See also: Richard Dawkins and the Power of Fairy Tales
Every year, many evangelicals fret and debate one of the central questions of the Christmas season. Should Christians tell their children that Santa makes a list and checks it twice? Should we tell our children anything about Santa at all? Isn’t it deceitful to pretend that a man in a red hood crawls down a chimney laden with gifts every Christmas? And isn’t an all-seeing, all-knowing phantasm who rewards moral endeavour a false god? Now that Saint Nicholas has lent his support to the American Atheist war on Christmas, extra agony will be added to the annual evangelical Christian crisis of conscience.
I must confess to a degree of impatience with such questions, mainly because Christians in coming generations will not condemn us for taking an annual game of make believe too seriously. They are much more likely to condemn us for our unsustainable, extravagant and indulgent lifestyles. And we strain at gnats and swallow camels when we wonder if Santa is an idol, yet genuflect before our cherished political candidates and mingle our preferred political manifestos with the mission of the church.
The vast majority of parents repeatedly tell their children that magic does not work and that goblins, ghouls, unicorns and dragons are make believe. The gifts which kids request from Santa’s toy-shop are also available from Wall-mart and Amazon. Children have more wit than we give them credit for and have more than enough information to discern that Santa is a game of make-believe; they simply do not want a free-thinking Gradgrind to bring this game to a stop.
Children have a remarkable capacity to enter the world of make-believe. My daughter had two invisible friends – Princess the Horse and Bumble the Bee. She could have quite in-depth conversations with both – conversations that I played along with (Bumble liked me but Princess found me a little grumpy and intimidating). Rebekah (who is now ten, and much too old for such childishness) can recall both of her imaginary friends and informs me that she was perfectly aware that they were fictional. She is also clear that I would have ruined her game entirely if I had persistently reminded her that neither of her magical friends really existed.
There is a world of difference between a lie and a game of make believe. We rolled our eyes to high heaven when Richard Dawkins advised parents to foster a spirit of scepticism in their children by telling them that it was “statistically improbable” that frogs could turn into princes. Yet we seriously wonder whether we have a moral imperative to inform our children that the laws of physics – and of the free-market – do not allow kindly old men to deliver free gifts from magical sleighs.
All that said, I can understand why some parents do not choose to play along with Santa. Father Christmas has certainly been recruited the cult of consumerism; pester-power is insidious enough, but parents can be placed under intolerable pressure when a child’s sense of magic and wonder depends on receiving the right gift under the Christmas tree. And some parents just can’t shake the feeling that the game has gone too far – that the ruses required to keep the game going have just become too elaborate, too stressful, and that it all begins to feel like deceit.
We believe in freedom of conscience at Saints and Sceptics. There are some issues on which scripture does not speak with a clear voice. Deceitfulness is ruled out; but the role of make-believe in a child’s life, and precisely how parents should nurture a sense of wonder in their children, is never explicitly addressed. Different virtues must be nurtured in different families, for we all face different circumstances. So how Christian parents deal with Santa is rarely anyone else’s business and the least of the problems facing the Church. Perhaps we ought to pay a little more attention to CS Lewis’s advice: