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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

  • Paull said:
    Maybe not these days, but when I went to school I was taught that Jesus walked on water, turned water into wine, fed 5000 people with 3 loaves and 5 fish etc, all of which are scientifically impossible. Faith schools also exist and they often have a strict regime to drum a certain religion into vulnerable childrens heads.

    Was that in the 'bad old days' before 1988 when primary schools could effectively teach what they wanted and kids had to comply with the teacher's whims?

    My mother attended a (secular?) primary school during the 1970s and had to sing hymns in assembly and pray or else have her knuckles caned, but there we no lessons teaching things about religions other than Christianity and she suspects that the teachers had very little knowledge of them.

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  • Paull said:
    Maybe not these days, but when I went to school I was taught that Jesus walked on water, turned water into wine, fed 5000 people with 3 loaves and 5 fish etc, all of which are scientifically impossible. Faith schools also exist and they often have a strict regime to drum a certain religion into vulnerable childrens heads.

    Was that in the 'bad old days' before 1988 when primary schools could effectively teach what they wanted and kids had to comply with the teacher's whims?

    My mother attended a (secular?) primary school during the 1970s and had to sing hymns in assembly and pray or else have her knuckles caned, but there we no lessons teaching things about religions other than Christianity and she suspects that the teachers had very little knowledge of them.

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