The reason, of course, for the argument was that I agree with what my parents did. I don't see any reason to lie to your kids about this particular subject--it doesn't bring them any benefit (whereas telling them that school will help them get a job encourages them to stay in school and not quit just because; whereas telling them that policemen are there to help encourages them to go to the police if they're ever in danger) and can result in an unnecessary loss of trust.

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Let yourself be enchanted,
You just might break through
To ever ever after

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I like to look at it as a freedom to prolong one's innocence in order to instill any number of ideals of morality, kindness, consideration, receptiveness, humility, curiosity, and child-like wonder and amazement. You are committing no sin, nor harm to a child for simply appealing to an imaginative process in the hope of your child be willing to be good upward toward their being rewarded as an outcome. Another question for you would be not whether to inform children of there being a Santa Claus, but what moderator possibly thought that you were even remotely comparable to intellectual status?

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It's not a sin to lie?

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Let yourself be enchanted,
You just might break through
To ever ever after

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Quote: from fenrir at 8:14 am on Dec. 15, 2008

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I like to look at it as a freedom to prolong one's innocence in order to instill any number of ideals of morality, kindness, consideration, receptiveness, humility, curiosity, and child-like wonder and amazement.  You are committing no sin, nor harm to a child for simply appealing to an imaginative process in the hope of your child be willing to be good upward toward their being rewarded as an outcome.  Another question for you would be not whether to inform children of there being a Santa Claus, but what moderator possibly thought that you were even remotely comparable to intellectual status?

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It's not a sin to lie?

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Except that I know plenty of people who have more of a sense of child-like wonder and amazement without ever having believed in Santa Claus than those who do--and they actually still trust their parents, to boot.

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My girlfriend, who is a hardcore Christian, and I have both agreed that it isn't morally wrong for us to simply tell our children a fable in order to help them understand the importance of hard work eventually being rewarded.  Personally, if my children come to the understanding later on in life that there isn't a Santa, they'll know that we both still care for them and the presents will keep coming regardless.

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"How incitful of you, dwarf. Though I can't speak for fenrir,
I beleive that he too has a certain degree of sarcasm
and humor in his posts." - Prince o palities

Not only that, but as a Christian, that idea of "earning" blessings disgusts me--we're not blessed because we deserve it. We're blessed because we're loved by God. That's a model I'd rather see practiced, rather than telling my kids things that have the potential to keep them up all night on Christmas Eve, panicking about whether or not Santa Claus knows that they ate four cookies when Mommy only said they could have three way back in July.

Frankly, when you remove the sentimentality attached to it by people who seem to have some sort of strange attachment to the idea of Santa Claus, it's a horrible thing to do to your children--to tell them that someone is going to break into their house on Christmas Eve and, if they were the slightest bit less than perfect all year long, deny them Christmas gifts. And then, to boot, if you look at it in a positive light, it's all a lie! What kinds of values are you teaching your kids when you do that?

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Let yourself be enchanted,
You just might break through
To ever ever after

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I know people justify it with "We're giving kids happiness by shielding them from the truth" but to me that's worse.

"Good news sir, your wife is miraculously unharmed! No, no, I'm kidding, she's dead but I'm glad to have given you that moment of joy."

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Or:

"Good news 5 year old, there is a jolly man who gives you presents every year!!" ...**wait for the kids to get older** "So, remember that jolly man who gave you presents every year, well as you've probably figured out by now, he doesn't exist. IT WAS ME who was giving you ALL THOSE PRESENTS."

Yea, kids will really resent THAT...

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Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful.It's the transition
that's troublesome.   --Isaac Asimov

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There's a difference between telling your children a story that you and they both know isn't true (e.g. "Cinderella" or "Snow White") and telling them something is true when it isn't. Telling them that there's a Santa Claus isn't like reading them "The Three Little Pigs" before they go to bed; it's like telling them that the Three Little Pigs are going to come visit them and that if they're not good, the Big Bad Wolf will blow their house down.

Not only that, but as a Christian, that idea of "earning" blessings disgusts me--we're not blessed because we deserve it. We're blessed because we're loved by God. That's a model I'd rather see practiced, rather than telling my kids things that have the potential to keep them up all night on Christmas Eve, panicking about whether or not Santa Claus knows that they ate four cookies when Mommy only said they could have three way back in July.  

Frankly, when you remove the sentimentality attached to it by people who seem to have some sort of strange attachment to the idea of Santa Claus, it's a horrible thing to do to your children--to tell them that someone is going to break into their house on Christmas Eve and, if they were the slightest bit less than perfect all year long, deny them Christmas gifts. And then, to boot, if you look at it in a positive light, it's all a lie! What kinds of values are you teaching your kids when you do that?

