a long, rambling post that was. And no posts since. I feel like the boring person at a party who manages to kill the atmosphere with a tedious anecdote about table legs.
Maybe I should drink until I throw up into a plant pot. That makes those rambling types more fun, at least.
#175
I read the post and it has, in some form, some of my ideas. And hey, it’s morning on the west side of the Alantic, people there are just fixing their first coffee, give it time, especially because the creationist generally live a time zone or two further west.
You know, if Mary wasn’t good enough for Joseph, why would God want to go there? Did Joseph really want God’s sloppy seconds?
I can. When I was 7, I could take my bike, ride a mile and play with friends from school… as long as my parents knew roughly where I was going and if I was home for meals, and didn’t blow up old man Wiggins’ cat, no biggy.
My friends today who have kids around age 7 wouldn’t dare let them go around the corner without a military escort, cell phone, GPS tracker and satellite camera monitoring. Ok, I’m joking about the escort and satellite. Some of my friends actually schedule their pre-teen kids’ play time with Outlook.
With children being subjected to that kind of Orwellian control by their parents, I’m not surprised that they’ll believe all sorts of shit that we wouldn’t believe as kids. We had the luxury of thinking for ourselves.
Because Santa is really a squid who lives deep in the ocean. Elves exist, although a certain author once referred to them as “Deep Ones” and that name stuck in some circles. Reindeer fly by they flap their fins. They’re really Vampyroteuthis infernalis and they only look like reindeer when they’re moving very fast.
Awesome! Can you store it at 1500C under about 60000 atm of pressure between now and Christmas?
For my part, I think 5 years old was the last year that I believed in Santa, and even then only nominally. I knew that the department store Santas weren’t real because you could see more than one at the same time in some spots, and the story that they were helper Santa’s on some kind of Elfin mafia payroll didn’t work for me. The science of Santa already didn’t work for me. Nor did the unfairness… why did Santa not come to my Jehova’s Witness cousins? Why did my parents and some of my aunts and uncles fight and argue at Christmas with the JW aunts and uncles? Why would Santa put up with that shit? Certainly by the time I was 7 all notions of magical Santas were gone from my head.
My 6 year old still believes in Santa and I believed until I was 8. Yes, I do “Christmas” as a tradition not as religion. When she finally does stop believing in Santa and the Tooth Fairy, I will use them as examples to her of how easy it is for people to believe in something that isn’t real (God) because other people told them it exists. Hopefully, it will get rid of some of the brainwashing my neighbor’s daughter has spread to mine. My daughter is still at that “my Mommy thinks your Mommy is an idiot for believing in God” phase that gets people punched in the face so I try my best to counter their crap without saying what I really feel.
on the santa thing:
there are a lot of billboards around London with a message from ‘the Prince’s Trust’, an organisation with Prince Charles as it’s figurehead, which tries to get youths interested in sport and achievement etc. It reads:
“God? Father Christmas? Some kids don’t even believe in themselves…”
This message for some reason makes me want to go and scrawl a reasonable slogan over it in a fit of rage, but I can understand the semi positive message behind it. Sort of. I just think they could have got the message over without resorting to mythical fairy creatures…sigh.
Can anyone else explain why I feel so annoyed by it?!
BTW my kids were shamelessly misinformed by their parents until about 7/8…the ‘no presents from father christmas cos you’re being naughty’ tactic worked a treat in the run up to xmas! I hang my head in atheist shame.
I think I was about 5 years old when I came to the conclusion that Sinterklaas* wasn’t the real thing. I’m fairly sure most of the small ones in my family/friends ‘know’ he isn’t real, but they surely will act like he is… because otherwise the presents might go away.
So basically belief in Sinterklaas equals the amount of toys received. Don’t think any teacher can change that :)
I’d still be a bit pissed if a teacher told my kids stuff like that before they’d figured it out themselves though.
* We didn’t have Santa Claus in my youth. We have Sinter Klaas, who celebrates his birthday on the 5th of december by giving all *good* children presents and presumably giving the *bad* children a whip, as in they would be wipped if they kept up being bad.
And whilst modern PC goofballs might accuse the old Sint of slavery and such, he gave his presents to each and every household, no matter what Religion that household might subscribe to.
Why Sinter Klaas became Santa Claus, and why the 5th of december became the 25th is something puzzling to us, then again, Coca Cola wasn’t our national drink either ;)
@17: Muslims lke Choudary, and indeed most Sunni Muslims as well as Twelver Shia, don’t consider the Alawi to be Muslims anyway, so whatever they do regarding Xmas or Easter doesn’t matter. They have much bigger heresies under their belts.
