According to a study from the Family and Parenting Institute, nine out of ten parents worry that Christmas makes their children more materialistic.

Read more: [www.dailymail.co.uk]

yea i was watching these videos earlier after telling my cousin she needs to tell her kids the gifts are from her not a fictional 'santa' so she does not cause him psychological harm and build trust issues.

[www.youtube.com]

10 reasons:

because i want to be helpful and peopel to be fully informed . this is too big for a message.


The Negative Effects of Perpetrating the Santa Myth

Just how psychologically and intellectually healthy is it to foist upon children the lie that Santa is real?

In answer, author Tom Flynn offers ten compelling reasons “Why Thoughtful People Should ‘Just Say No’ to Santa Claus.”

Reason #1: ”To teach and perpetrate the Santa Claus myth, parents must lie to their children.”

Flynn contends that the Santa story “is not innocent ‘sharing of fantasy,’ as defenders claim. It is a lie, and one in which parents are always caught, eroding children’s trust at a critical time.”

Flynn notes that children who discover that they have been lied to by their parents about Santa may cause damage to them in later years. Flynn quotes the observation of John Shlien, who warns that the destruction of belief “leaves a cynical disillusionment which occasionally shows up among the trauma in case-histories of maladjusted adults.”

Flynn also cites the warning of Dr. Lee Salk, director of pediatric psychology at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center: “A child should be told from the beginning that Santa is a make believe person or it might create an early credibility gap between parent and child.”

The components of the Santa lie are sweeping and subversive. Describing some of these deceptions as “uncomfortably reminiscent of a childlike view of God,” Flynn offers a sampling of the lies parents “must tell to initiate kids into the Santa tradition:”

--A benign force reigns over the world from a headquarters at the North Pole.

--Santa sees--and records—everything that happens. On the upside nothing is overlooked. On the downside, no child has privacy.

--Every child receives his or her just desserts each year, based on a global judgment whether the child has been "good" or "bad."

--Santa physically visits every family with children in the world in one night.

--Since Santa is the source of all the bounty of Christmas, holiday cheer originates outside of the family and is unrelated to the family’s emotional or economic needs. (Flynn, p. 129)

Flynn then asks tough questions about long-term consequences of, in the name of Santa, deceiving vulnerable children:

What price are we paying for lying to children about Santa Claus? It may be steeper than we think. Because the myth panders to childhood credulity, some have implicated it in the rising incidence of scientific illiteracy among the young. Because it encourages children to build their world views on authority, not on independent thinking, others have related it to the abysmal judgment supposedly displayed by young adults. Can parents honestly be surprised when children do not consult them before experimenting with sex, drugs, crime, or destructive relationships--so soon after their parents have made it clear that children cannot trust them to provide accurate knowledge of the world? A Christian parent put the issue clearly in a letter to the editor:

“Certainly we can’t get away with lies for seven to ten years and then expect children to “outgrow” Santa . . . then suddenly expect them to believe us when we mention high intensity moral issues.

“Simply being honest with our children, in my opinion, would outweigh anything Santa ever brought.” (Flynn, pp. 129-30, 132, 148)


Reason #2: ”The Santa Claus myth exploits characteristic weakness in young children’s thinking, perhaps obstructing their passage to later stages of cognitive development”.

Flynn explains how lying about Santa exploits childhood tendencies to accept simplistic religious claims:

Parents who lie about Santa Claus catch their children at a vulnerable age. Youngsters have trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality as it is. . . .

Recent research suggests that the Santa Claus myth attracts the young because it exploits the same cognitive predispositions that help children learn religion . . .

Young minds might embrace religious ideas of varying complexity at characteristic ages. A . . . study by child psychologist Fritz K. Oser . . . [showed that] . . . [a]t the ages when belief in Santa peaks . . . children tend to hold a blend of two naïve religious views. The simplest [Stage One] imagines God as a distant, powerful ultimate being and a stern, unpredictable judge. . . . At the next level [Stage Two], God is still imagined as an external judge, but . . . [this latter] . . . deity can be influenced by good behavior. Such ideas echo the religions of sacrifice, familiar from ancient history and the pages of the Old Testament. . . .

