Santa Claus trauma
Dec. 24th, 2005 12:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sophiaserpentiaGrinchy remark sends kids home in tears (thanks to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
joffeman for the link)
Kids in tears after learning that Santa isn't real. Well, kids are going to find out somehow, you can't hide it forever: Santa Claus does not come down the chimney (most houses don't seem to have those these days anyways) and leave presents for good boys and girls. The only way in which Santa exists is in the fuzzy "liberal clausology" way: a spark of the disembodied invisible spirit of Santa lives in each of us.
Yet we construct this myth, encourage children to love Santa Claus, and defend the myth ruthlessly, knowing that it will end in eventual disappointment. Why?
I've known more than one person who's discovery of the truth about Santa Claus planted the seeds for a later religious crisis. Your parents construct an elaborate fiction, and claim to be doing it to "preserve your innocence."
Maybe therein lies the problem: the "innocence of childhood," which is a bubble of reality we attempt to construct in which the world is full of happy rainbows and love and where hamburgers grow on plants and chicken nuggets are happy to be eaten. (And it's worth bringing up commercialism as at least an aside here, because commercialism drives much of this nowadays: after all, our modern image of Santa was shaped in large part by a series of paintings commissioned by the Coca-Cola Company.)
Maybe we do this because we are ashamed of the mess we've made of the world which they are going to be left with. Or maybe the reason is more sinister: it's a tactic to marginalize children's voices and "other" them. What we hide about the way the world works from children makes them vulnerable and easier to victimize. Adults tend not to believe what children say because they are innocent (and whose fault is that?) We teach children about "stranger danger" but not about the dangers in their own home. And when we do learn about the brutal abuse some children have endured we (as a society) seem to mourn the absence of a bubble of imaginary innocence in her or his life more than the brutality itself: another way in which "the innocence of childhood" is used to silence children.
The nine year old in our house believes in Santa. He learned about Santa at school, from other children, and from advertising; it was not a fiction his mother encouraged. It puts us in a really awkward position. Sooner or later he's going to start asking about this Jesus guy too, what do we tell him then? As non-Christians we do not have the option of shielding him from opinions in society at large with which we disagree. Maybe we'll tell him a spark of the disembodied invisible spirit of Jesus lives in each of us, too, right next door to Santa Claus.
joffeman for the link)Kids in tears after learning that Santa isn't real. Well, kids are going to find out somehow, you can't hide it forever: Santa Claus does not come down the chimney (most houses don't seem to have those these days anyways) and leave presents for good boys and girls. The only way in which Santa exists is in the fuzzy "liberal clausology" way: a spark of the disembodied invisible spirit of Santa lives in each of us.
Yet we construct this myth, encourage children to love Santa Claus, and defend the myth ruthlessly, knowing that it will end in eventual disappointment. Why?
I've known more than one person who's discovery of the truth about Santa Claus planted the seeds for a later religious crisis. Your parents construct an elaborate fiction, and claim to be doing it to "preserve your innocence."
Maybe therein lies the problem: the "innocence of childhood," which is a bubble of reality we attempt to construct in which the world is full of happy rainbows and love and where hamburgers grow on plants and chicken nuggets are happy to be eaten. (And it's worth bringing up commercialism as at least an aside here, because commercialism drives much of this nowadays: after all, our modern image of Santa was shaped in large part by a series of paintings commissioned by the Coca-Cola Company.)
Maybe we do this because we are ashamed of the mess we've made of the world which they are going to be left with. Or maybe the reason is more sinister: it's a tactic to marginalize children's voices and "other" them. What we hide about the way the world works from children makes them vulnerable and easier to victimize. Adults tend not to believe what children say because they are innocent (and whose fault is that?) We teach children about "stranger danger" but not about the dangers in their own home. And when we do learn about the brutal abuse some children have endured we (as a society) seem to mourn the absence of a bubble of imaginary innocence in her or his life more than the brutality itself: another way in which "the innocence of childhood" is used to silence children.
The nine year old in our house believes in Santa. He learned about Santa at school, from other children, and from advertising; it was not a fiction his mother encouraged. It puts us in a really awkward position. Sooner or later he's going to start asking about this Jesus guy too, what do we tell him then? As non-Christians we do not have the option of shielding him from opinions in society at large with which we disagree. Maybe we'll tell him a spark of the disembodied invisible spirit of Jesus lives in each of us, too, right next door to Santa Claus.