@138: All Muslims believe that Jesus was a prophet; it’s part of the Quran and an essential article of belief in order to be Muslim. That doesn’t mean you go around celebrating his alleged birthday now!
Muslims have been saying the same about Christmas for decades now, including some of their illustrious mainstream leaders (well, they only say these things when they’re not on CNN begging for ‘brotherhood’ and acceptance). Even people who might be embarrassed by or dislike Choudary and his other sentiments will quietly agree with him on this, including your friendly Muslim co-workers.
“Why Sinter Klaas became Santa Claus”
More importantly, why do I have to give them presents twice….. :)
Question is, will they stop believing in them both at once, or will one go first. And will they figure out it is, for all intents and purposes, one and the same character.
Poor Virginia! She’s been lied to all these years!
I gueth I don’t geth my two fronth teeth.
Hell, American Protestant churches, especially in the North, didn’t celebrate Christmas the way we do now; the Puritans saw its pagan origins (they being honest enough to admit that December 25 was selected as Christ’s birthday in order to co-opt the Sol Invictus and Saturnalia ceremonies of the Romans) and actually made it illegal in the jurisdictions where they held the strongest sway. It didn’t become a national holiday in the US until Abraham Lincoln made it one.
All you parents with two children had best beware… If they decide to do some kind of double-blind test, you’ll be stuck with one really good and one truly awful child.
I very much doubt that a significant number of Muslims are going to feel that they are threatened with the loss of paradise because other people celebrate Christmas. Which obviously does not mean they are going to celebrate it themselves. If they are celebrating it themselves, they probably don’t care what Choudary says anyhow.
I’ll check with a few at work today and get back to you, though.
#185
That would explain a lot of oddities in the EB household.
When I was in my teens, I sold my soul to Santa.
Bloody dyslexia.
John, yeah, reread my comment, I didn’t said kids should be taught about Santa.
Here in the UK we have a new tradition whereby an overzealous local authourity issues a decree that non the the local schools may put on Nativity plays in case they cause offence.
The right wing press then have to go a bit insane and declare that as a result of the decree Western Civilisation will crumble.
In addition Jewish, Sikh, Hindu and Muslim religious leaders are required to make statements saying they have no problem with Nativity plays in schools, and that they recognise they form part of the cultural tradition.
The final part of the tradition involves the local authority claiming they never intended to ban Nativity plays in the first place, and even if they had everyone was being really unfair and picking on them. This is normally accompied by a ritual savaging by John Humphries on the Today program.
Dan@26: Done and done. The bandwidth is way lower there than here, I am actually being read there!
JC
I want everyone to know I have solved the whole Santa problem. The answer? Don’t have kids. See? It doesn’t matter anymore.
My parents dealt with the Santa thing by telling us he once was a real person many years ago and when people mention Santa, what they really mean is the “spirit of Christmas”. Well I didn’t fall for that crap either, at any age.
My wife is a far greater advocate for the Santa myth than I am. I play along some, but usually in such a manner that’ll make the midgets think; there are a lot of conspiratorial winks and suggestions that “all is not what it seems”. I, like one above poster, also advocate the use of “Santa traps” (moreso now that we actually have a chimney), only to get voted down every year. Even my wife joined in on that one, this time, but my son wasn’t sure of what would happen should we actually capture the elf. I long for the year he lets me set them up. I can think of several teaching events coming out of the results.
Of course, I’m also tempted to get a manneqin dressed as Santa, wrap it in whatever trap materials we’re working with, and place it in the floor in front of the fireplace. I have an odd sense of humor, that way. Might even stand over it with an axe, yelling, “You remember the Transformers I wanted when I was six, old man? Remember? Who’s nice now?”
Yeah, I need help.
My older kids apparently figured it out by themselves, but were leery of admitting that fact to their parents for fear that it might reduce their presents. =)
“Very eloquent at #166, Craig. Too bad your first two sentences, where you showed you don’t get the difference between “part” and “all”, switched me into reading it as if you were going to be disingenuous. It doesn’t help that your point boils down to “this is how I was raised, therefore it was better”.”
No, I understand the difference. What you are saying is that because I was not raised to believe that fairy tales were actually TRUE, that I missed PART (not all, just part) of the fun of being a kid.
I say bullshit.
Just ONCE I would like to see someone be honest and admit that the reason parents lie to their kids about Santa is because it’s fun for the parents.
Parents lie to their kids about Santa because it’s fun for them to think that their kids believe in such things. It’s cute. They get to imagine the fun they figure it means the kids are having.
Meanwhile, it doesn’t matter a bit either way to the kid.
Kids are going to love Christmas no matter what. Toys, presents, the whole feeling of an event, putting up the tree, special music, colorful decorations, cool lights on all the houses, and fun Rankin-Bass and Charlie Brown specials on TV.
