• Replies 182 replies
  • Subscribers 28 subscribers
  • Views 29233 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
Related
Hints and tips
  • To quote someone's message, first select/highlight the relevant text, and then use the Quote button that appears
  • To "mention" someone, type @ followed by the start of the forum name, and choose from the list; that person will get a notification of being mentioned

Is Santa silly?

Arran

I'm writing this as someone who doesn't celebrate Christmas in either a religious or cultural sense. From a young age I was told that Santa doesn't exist and is just a silly hoax that parents play on their kids. It never affected me in any bad way and neither was I expecting to find wrapped presents mysteriously appear on the morning of the 25th day of December. If anybody in my family received a Christmas gift then it was usually opened on the same day. A downside to this is that even from the age of 4 or 5 I went round telling kids at school "Father Christmas isn't real, it's all made up, your parents buy Christmas presents from the shops" which often resulted in me getting into trouble whenever they got upset. I once had to report to the head teacher after completely reducing a classmate to tears.

Is the concept of Santa a silly nonsense or is it part of the joys of childhood? Do you tell your own children the truth or would you prefer to go along with the cultural norm? Is pleasing one's classmates more important than knowing the truth? What about children at school who follow different religions so do not celebrate Christmas - where do they fit in?

Parents

  • At which point I cannot avoid coming in.

    According to Paull "those with wrong thinking always end up having wrong opinions"

    Please explain the connection between wrong thinking and wrong opinions.

    Our understanding of science has come about from gradual revelation. Up until the early 19th century (and indeed some resisted into the 20th and beyond) people genuinely believed that fossils were left behind after Noah's Great Flood.

    The curious thing is that very good fossil analysis was carried out by people with that misconception. They formed very good scientifically derived opinions around what we now know to be wrong thinking.

    There are people around who think like you are doing. They make connections that just aren't there.

    One of the commonest forms I encounter are people who reject the evidence of history. They hunt around until they find a mistake in an historian's thinking influenced by that historian's own times. Then they declare the historian entirely deluded or mentally incapacitated on the grounds of one misconception. Therefore, they conclude all ideas by that historian are totally unreliable. By that mechanism they then determine that history is wrong.

Reply

  • At which point I cannot avoid coming in.

    According to Paull "those with wrong thinking always end up having wrong opinions"

    Please explain the connection between wrong thinking and wrong opinions.

    Our understanding of science has come about from gradual revelation. Up until the early 19th century (and indeed some resisted into the 20th and beyond) people genuinely believed that fossils were left behind after Noah's Great Flood.

    The curious thing is that very good fossil analysis was carried out by people with that misconception. They formed very good scientifically derived opinions around what we now know to be wrong thinking.

    There are people around who think like you are doing. They make connections that just aren't there.

    One of the commonest forms I encounter are people who reject the evidence of history. They hunt around until they find a mistake in an historian's thinking influenced by that historian's own times. Then they declare the historian entirely deluded or mentally incapacitated on the grounds of one misconception. Therefore, they conclude all ideas by that historian are totally unreliable. By that mechanism they then determine that history is wrong.

Children
No Data