The covenant
I think Trump’s sudden lurch into rational skepticism at a socially inappropriate moment is hilarious, but I’m not going to pretend the whole “don’t tell the kids Santa is a story” routine makes any sense.
What’s the point of telling one’s children a lie that you know they’ll find out is a lie long before they’re out of childhood? Why not just tell them it’s a story? Adults don’t tell children pumpkins are the personified Spirit of Halloween, so what’s with all the “Shh shh don’t spill the beans” silliness? Apart from anything else I don’t see why parents would want to give their children reason to think Mommy and Daddy make a habit of lying to them.
Hey, kids under 8 years old, thanks for reading The New York Times. But this time, please don’t. Maybe go play Minecraft or something instead.
… O.K., are they gone now? Cool. Here’s what President Trump said to a child about Santa Claus on Monday.
Jokey [as if kids under 8 read the Times!] but still referring to a real taboo. What Trump did is hilarious because of the taboo.
Sadly, we do not know how the 7-year-old, named Coleman, responded to the president of the United States’ suggestion that his parents had been lying to him all his life and that he would probably get wise to it soon. The president made the comments from the White House while he and the first lady, Melania Trump, fielded calls from a hotline for children wondering where Santa was.
Mr. Trump’s faux pas was roundly mocked on social media, where he was criticized for breaking the covenant in which we have all agreed to deceive our children.
Exactly; why has everyone agreed to do that? It’s kind of a bully move, and I remember being annoyed about it when I was a child.
I’m with Katha on this.
https://twitter.com/KathaPollitt/status/1077414771065004033
Totally agree. It does nothing to spoil the fun and excitement if kids know it’s just a story. The part I dislike the most is that as kids start to understand it’s a lie, they have to become complicit in the lie too. I’ve seen parents acting disappointed when their kids start to work out there’s no Father Christmas. In front of the kids. Don’t they think that’s exactly the sort of things kids pick up on?
It wasn’t such a big deal in our house when I was a kid, but that other imaginary guy was. I don’t remember ever really believing in god, but I do remember a time when I desperately wanted to tell my parents I didn’t believe and could I stop going to church now? And feeling awful at the thought of their disappointment. I bet a lot of children feel the same way about the Santa lie.
It’s like the movie Miracle on 34th Street. The practical, non-lying mother is presented as being so rational that her daughter has no idea how to play, doesn’t know any nursery rhymes, has never had a bedtime story read to her, or had her mother sing a bedtime song, etc.
It’s startling how people can’t seem to understand that simply telling the truth about things doesn’t mean you have to have absolutely no imagination and no fun. Just because you know it’s only a story? I don’t have to believe that aliens are real to enjoy Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. In fact, I appreciate the cleverness more knowing Douglas Adams made it up than thinking he was just transcribing some truth.
When I was a kid, I thought I believed in God, but at the same time, i realize it never seemed to be that much more real than Little Red Riding Hood or Treasure Island. Noah was a story, nothing more. And no one, absolutely no one who knows me, ever accuses me of lacking imagination just because I know the difference between truth (and that we don’t know absolute truth) and imagination.
iknklast@2:
Amazing that Jewish children (and Muslim children, etc.) are somehow able to manage. Which is also my thought when I hear parents give the excuse that “well, threatening that Santa won’t give them presents gets them to shut up and behave.” (Well, that and “what do you do the other eleven months of the year? Because I never hear parents bring up Santa in March.)
I’ve never even seen Miracle on 34th Street, no doubt because I consider the premise so idiotic it doesn’t tempt me. This idea that belief is fundamental to fantasy-enjoyment doesn’t withstand a moment’s thought plus observation – like, there’s this whole entire category called “fiction”? Aka stories? Which humans are well known to love and rely on and use for greater understanding, from infancy all the way to the end?
Plus…if it’s only very young children who are expected to believe it, doesn’t that kind of show that it’s not all that necessary? In fact adult parents would feel pretty uncomfortable if their child of 12 believed in Santa. What is it about this one Holiday Season lie that is so crucial?
Bupkis, that’s what.
You all are a bunch of Scrooges.
Anyway, kids need to learn to think for themselves and distrust authority. What better way to set that up than to have their primary authority figures lies to them about something important to them for years and then later admit it’s not true?
Oh, and Merry Christmas to the lot of you!
My mother dodged this neatly. She always told us Santa was the spirit of Christmas. That way, we gradually grew to understand he was a metaphor without her having to lie to us. Never had that trauma of realizing your parents lied to you.
That’s a pretty good dodge.
I think it could perfectly well just be a matter of pretending. Parents play let’s pretend with their kids all the time, don’t they? Pretend Santa would love a snack and a thank you note, pretend Santa filled the stockings while the presents under the tree are from the family, etc etc. Pretending is fun as pretending; there’s no need to say it’s real.