The fun of make-believe, the fun of cool stories about Rudolph and Santa. Kids get that stuff instinctively without needing to be told it represents reality.
Kids don’t NEED it to be real to enjoy it and love it. That’s why they’re kids.
Its ADULTS who can’t enjoy fantasy and make-believe, who have lost their childish playful sense, and who then need to pretend its real “for their kids sake,” because otherwise they’d have a hard time playing along, and because they forgotten what it is to be a kid – forgotten that you can make a place in yourself to let a fantasy become real, feel real, be exciting and wondrous, without needing to lose your sense of reality.
And parents also do this because it’s a nostalgia trip. They were told the lie as a kid, and they loved Christmas and so they think their kid needs to have the exact same experience in order to enjoy it.
There’s a lot of that in some parents’ motivation – raising their kids the way they were raised simply because it’s the way they were raised. Same reason my sister feeds her kids white rice with maple syrup… because our mom gave it to us. (Mom was a lazy, thoughtless food provider who grabbed whatever was easy.) It never occurs to my sister to think that white rice with maple syrup is a pretty stupid thing to feed little kids for dinner. She loved it as a kid, so therefore “white rice is SUPPOSED to be served with maple syrup, that’s what its for.”
That’s what I’d like, just once… that honesty. I’d like to see someone admit that they tell the Santa story as truth to their kids because it’s fun for THEM.
Just ONCE I would like to see someone be honest and admit that the reason parents lie to their kids about Santa is because it’s fun for the parents.
Parents lie to their kids about Santa because it’s fun for them to think that their kids believe in such things. It’s cute.
Parents shouldn’t lie to their kids about Santa. While it’s true, part of the reason is, parents think it’s “cute” but it also brings joy to their children, especially when a man in a red suite shows up to give them presents! So it’s an emotional reason as well.
Some parents use it to motivate their kids to do good, otherwise “Santa” will give them coal instead of presents.
By the way, how many godless people exchange gifts on X-mas? lol
Craig,
If more parents played more D&D, they wouldn’t need to lie to the kiddies about Santa to get their own fantasy ya-yas out. :)
You know, for all of the griping about honesty in the whole Santa thing, I’ve not see anyone here mention the solution of talking about “the first Santa Claus”; i.e. Bishop Nicholas. It’s simple enough to say that Santa Claus as the guy who flies around with reindeer is obviously false, and that everyone’s who dresses up like that is trying to make people remember a generous Bishop who used to leave gifts for all the people he met and came across.
It’s true, it doesn’t depreciate the Christmas spirit at all, and it even maintains the figurehead.
Evolving Squid #177
Ooh! I love it!! And my son would actually love the idea of a Santa Squid (Cthulhu Claus?), although knowing him, the Vampyroteuthis infernalis/flying reindeer would be replaced with fire-breathing dragons :)
As to trying to trap Santa, it never occurred to me to try it as a kid. But, I did try to capture the tooth fairy. As a girl I had a jewelry box that was also a music box, which I kept on the shelf near my headboard. The music would play when one of the drawers was pulled out, so clever me tied one end of a string to the tooth under my pillow and the other end to the musical drawer. I was so excited that I was finally going to get to see the tooth fairy, and I was so proud of my idea that I showed it to my mom as she was tucking me into bed. In the morning I was disappointed to learn that the tooth fairy always keeps a pair of scissors on her…
Breaking news: my 7yo son figured it out, there’s no Santa and no Sinterklaas. He flat out asked my wife and she asked him what he thought. He basically said it didn’t add up and she said that indeed it was just a story. He was very proud of himself. Another skeptic is born.
I think that myths and legends are just fine, in fact I think they’re brilliant.
Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Norse, I’ve enjoyed all of them, especially Norse.
I could add Tolkein, Asimov, Lovecraft, Van Vogt, Pratchett et al. Though you could quite rightly distinguish between stories and myths, I suppose.
Do you enjoy Bond films? Carry On films? Arnie Films? I do, the more the merrier. In fact with xmas coming up I’m really looking forward to the usual run of such cheesiness on British television.
OK, so I also read/watch more highbrow stuff, and I eschew that which I consider to be utter rubbish, which is a very subjective judgement.
But so what? None of these myths/stories/films tell me how I must live my life, they may try, but not so as I’ve noticed. Nor the difference between right and wrong, I would argue that films in particular merely pander to the source culture’s perceptions of right and wrong.
Father Christmas is no differet really. It’s just another myth. As P.Z. has said elsewhere “The War On Christmas” has already been won. Actually “The War On Christmas” is a term that I only learned when reading this blog, you should try England for a change, we’re still comparitively free from the religious fuckwittery expressed in the USA.
