My son is 7. He is an intelligent, creative kid who has a bright spirit. We were sitting as he made himself a Pb & j. He turned and asked me if Santa was real. I always endeavour to tell my children the truth. Sometimes I varnish it. Sometimes I paint a verbal murals around it. I am always, at the core of what I say, truthful. I also endeavour to provide my children with tools to allow them to face the dark, cynical evil of the West with wisdom. This might seem complicated, but I'll expand.
I asked him if he thought Santa was true. He went into a brief rambling, as young boys do, about some version of the Santa story that fixed his plot hole. "Do you really believe that," I asked. Finally he told me no and that the story was a lie. That was where we stopped. True and false dont really work when you are talking about a story. They are all real in a sense. A story exists in a moment in time and therefore does have a piece of reality. Stories are either based on true events or based on fiction. I told him about the legend of the Saint named Nicholas and that there is real kernel in the story. We also talked about how when him and his sibling have a fight and they both complain, how do I know who is telling the truth. Truly, I dont know the truth. I can guess based on things I know, but I dont know with certainty. Stories have a place, but applying a scientific framework is not a helpful method in my view. We go into the world and we are told lots of stories. We are told of all the enemies and friends. All the blessings and pitfalls. Life is story. One we are living and to say that a story is not true robs you of a certain joy. The story of Santa isnt true or false. It is a traditional story we tell that allows us to share a collective experience. We allow children's imaginations to flow freely and to be excited about something. Rest assured, parenting is largely providing experiences to your kids and telling stories. The question doesn't need to be asked about the story because it doesn't matter. I want my kids to hear stories and to listen to them. I want them to hear the expressions of people and cultures and learn to enjoy them. Not to pick them apart. Not to analyse them and feel a smug sense of superiority. In truth, these things are a fools errand because it is like an ant that's found it's way up to a leaf and looks down at his colony and believes that he has ascended. Nope. Your an ant. You might feel better on the leaf, but its lonely there and people want to keep company with you.
Now having said all that, what he wanted to know was where the gifts come from. I told him about Occam's razor that postulates that the simplest answer is probably the correct one. Now, in the strictest sense this is a misuse of Occam's razor because it refers to evaluations of experiments within science. That not withstanding, it is a helpful way to give my child a simple tool to evaluate an idea. So the question was, "do you think your presents come from a magical flying fat man or your parents?"
The conclusion was "your gifts come from mama and papa, but you can still talk about Santa and enjoy the story with all of your friends." I was satisfied because I believe I left him with the freedom to enjoy a part of his childhood without needing to paint it in some shameful tone. Share the story. Tell the story. Add to the story. Its a story. Smile at it. Think about it. Remind yourself, dear reader, that you are probably sitting on a leaf in your mind. Allow yourself to hear the stories in your life and free yourself from the need to evaluate all of them. Now I am not saying all logic need be thrown out the window, but if there is no cost in listening than listen freely my friends and enjoy the stories.
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