My mother did the same as Mary’s. I still noticed that she was complicit enough. Reconciling the seemingly innocuous betrayals like this from trusted authorities has been a significant and ongoing part of my life.
So, I couldn’t lie to my kids about much of anything. My eldest says that I did lie to my youngest about Santa for a brief period. An awkward, regrettable attempt, I’m sure. Overall my adult children appreciate that they could rely on me for honesty.
My whole thing with what Trump said is that it shows him to be such a… weirdo. Who would say that to a little kid (regardless of whether it bursts the Santa bubble?): “Because at 7, it’s marginal, right?” It’s marginal, right? It’s the “other minds” problem: Does Trump know that other people are, like, other people?
Because Santa is pretty much ubiquitous from November onwards (gets earlier every year, get off my lawn, etc.) then apart from babies, all kids are going to learn about him regardless of the parents’ wishes, be it from television, school, other kids, or in any one of a hundred ways that toy manufacturers can think of to influence our little darlings’ desires.
For the younger children everything is real, so they’ll naturally believe in Santa. The belief doesn’t last that long – Trump might have got it right that ‘at seven, it’s marginal’, but only for those kids whose parents’ perpetuate the myth; for those allowed and encouraged to doubt it’s marginal a couple of years earlier – because children very quickly switch from believing everything to questioning everything. It isn’t long before they see a disconnect between the fable of Santa’s elves making toys all year round and Santa loading up for his annual epic delivery route, and the fact of waking up on Christmas morning to find presents wrapped in the same paper as mum or dad bought last week at Tesco, with labels attached saying they’re from mum & dad, aunty and uncle, siblings, and so on. A forgetful relative leaving the price sticker on the gift is a dead giveaway (‘If the toys are made by elves, why has mine got a 9.99 RRP sticker?) Once they’ve made the connection, unless the parents are particulary religious about Santa for whatever reason then the story very quickly falls apart.
My two grandsons are just 18 months apart; the eldest is just four months shy of turning 9 and his brother turned 7 in October, and I think that their different attitudes sum it up. Neither boy actually believes in Santa, but while the eldest dismisses it as ‘a stupid story for babies’, the youngest still likes to play along because he simply enjoys the ‘magic’ of Christmas (there may be a hint of ‘just-in-case’ about his attitude, too). Also, because they’ve been allowed to ask all the questions and encouraged to look at and think about stories carefully, they have both formed very definite negative opinions on religion. Unlike Santa, however, the youngest doesn’t even feign religious belief as he does in Santa because ‘there’s no point in pretending to believe in Jesus and God because they don’t do anything anyway’.
Kids most definitely play along with the lie. They don’t know what will happen if they call bullshit. They might not get presents next year if they do. I’ve known several children who hedged their bets by telling their parents “well, I’ll believe *this* year, but probably won’t next year”. They’re calling bullshit on their parents but the only present-adjacent way to do it is to be complicit in the idea that the lie is OK and that it’s fine to be in on the steal with any younger family members.
That does not seem healthy to me.
By way of contrast, does any parent expect their child to believe in the easter bunny? Would kids do easter egg hunts and eat chocolate any less enthusiastically if they did?
I’ve read fiction – brilliantly interactive despite my inept delivery – to my nieces and nephews. I’ve played games with them. You aren’t really a cafe owner, Relation X, especially since you always lose interest halfway through taking our order and we never get our unicorn sandwiches, how do you expect to make a profit? I can complain hours later that I’ve died from starvation and they might hurriedly put together the unicorn sandwiches, but I don’t pretend eat them with as much relish as if they were pretend fresh.
That’s just how you play with children. You react to whatever whim they’re going with at the moment. Hyperbole is your friend.
Yes. My parents. And the Tooth Fairy (which I quit believing in after testing Mom by not telling her I had lost a tooth. Bupkis. After two nights, I told her I had lost a tooth. The next morning, tooth had turned into a quarter. Yeah, thanks, Mom).
But then, my parents also expected us to believe in God, a literal Adam and Eve, Noah, a fish that could swallow a man and the man live, ghosts (our house was haunted, according to my mom), and the zodiac. Other things, my mom was good at skepticism. She never believed in Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster, for instance, and other ridiculous claims would have her rolling her eyes and teaching me how not to accept what I was told. I guess she never expected me to turn that skill on her own cherished beliefs.
And let’s not forget the courtroom scene in The Miracle. Just a no-fucking-no.
Kristjan, I thought the court scene, as unrealistic as it was, was quite funny for the way that God was brought down to the level of Santa, or Santa elevated to God status. Either way, God didn’t exactly maintain His unique status, and I suspect the writers were making a point by having a child be the one to point out logically how obviously flawed the idea of faith actually is.
AoS, true, but the implications of acknowledging the old man as the Santa are bad. Now imagine a court acknowledging someone as a god.