I'm bringing this over from the atheist parenting thread.

My 3 1/2 year-old daughter already straddles the magical and the "real" worlds with ridiculous ease. Santa, for her, is another kind of "let's pretend".

She can watch and adore "My Little Pony", and when she plays with her toy horses, they "talk" to each other. But when she meets a "real" horse, she's not surprised that it doesn't talk back. That there are two separate "worlds" doesn't faze her at all and she has no problem switching between the two. Would that all adults could do the same.

As I mentioned on the other thread, my partner and I don't attach any morality to Santa Clause, and we certainly don't invoke the "argument from desire". We'll cheerfully violate any logical justification for Santa because Santa is "pretend".

Here's another reason for Santa...

http://jamesarthur.net/mm_01.html

It occurs to me that there's something very telling about the way this whole Santa thing is presented: although we eventually admit to kids that there is no such person, we do it almost with a sense of shame, and people like this teacher who blow the lid off the secret early are reviled for somehow "ruining" it. Even in the cases where everyone acknowledges a supernatural belief to be untrue, it seems that we're reluctant to say so too loudly, that there's something wrong with admitting it. What does that say for the prospects of atheists, who attack an even more widely believed-in supernatural figure and do so in an even more public fashion?

> So how do you explain the fact that I prayed I would receive a copy of Sam Harris's "Letter to a Christian Nation" for Christmas, and in fact did?

Perhaps prayers to Sam Harris are more effective than prayers to Joe Pesci?

The symmetry of this is almost disturbing me (but actually I'm just really, really enjoying it). At my own place, there's been a recent (and slightly heated) debate on the value of the Christmas/Santa myth (just follow the link from within here, sorry, Yahoogroups mangled a link on me).

It was put to me that there's more to the world than merely Truth and Fiction, that the Santa myth is necessary, that the UK schoolteacher fired for telling a class there was no Santa "deserved everything she got for her disgusting behaviour" (to paraphrase). There you go, Erich.

I made the point that this sort of thinking is what allows something like "Intelligent Design" or somethings like "Ken Ham" or "Kent Hovind" or "Ted Haggard" to occur.

Next thing I know, I pull up my semi-regular RSS and find "Popular Delusions V: Santa Claus" on my screen. Beautiful, just beautiful. Many thanks, Ebonmuse and commenters above.

Another similarity that bewildered me for years: if Santa isn't real, why do grownups talk about him all the time? They make movies and TV shows and take you to see him and ask you what he brought...unfathomable.

The question whether or not to perpetuate the Santa Claus myth is interesting. I remember a year or two ago, my little brother was scoffing at Santa Claus, and my mum looked at me mournfully and said "You always believed when you were a kid." I broke it gently to her, "Mum, for years I slept with the door open, right across from the staircase you schlepped the presents down, and who falls asleep on Christmas Eve?" She was shocked. "So you knew? You were lying to us?" "You were lying to me!"

I was also disgusted with myself that I had simply believed everything I had been told about Santa, without questioning it. I should have realized that a man delivering presents to all the children in the world on one night was impossible.

However, after learning the truth about Santa, I began to question the existence of God, and after many years of thought, I know that he does not exist. Many times I had wished that my parents hadn't fooled me with this Santa Claus character, but if I hadn't experienced it, and learned to question everything, would I have accepted God?

So as much as I don't want to actively lie to my children, I think the Santa myth can be a valuable life lesson. Think for yourself. Question everything.

I've got two daughters, aged 6 and 8. At the request of my wife, I haven't gone so far as to tell them there's no Santa (I think that doing this constitutes a federal crime in the U.S.). On the other hand, I have never affirmatively told my children that Santa is really real. The thing that I value more than anything else with them is our mutual sense of trust. I don't think that fibbing to them about Santa will cause them to lose trust in me in other matters, but why step onto what might be a slippery slope?

They've just about figured the whole thing out without my help, so the crisis will soon be over.