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Santa Guilt
I think it was the fifth time in seven days that I heard from someone that he (or she, but yesterday it happened to be a he) felt bad for lying to his children about aspects of Christmas, namely Santa Claus. In this case, again, he said that he felt reasonably all right telling the story initially but his child began asking detailed questions about how Santa operates, how he gets around, his personal interests, that sort of thing.
This sort of self-consciousness and guilt is a little bit alien to me because my family did a lot of storytelling and had a very non-literal approach to . . . most things. So I don't think my parents would call any discussions of Santa and his activities "lying" any more than they would think about the questionable truth behind my father saying: "If you raise your hand to your mother, it will fall off."
My memory is that talk about Santa's abilities to be everywhere at once were explained with the single word "magic" and we all tended to make up our own stories about what might be going on as we saw fit, but overall, I probably believed in Santa about as much as I believed in the Greek and Roman gods (with whom I had an obsession) or any other mythological thing.
I didn't ask any of the people I talked to who felt queasy about the Santa fabrication if part of their discomfort came not so much from the problem of lying but from a conflict between religious beliefs and utter fabrication. Since I was raised with no religion, but was taught many of the fundamental Jewish and Christian narratives (and took the New Testament as Literature in college), my own conscience isn't plagued by telling my kids about Santa. Santa stories aren't so wildly different from the things we make up about our terrier's activities when we go out and he invites his dog friends over or has crazy adventures.
But I am curious about the problem. People feel terribly strongly about this and I am surprised, not that people do care so deeply about speaking the truth to their kids, but about how I am only now, in almost the fifth year of being a parent, becoming aware of this particular conflict. Is it a newer bit of guilt or was it just waiting until my kids were old enough to appear? (This is not to say that I feel guilty about this thing. I don't. This is one area where I surprisingly have no feelings of conflict. And to be honest, it is way too early in the season for me to even talk out loud about Santa. I still don't know what to do with the children over winter break.)
posted by Elise at 8:06 AM
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your blog is loading slowly
12/11/2009 10:59 PM
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I truly believe that we have reached the point where technology has become one with our world, and I think it is safe to say that we have passed the point of no return in our relationship with technology.
I don't mean this in a bad way, of course! Societal concerns aside... I just hope that as the price of memory drops, the possibility of copying our memories onto a digital medium becomes a true reality. It's a fantasy that I dream about every once in a while.
(Submitted by NDSBro for R4i Nintendo DS.)
2/07/2010 3:16 PM
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