RE: Santa, The Tooth Fairy and the Fantabulous Fabularium of Innocent Myths
October 20, 2011 at 8:32 am
My son came to me asking a million and one santa questions. How do reindeer fly if they don't have wings? What are elves? How does he make it around the world in one night and deliver all those presents to all those kids? Perfectly logical questions.
I sat and thought about it for a bit. I concluded that there was no point to the santa myth. It's reminiscent of the god myth if you think about it. He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake. Unlike the god myth, we all eventually learn that santa is just a story to make us behave on pain of coal in our stockings at Christmas. Fuck that. If my son is smart enough to ask reasonable questions about silly fairy tales, then he could certainly handle the truth. Also, thinking about it further, I reasoned that if I wanted my children to trust me and know that I would never lie to them, I wasn't going to earn that trust by lying to them for no reason.
So I sat the boy down and asked him what he thought were the answers to his many questions. He essentially figured it out himself, I just confirmed it. Then he told his sisters, who were like, okay- whatever. Now their dads are throwing fits about it. Saying I've stolen their childhoods away from them. Have I? They still love their fairy tales. They still watch Aladdin, pretend to be princesses, make spongebob episodes with their puppets. They don't care that they don't believe santa is a true story. The only ones broken up about it are the grown fucking men.
I just think it's a pointless lie. They have a keen understanding for what's real and what's not. My 5 year old daughter's favorite genre is horror. She's seen a hundred horror films from Fright Night to Hannibal Rising (which she said "could've been bloodier"), but she cautions other children that none of it's real and there is nothing to fear. She never has nightmares, but her older brother pissed himself watching Mirrors, and he refuses to watch them. It's not because he thinks it's real, it's because he prefers more lighthearted films.
I guess every child is different, and you just have to feel them out.
I sat and thought about it for a bit. I concluded that there was no point to the santa myth. It's reminiscent of the god myth if you think about it. He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake. Unlike the god myth, we all eventually learn that santa is just a story to make us behave on pain of coal in our stockings at Christmas. Fuck that. If my son is smart enough to ask reasonable questions about silly fairy tales, then he could certainly handle the truth. Also, thinking about it further, I reasoned that if I wanted my children to trust me and know that I would never lie to them, I wasn't going to earn that trust by lying to them for no reason.
So I sat the boy down and asked him what he thought were the answers to his many questions. He essentially figured it out himself, I just confirmed it. Then he told his sisters, who were like, okay- whatever. Now their dads are throwing fits about it. Saying I've stolen their childhoods away from them. Have I? They still love their fairy tales. They still watch Aladdin, pretend to be princesses, make spongebob episodes with their puppets. They don't care that they don't believe santa is a true story. The only ones broken up about it are the grown fucking men.
I just think it's a pointless lie. They have a keen understanding for what's real and what's not. My 5 year old daughter's favorite genre is horror. She's seen a hundred horror films from Fright Night to Hannibal Rising (which she said "could've been bloodier"), but she cautions other children that none of it's real and there is nothing to fear. She never has nightmares, but her older brother pissed himself watching Mirrors, and he refuses to watch them. It's not because he thinks it's real, it's because he prefers more lighthearted films.
I guess every child is different, and you just have to feel them out.
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