Like the stage One God, Santa Claus is external and powerful. He observes from a distance and metes out justice (presents or coal) based on what he sees.

Like the more advanced State Two God, Santa Claus can be bought. Children learn that they can purchase Santa’s blessing and guaranteed themselves a merry Christmas by “being good.”

Flynn also debunks the notion that belief in Santa Claus produces good behavior in children:

According to the stereotype, the Santa myth . . . is said to help children outgrow the selfishness of early childhood and develop adult ideas about generosity and giving. Research suggests otherwise. When educational psychologists David J. Dixon and Harry L. Hom sought links between charitable acts by children and their belief in Santa Claus, they came up empty. So much for the idea that parents can justify lying about Santa because it makes their children better people. . . .

Like a true virus, the Santa Claus myth turns the wheels of society toward purposes unrelated to human welfare. It exploits the nascent religious sensibilities of children, if such there be. It compels parents to tell, and later to defend, insupportable lies. At the end, the Santa Claus myth benefits only itself. (Flynn, pp. 132-34)


Reason #3: ”To buoy belief, adults stage elaborate deceptions, laying traps for the child’s developing intellect”

Flynn describes how the Santa lie breeds distrust and cynicism in children toward everybody:

Disillusioned eight-year-olds don’t just learn that their parents lied to them, they learn that society invested tremendous energies to drag out the lie a little longer. No one can be trusted.

Deception about Santa begins at home. Kids begin to notice how many Santas there are at the mall. They spot the present from Santa that is wrapped with the same paper as gift from Mom and Dad. They ask how Santa can visit every house in the world in one night. It gets harder to confine the kids to their room after lights--out on Christmas Eve--time parents need to set the stage for the drama of Christmas morning. As the lies become more elaborate, and correspondingly hard to keep straight, some parents begin to feel “like a burned-out secret agent ready to come in from the cold.” . . .

Moreover, the Santa lie, on the one hand, discourages the development of critical thinking and, on the other, fosters belief in the preposterous.

Notes Flynn:

As boys and girls detect successive contradictions in the myth, always to get smokescreened by fast-talking adults, they learn to distrust their own observations and their powers of deduction. In place of independent discovery, they learn to settle for the leaden substitute of data presented by authority figures and learned by rote. . . . Too often children keep faith in Santa until they have lost faith in inquiry. . . .

After we spend our children’s formative years lying about Santa Claus and sabotaging their early efforts to unravel the myth for themselves, we stand before them revealed not merely as liars, but as the architects of an elaborate deception. Yet we are unashamed. Should we wonder when our children grow up as quick to lie as we were, or when they stumble into adulthood even easier to deceive than we? . . . Children can hardly be blamed for growing up to prefer magical thinking, paranormal beliefs, or exotic sectarian creeds to reality and critical thinking, or for grasping at any glittering lie to "add a tinsel splendour to the plain straight road of our life." (Flynn, pp. 134, 137)


Reason #4: ”The myth encourages lazy parenting and promotes unhealthy fear.”

It is unwise parents who hold Santa over the heads of their children as a god-like promise of reward for good behavior and as a divine threat of punishment for bad.

Flynn writes:

Children see Santa as an all-seeing judge who holds in one hand the carrot of Christmas, in the other a stick shaped like a lump of coal. The temptation for parents to abuse the myth is strong. “Mothers get a lot of mileage out of Christmas,” Erma Bombeck once observed. Parents do not imagine the damage they may do when they use the Claus as a club.

This omnipresent Santa figure, like the myth of an all-seeing God, reminds children that there is no place for them to hide:

The Santa myth teaches kids that they live in a world without privacy. The idea of a watcher who overlooks not a single forbidden actions or a single wayward thought--even one parents miss--can hardly fail to terrify some children. . . .

In essence, Flynn argues, parents who use Santa to produce compliant children are making “coalitions with God by:”

. . . extract[ing] obedience by threatening children with divine punishment. The children believe that God sees what they do, knows what they think, and punishes wrong actions. Viewed like this, God is the equivalent of Santa Claus. . . .

f parents can harm their children by claiming that God is their back-up, using Santa Claus that way is probably harmful, too. (Flynn, pp. 137-38)


Reason #5: ”The number of characteristics that Santa Claus shares with God and Jesus verges on the blasphemous.”

Children do, indeed, make definite connections in their minds between Santa and God. As Flynn notes:

Research studies, personal anecdotes, and press reports illustrate the links between Santa Claus, God, and Jesus in the popular mind. One psychologist . . . [reported] that children’s belief in Santa Claus “lays the groundwork for later belief in God.” . . . Arnold Gesell, director of the Yale Clinic of Child Development, revealed that three-year-olds he had studied understood the concept of Santa Claus before they knew the concept of God. John Shlien reported that four- and five-year-olds would not eat candies shaped like Santa Claus, a behavior thought to show reverence. Another writer complained in the 1930s about overhearing his daughter praying to Santa Claus.

Examples of the similarities between Jesus and St. Nick in the following areas have been provided by Idaho secular humanist Ralph Nielsen:

MIRACLES

Santa Claus: Flying reindeer
Jesus: Angels

Santa Claus: Covering the world in one night
Jesus: Bringing the Word to all nations

Santa: Bottomless bag of toys
Jesus: Loaves and fishes

PARALLEL ELEMENTS

Santa Claus: Elves
Jesus: Apostles

Santa Claus: Letters to Santa
Jesus: Prayers (especially pledges of good behavior in return for favors)

Santa Claus: Milk and cookies
Jesus: Bread and wine

Santa Claus: Immortal
Jesus: Immortal

Santa Claus: All-seeing, all-knowing
Jesus: All-seeing, all-knowing

Santa Claus: Rewards and punishes behavior
Jesus: Rewards and punishes behavior

Santa Claus: Lives at white, pure North Pole
Jesus: Lives in white, pure heaven

OPPOSITES

Santa Claus: Fat
Jesus: Thin

Santa Claus: Jolly
Jesus: Serene

Santa Claus: Creature of winter
Jesus: Lived in deserts

Santa Claus: Brings toys, luxuries
Jesus: Brings health, spiritual necessities (Flynn, pp. 138-140)


Reason #6: ”The Santa myth harms children’s cognitive and emotional development and damages family dynamics.”

It is part of what Flynn describes as the “emotionally twisted subtexts” of Christmas celebration.

For starters, Flynn notes that Santa’s promise of reward or vow of punishment is simply too vague for small children to meaningfully comprehend:

If a merry Christmas depends on being a good boy or girl, they will struggle to be good even if they are not sure what “good” or “bad” means.

Flynn quotes Steven A. Gelb who, in his article, “Christmas Programming in Schools; Unintended Consequences” (Childhood Education October 1987), argues that:

Telling children to be “good” so that Santa will be pleased and give them presents . . . is counterproductive—not only because it encourages children to look outside themselves for standards, but because the words “good” and “bad” convey little information, especially to young children.

Citing Eric R. Wolf, Flynn further notes that the Santa myth harms parent-child relationships by serving to enforce upon children their parents’ “own distorted, nostalgic vision of a ‘golden age of childhood.’” Noting the observations of psychiatrist Renzo Sereno, Flynn writes that parents who do so are themselves “seek[ing] meaning, comfort and reassurance in religion or mystical ideas.”

Santa also plays the role of a convenient scapegoat for parents:

[According to sociologist Warren Hagstrom], f a child has fixed his or her heart on a gift the parent cannot afford, or receives the wrong present because a Christmas list was misunderstood, the parent can always resort to the callow argument that “Santa knows best.” . . . [Santa Claus is also useful] in allowing parents to give gifts without appearing to demand anything in return. As social psychologist Barry Schwartz noted, accepting a gift which one cannot reciprocate is an admission of social inferiority that even children can understand.

Finally, Flynn cites Sereno’s view that parents employ the Santa Claus lie “as a buffer because they are unsure whether they deserve their children’s love:”

”[Parents] need the reassurance of such deceitful acts in order to secure from their children the feelings and the conduct which should be their right and their duty to expect. Instead of letting their love flow, the parents attempt to strike a bargain . . . The child . . . begins to nourish doubts about the love of his parents, and resents being obligated to a mythical ludicrous stranger, rather than being tied by love to those he loves most . . .[P]arental love—diffused through a maze of pointless and never explained ceremonies—is wholly lost.” (Flynn, pp. 141-42)


Reason #7: ”The Santa myth stunts moral development because it encourages children to judge themselves globally, as good or bad persons, rather than to judge positive or negative behavior.”

Flynn points out the confusion generated by the Santa lie in the minds of children as to their individual, personal worth:

. . . [T]hey will strive to be “good” even if they do not understand the distinction between being a “good child” and being a child who usually does good things.

The distinction matters. Do we want to teach our children to evaluate their behaviors, to see which can be improved? Or do we want them to score themselves as persons? Most child psychologists prefer the first strategy. When it is time to judge actions, positive or negative evaluation are applied to the acts, not to the child’s personhood. It is healthy to explain to a child why he or she has done a foolish thing but harmful to say that because of that behavior, he or she is a foolish child.

The Santa Claus myth gets it backwards. Christmas morning is the biggest report card of the year. Presents--or coal? A year’s worth of behavior funnels into that stocking; either you were a good child or you were a bad child. (Flynn, p 142, original emphasis)


Reason #8: “The myth promotes selfish and acquisitive attitudes among children.”

As if the commercialized orgy of the contemporary holiday season is not bad enough, Flynn notes that the St. Nick lie “prepares children to become docile members of consumer culture:”

In a study of children’s letters to Santa Claus, kids always asked Santa for material items, not new skills, intangible benefits for other family members, or good health. By contrast, when the same children listed their desires in contexts not associated with Santa Claus, fewer than half of their requests concerned material objects. (original emphasis)

Citing “masterful” research in this area, Flynn says that Santa becomes a key figure in seducing children into becoming “materially indulgent” commercial feeders by :

[teaching them] that life is so full of free lunches, there may not be enough noontimes to eat them all. In this way kids are groomed to assume their roles as American consumers, grasping for happiness with each new purchase. . . . [Thus,] . . . virtue is not its own reward, but if we are good enough a reward will eventually appear. (Flynn, pp. 143-44)


Reason #9: “Children may not enjoy the Santa Claus drama as much as parental nostalgia suggests.”

Contrary to what parents may want to think, many children--particularly the younger ones--view Santa Claus with a certain amount distress and uneasiness. As an indicator of that, recall how many small children recoil, protest and cry when placed on Santa’s lap in the mall. (Flynn, p. 144)


Reason #10: ”Contemporary authorities who defend the Santa myth on psychotherapeutic grounds fail to make a convincing case."

Contrary to the assertion of self-proclaimed “friends of Santa” who say that discouraging belief in the St. Nick myth throws children into an unfriendly world, Flynn notes that no evidence exists in the literature “that children denied the Santa Claus myth grow up “to hate reality.”

Ultimately, Flynn says, the problem with the Santa myth is that:

. . . Santa is viewed not as myth or metaphor, but as fact. . . .

American culture treats the figure of Santa Claus too literally for the myth to function as a true fable. It is time for mental health and child development professionals to reopen their minds and ask whether the Santa myth is good for children. (Flynn, p. 146)

life vs lifelessness



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/15/2011 07:34PM by Diogenez.

OMG. What kind of repressed childhood did that mess come from? The season of Joy. Elves make toys, apostles?? Please. I got one new toy per year. On Christmas. Don't ruin it for all of us.

One new toy per year is acceptable, I like that formula. However, every single family member seems compelled to purchase several gifts for each child so they end up with dozens of new things. Nothing is special then, all the time, care, effort I put into choosing or making one special thing that should have been a long-lasting thrill is completely negated in favour of a mountain of plastic landfill. Sigh.

And I never lied to the kids about Santa, they know the truth. I remember being furious and very hurt to discover that my moralizing parents had been systematically deceiving me for my entire life when I found out the big secret. It was not a happy time. I can't see any good reason for doing it to my kids. They enjoy the make believe story as much as if they thought it was real, just like other fictional characters. My gift to them is honesty.

Well there are some scary aspects of christmas. I did fear the coal in the stocking, but of course that never happened.

I remember being terrified of a christmas holiday special. The rudolf the red nosed reindeer. The deers were cute, but I was just so afraid of the yeti, especially when it roared, and seemed to be following them, and they couldn't escape it. I saw it again I think last year, and just thought 'wow' how could I ever been afraid of that. But when you are a child things seem more real, and can get more afraid. I remember actually thinking that characters on tv could watch me, just as I could watch them. And whatever was happening on the tube was actually happening somewhere, potentially somewhere nearby.

I saw a version of 'Scrooge' that was really made for adults. I remember being so afraid of these 'things' that were representing christmas past or future I don't recall which. But it was supposed to represent what would happen from not being generous. It was these starving children with bloated bellies.

Most of christmas was magical and wonderful for me when I was a kid, but just those few things I remember were a bit scary. I am not sure what this year will be like. Its not going to be great for a number of reasons. Economic, and living situation with a conflicts. I have been also so busy with school I haven't had time to think or cope with the holidays

Mislu, one thing I think makes a lovely gift is a compilation CD of seasonal music. It does take a bit of time to put together and it's nicer if you print a label and cover but you can then give the same gift to everyone on your list! It's personal but generic enough for everyone.
That or food, chocolate, wine, flowers, etc. For those who expect something but you just don't know what to get or have time to search around. Whatever you do, don't stress too much about it. It really should be about spending RELAXING time together.

LOL Mislu. "I want to be a dentist."

I'm sorry you were upset about being lied to coco. My parents never tried that stuff on me. I told my kids I was one of Santa's secret elves, and they could become Santa's elves too once they turn eighteen. It's just for fun.

(But yeah, I was pissed when my dad told me the tooth fairy slipped a dollar under my pillow, when he was busted already that it was him.)

What a great gift idea, a compilation cd.

I dont have kids,but if I did you bet your bippy that they would know the REAL reason for the season.
Vinny

yeah! Fun decorating~

To me it's all about family, the one we are born into as well as extended family aka humanity. That's why we make a charitable donation instead of going crazy with the gifts. My kids are down with it, they're happy to get anything, one nice thing, they are totally satisfied. It doesn't have to be tons of presents, that's not even interesting to them after a couple of things are unwrapped. We (parents, family, merchandisers, media) put that expectation on them, they learn their selfish, greedy behavior from US! We could all stand to take a page from the book of simple pleasures that rules a child's life.

I think it helped that, being Ukie, we always celebrated St Nicholas Day in Ukie school, and St Nicholas was always played by someone's dad or a teacher, so there was no illusion involved. This carried over into Santa; we knew the guy letting all the kiddies sit on his lap at Hudson's wasn't Santa Claus because what the heck would he be doing in downtown Detroit? We knew that the toys under the tree came from our grandparents 'cos we'd been jabbering yearningly about them for months, and the look of quiet joy on their faces when we opened our presents and were delighted with them was unmistakable. Plus, our mother understood that Christmas is a main opportunity to teach your children gratitude. If your kids think some magic being left their presents for them, Grandpa and Auntie Natalie are gonna get shorted on Thank Yous. This can become habitual ingratitude, which is awful: the only thing worse than an adult with an overweening sense of entitlement is a child with an overweening sense of entitlement. It's repellent. It's unnatural.

Kids aren't stupid and I find the tradition of deceiving them to be ridiculous and an effective distraction from the point of Christmas gift giving: it's a special occasion and your family loves you enough to have made an effort to give you something you would otherwise not get for this special occasion. And herein lies the problem, IMO: our culture has gotten too materialistic outside the holidays, and this perversion has invaded the holidays rather than its arising spontaneously in response to the seasonal behavior of advertisers/marketers. We wouldn't be marketed to so aggressively at this time of year and give in if we didn't do that the other 42 weeks of the year, right? If we weren't prone to already buying all kinds of crap we don't need all the time, the "Holidays" wouldn't be so corrupt and children would remember that it's a time for family and religious observation and not about "Me" and the getting of stuff. We wouldn't need to perpetrate a Santa subterfuge on the kiddies if the self and material needs weren't emphasized in the first place!

Cancelling the pledge of allegiance.