From a comment on DailyKos: an argument that the Santa myth helps make children susceptible to conspiracy theories -- which is a good thing!
Two years ago my son (8 at the time) declared he was an atheist. Try as I might I couldn't gently lead him to see the comparison between his statement of disbelief in God and his statement of belief in Santa. So for 2 years I had a atheist in the household who believed in Santa.
Well, it turns out it was only one year and he held out for the other year, just in case. When I finally talked to him about it, I made him do all the work. It took almost 2 hours. He'd toss out argument after argument why Santa couldn't exist and I did my best to refute them - mostly pointing him back to not having done his research, etc. But at one point he accused grownups of a worldwide conspiracy to create and perpetuate the lie to children about Santa. He was actually pretty pissed about it and had been for almost a year that we were lying to him.
His first conspiracy theory! I was proud as all get-out, because he got it right! I hadn't thought of it in those terms, but he was essentially correct.
Next, he can move on to teaching his son about Bush's War for Oil. ;-)
I tend to believe in the notion that the games people play are teaching tools. Sports lets kids know how strong or agile they are relative to others, for instance. And they used to teach kids how to self-organize back when 'pick up' games were more common than leagues organized by parents.
Adults do tend to tease kids and tell them lies. It's fair to ask why they do. "Fun" may describe a person's disposition towards the activity, not the underlying reasons for it. Sometimes (The stork brings babies!) I can understand the purpose is that kids aren't seen as ready for certain information yet. Many other times, it seems like the result is that kids learn to recognize when they're being fed garbage deliberately. But some of the deception really does seem gratuitous and almost counterproductive.
"Santa Claus" and "The Tooth Fairy" really is about adults lying to kids, en masse. It surprises me how much people tolerate and glorify that kind of behavior, and how much they want their kids to believe in 'magic' for a little while. I know it's done in the name of 'protecting innocence' and as some grand fun game. I'm not sure I buy the OP's explanations for why it happens, though.
I like your idea, Ryan: Watch immature animals play with each other. They pretend to wrestle, kill, hunt. Even cats alone will suddenly pretend some object in the room is alive, and pretend it's "prey" (and perhaps switch back and forth to "threat" to keep things interesting). We think it's cute to watch: the cat stalks up on a piece of paper, touches it gingerly, and leaps back in mock-surprise...
Adults do tend to tease kids and tell them lies.
Though I try to be truthful everywhere else, I find I do this with kids. Actually, I don't mean to mislead them, but I tend to give "silly" answers they seem to actually believe. I wonder if I just need to adapt more to an audience with insufficient context, and no ability to detect irony or absurdity.
As stated above, I buy into the idea that the "games" kids are drawn to play are purpositive. But I'm not sure that translates into every (or any) aspect of seemingly unpurposed parental / adult behavior. In my case, I'm just confusing the poor kid with jests I would normally use with adults. In the end, it may eventually have a good effect, but I'm not sure one can convincingly argue there's some deep biological mechanism at work upon my brain to cause this. The simplest explanation is just that I'm not sufficiently adapted to children's needs. (Or perhaps, if I'm being frank, that I'm trying to amuse the adults around me, whether the child gets it or not.)
I had a friend whose parents convinced that cows were actually called "peezelheads." On a kindergarten field trip, the kids spotted and pointed to the cows outside the bus. My friend corrected them: "No! Those aren't 'cows'! Those are 'peezelheads'!"
She finds this story immensely amusing, but I suddenly wonder what effect this might have had on her young mind. (She had other psychological issues, and I suddenly wonder if there's an indirect link. Perhaps not, but now I wonder.)
In that case, I think the reason (not merely "disposition") was in fact that it was "fun" to see their daughter learn a (seemingly fairly harmless) wrong word for something. "Hey look! We can program her to say 'peezelhead' instead of cow!" Again, I'm not sure we need to look for a deeper motive: people do all kinds of things for fun. What's the deeper purpose of most the content in the many seasons of Monty Python?
A friend of mine and I just had an interesting discussion about children's stories. He was raised in Germany, and read Struwwelpeter as a kid. The imagery is horrifying (more than is shown) and the moral clearly is that if you do bad things to others, or don't obey your parents, or don't take care of daily tasks, incredibly terrible things are likely to happen to you. It's also not hard to get the subtext there: The lies exist to make children obey your parents.
"If you make that face at your sister too much, it will freeze up that way."
Perhaps the universality Struwwelpeter among German children explains a bit of the stereotype of the German "personality": regimented by routine and structure.
In other cases, teasing might also be a rite of passage or kind of hazing. I'm not big on hazing, but most people seem to like it: "Somebody did something awful to me, so now I'm going to do it to you."
Getting back to the Santa myth, I suspect we need to look to it's origins, ask why it became popular, and ask why it remains popular. This article seems to explain origins, in harmony with things I heard from trusted sources before. A number of motives are suggested.
I think there's some truth in the idea that Santa was and is promoted commercially because it gives the idea of gift-giving (these days, absurd gift-giving) some cultural traction -- a bit like the way DeBeers talked everyone into believing that a diamond engagement ring was the only acceptable option, and that "Diamonds are forever" (ie: PLEASE don't resell yours, as it will flood the market and bring down the value of our mined gems.)
Mike: It's one of those rare occasions where someone actually seems to get everything wrong...
Actually, I posted it because I think he had a valid point. In most of life, "conspiracy theories" are nonsense. The only reason one is possible, in this case, with kids is because they have no other context, and they have incredible trust in their parents.
I sometimes wonder if the Santa myth is a good thing at all. It is indeed an example systematic lying to children, and part of my brain wonders if that isn't always going to come back in some negative way. Yes, the kid has fun, and I'm open to the idea that perhaps the benefits outweigh the risks, but I also entertain suspicions of the opposite at times, too.
Perhaps it really does contribute to certain adults' willingness to believe in conspiracy theories?
I'm trying to post an intelligible comment, but that really, really made my head hurt... It's one of those rare occasions where someone actually seems to get everything wrong...
Posted by: Michael Zappe on April 29, 2008 12:25 AM