Father Christmas is a great myth/story too. Think about it: an eldery, kindly gentleman who lives at the north pole, with an army of enslaved elves who make toys all year long, then in the space of a single night he whizzes all around the western world in a sleigh hauled by flying reindeer, dropping down the chimney of every child, even those without chimney stacks at home, eating millions of mince pies, drinking gallons of cognac, and leaving footprints and presents. Wow, amazing stuff, where do I sign up? I want some of that.
However, Father Christmas is just a story and nobody worth mentioning gets too carried away about it, we enjoy the story and that’s that.
I’ve read Beowulf but that doesn’t mean I believe in Grendel. My daughter enjoys hearing me read Green Eggs & Ham, but she doesn’t believe in Sam-am-I.
By all means we must take care to protect our children from the nut cults such as christianity, but there’s nothing wrong with letting them enjoy harmless fantasies such as Santa Claus.
If my daughter were to ask me “Daddy, is Father Christmas real?”, of course I couldn’t lie to her. I might ask her whether or not she thought it was real, but at a mere three years old she’d probably wander off into her own wonderful fantasyland.
On the other hand, were my daughter to start exploring religious questions I’d have to offer a more concrete opinion. That’s one of the differences between the fun of stories and the mind controlling evil of religion.
£0.02
Cheers
Mark – looking forward to xmas
Here in the UK we have a new tradition whereby an overzealous local authourity issues a decree that non the the local schools may put on Nativity plays in case they cause offence. – Matt Penfold
Matt, do you have an actual example of this really really happening in real life?
My wife and I never pretended to our son that Father Christmas was real, any more than we told him fantasies about gods, ghosts or witches as truth; as Craig says, a child doesn’t need to believe the flying reindeer stuff is true in order to enjoy Christmas.
By the way, how many godless people exchange gifts on X-mas? lol – Michael
Most of them. Why is that a cause of pretended mirth? (By the way, Michael, putting “lol” after a point you have made yourself just makes you look even more of a wally than you otherwise would.) You Christians didn’t invent Christmas – you just took it over from the pagans, who also exchanged gifts around the winter solstice. So there was such a winter festival before Christians existed, and I expect it will still be celebrated when Christianity is no more.
REMEMBER THIS AT CHRISTMAS TIME
According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, while both male and female reindeers grow antlers in the summer each year, male reindeer drop their antlers at the beginning of winter, usually late November to mid-December. Female reindeers retain their antlers till after they give birth in the spring. Therefore, according to EVERY historical rendition depicting Santa’s reindeer, EVERY single one of them, from Rudolph to Blitzen, had to be a girl.
We should’ve known… ONLY women would be able to drag a fat-ass man in a red velvet suit all around the world in one night and not get lost.
Sam L. #20
Was there any follow up ? Was he checked for bruising etc ?
The difference is Parents know the kids will grow out of Santa Claus, where as Christian Parents don’t want them to grow out of Jesus. When my youngest, then 9, found out it was us, he burst into tears, and gave my wife a big hug and said “Thank you” (Tears of love, you see).
“You have to believe the little lies so you can learn to believe the big ones, like Justice”.
I have been telling my cynical pre-teen that he isn’t going to get any presents from Father Christmas. “Dad, there is no Father Christmas”- I’m very tempted to wind him up by hiding them all and saying “Warned you”
Last Hussar:
Do that. Please do that. It would be hilarious.
Yes, because my wife wants to start Christmas Day with an arguement.
“The” Muslims, 1.8 billion of ’em, haven’t entered the fray. A small minority are saying that. 8-)
I’m not ashamed to admit it: I bought into Santa until I was 9 years old. I think I stopped really believing by the time I was in second grade, but since I had no confirmation, and I wasn’t about to spoil a good thing, I just let it ride.
My belief in the red one was finally shattered by my next door neighbor on the school bus: He said Santa died in a helicopter.
I’m horrified to admit that, without Internet around, I completely believed in Santa until I was probably 12. I remember even at age 15 or so when my mom said something to me like, “Do we still have to do Santa?” my jaw dropped. It was like she was admitting to my face that she had lied to me for a decade. I still think it’s a bit horrifying that millions of parents conspire to perpetrate this gigantic lie to every child in America. It’s weird to think about. Even weirder to think how successful their efforts are! Makes a lot of elaborate conspiracy theories that involve dozens of government/corporate officials seem easy in comparison. It must make it easier for them to lie about other things, like the tooth fairy, and that your dog just went to a farm to live. But Christmas Eve was so exciting thinking this magically thing was about to happen – that only happens once a year. Maybe, just like smoking, it’s ok until you’re age 20?