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Its called positive response conditioning. If you give a bunch of presents to a kid whose been good all year, he will continue to be good all year. If you tell him that if he is bad he wont get any presents, then he will likely be good [until you have to tell him again] to get those presents at christmas.

I'd like to see you attempt to explain the logic behind christian blessings to a 4 year old. Then tell him --you receive these gifts because God loves you, not because you were good, and then try to get him to behave...

Kids don't typically think of Santa as some intruder, they see him as a magical fellow who GIVES THEM SHIT. Kids love it. Parents love it --except for the buying things part. And when the kids are old enough, they'll understand.

You really felt resentment because your parents lied about Santa Claus? Maybe you should have given back all your presents, since they were the products of lies.
C'mon now...Its fun as shit when you are a little kid and you think there really exists a guy that can fly around the world and give you presents. Then you find out he doesn't exist and realize that all the cool stuff you thought santa did, was really your parents doing it all for you.

Holding resentment there just seems a bit unfair if you ask me.

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Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful.It's the transition
that's troublesome.   --Isaac Asimov

My parents told us from the time we were old enough to understand that there was no Santa Claus (as I stated earlier in this thread). They made sure that we understood, from an early age, that these presents weren't rewards for being good, but rather that they were blessings because they loved us. We understood the concept of blessings from an early age because of that--it's really not that difficult of a concept to grasp.

As to getting kids to behave, that's utterly ridiculous. I don't know any kids who behaved throughout the year because Santa was supposedly watching them...I knew far more who behaved throughout the year because if they didn't behave, there was some sort of punishment waiting for them at home (whether it was a grounding, some sort of corporal punishment, or those odd parents who made them write lines). You're not thinking of Santa Claus when you force your younger sibling to eat mud in July or in February when you cut a hole in another boy's T-shirt. The Santa Claus thing may work in the month or so leading up to Christmas, but between teaching, counselling kids' camp, baby-sitting and personally knowing a lot of kids, they're more likely to laugh at you when you bring up Santa Claus in the summertime than they are to actually start behaving.

So really...don't assume things.

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Let yourself be enchanted,
You just might break through
To ever ever after

As for the bit about behavior.
1) it was mostly about the month or two preceding christmas. However, that is not to say that bringing up christmas isn't an easy way to get a rowdy kid to calm down. "Mikey, if you don't stop Santa won't bring you anything for christmas this year!" usually calms a kid down a bit.

2) I was not claiming that Christmas is a behavior tool, so responding to that as the majority of your post was kind of silly, don't you think?

Post edited at 4:24 pm on Dec. 15, 2008 by Event Horizon

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Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful.It's the transition
that's troublesome.   --Isaac Asimov

Second, if you so chose to tell your children any number of fables as to instill a particular set of moral values, I'd say that you still haven't committed any falsehood besides adhering to your particular preference.  You and I can argue the differences between upholding the curiousness of child-like wonder, but it'd merely go directly to one's personal philosophy for how to raise children.

Third, I know that you are a proponent of premarital sex, as am I, but my girlfriend will argue tooth-and-nail for how and why premarital sex is not only wrong, but it destroys the religious implications of a positive and beneficial relationship.  If you to debate with anyone who believed contrary to your particular adherence, is it not their personal right in order to disagree?  People naturally and inevitably disagree over the matter of preference when compared with how we essentially view as morality, and yet, how a particular action might violate a person's conscience is not exhaustive when compared to preference.  Not arguing that morality is relative, but one's authority in order to dictate what is acceptable generally hasn't anything to do besides one's ability to interpret for themselves.

Finally, a child doesn't have the same reasoning potential as you and I, because their logic isn't necessarily refined in order to associate the precise logistics of breaking-and-entering, time manipulation, instantaneous [teleportation] travel, etc. besides their imagination in order to process.  However, you have yet to fully write anything definitive that states it is morally unacceptable for one to believe in a mythical being that adheres to a purposefully GOOD outlook of morality.

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"How incitful of you, dwarf. Though I can't speak for fenrir,
I beleive that he too has a certain degree of sarcasm
and humor in his posts." - Prince o palities

But basically, tl;dr version? You haven't got an argument. That's cool.

EH...the other thing that calms kids down is "if you don't stop screaming, I'm going to give you a reason to scream." Shut my siblings right up when they were of that age, no Santa Claus needed.

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Let yourself be enchanted,
You just might break through
To ever ever after

http://nymag.com/news/features/43893/

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click and please click
^use head phones