Santa Claus Culture, or why I should never be a parent

... as if the world needed yet another reason.

Today I was surfing through Salon when I came across a column in the advice section: a woman writes in that her thirteen-year-old daugher still believes in Santa Claus and there is ... get this ... actual debate as to whether or not they should break the news to her.


And I recall the story from this past Christmas season about the teacher who was fired for telling her students Santa Claus was not real. Suffering Darwin, people, is lying to our own children so important that we'll sack other people who challenge that ability?

Every kid taught that Santa is real will have his or her heart broken at some point. Their first lesson in the crushing pain of falsehood uncovered will come from their own parents. This is not just what we want, but in fact a priority for us?

I would teach my children truth from the beginning, and critical thinking as soon as they were able.

Any child I raised would understand that the gift-exchanging tradition is a wonderful way for loved ones to show their compassion and joy in each other. But that, sadly, many other families observe a pathetic fantasy tradition that ascribes those gifts instead to an imaginary obese fairy invented a century ago by the Coca-Cola corporation.

My kids would run around the school snickering at the other children, "you believe in that fat fairy?". And "My DAD gives me gifts because he loves me ... why do yours have to depend on Santa Claus?"

No doubt they would be ostracised for it. I would get angry calls from other parents, horrified that I had interfered with their mendacious scheme for their offspring by failing to do the same with my own.

But I could never play games of falsehood with my own kids just because society expects it of me. Conformity does not come naturally - quite the opposite - and I rather enjoy jettisoning from my life all traditions that fail tests of critical analysis. In fact, I would get kind of a kick out of the pure experiment of raising kids to reject from the get-go all the silly baggage we carry around in our culture. I might even revel in it.

... but where would that leave the kids? At some point, you have to fit in somewhere, or existence gets pretty lonely. No, I think my having children would be pretty hazardous for them.