Not 'doing' Santa

Idiophreak

Welshwoofs wrote: »

Sorry, going to have to disagree with you here.

I never believed in Father Christmas. Nobody told me he wasn't real, I just knew that it was completely impossible for some old bloke to go zooming round the world on a flying sledge delivering presents.

Are you sure? Not being funny, but that reasoning is rather too advanced for a 2 or 3 year old...they just don't have an appreciation of the world in that way.

At that age, if you believe something relies, pretty much 100%, on whether you're told to believe it.

Someone was bound to have told you to believe, whether that be your family, friends or just the jolly man on the coke adverts - the fact you never believed it suggests someone must have told you not to.

podperson

Idiophreak wrote: »

Excellent post, skintchick...I've highlighted the above because I think this is the crux of the issue to me...Does actually believing something make it more enjoyable than just pretending....and, sorry to say, for me - yes, of course it does.

I think this is why the phrase that's used is "make believe" - pretending to look for fairies is just acting and, really, a bit of a waste of time when you think about it. "Making believe" you're looking for fairies is different...your child's imagination is allowed to run riot, to picture what they'd look like, to build hope, excitement and expectation...pretending to do the same thing, with no offence intended, just sounds cold and cynical.

The same thing is absolutely true for adults. Adults love to have their beliefs challenged and, more to the point, to suspend their disbelief - because, fundamentally, *we like believing* - so when something in a film breaks our suspension of disbelief, it jars us. When a magician stuffs up a trick, it makes us sad - because we can't believe any more.

To coin a phrase - we want to believe

But, as you say we love to 'suspend belief' - we watch movies, go to the theatre, read a book etc to escape into a story. We know that the story isn't real but that doesn't mean it's not still enjoyable and fun for us. I'm a writer, so I think it would be rather sad if knowing that something wasn't true didn't mean that we couldn't still imagine things about it.

skintchick

stargazer59 wrote: »

I can only assume that the parents are over it, most adults do get over things until they happen again! As for why she has few friends, it may well be that the children are upset at having the magic of Father Christmas ruined for them, i do not know. I do know that she is not a nasty child though.

Right.

So when you originally posted this:

stargazer59 wrote: »

My grand daughter started school a year ago, there was a child in their class who told all the children that they were stupid to believe in Father Christmas as her mother had told her that it was a lie, and that their parents were liars.

The children were upset, as were the parents, but the only one who suffered was the poor little girl, no one wanted to play with her, and even now she has trouble making and keeping friends.

i guess it is great to stand by your beliefs but it will be your child who may have to deal with the fallout.

you were saying something that's not in fact true? In that post you heavily implied that this child had no friends because she had told other children that FC was not real. in fact, that was the whole point of your post.

And now you say that you have no idea why she has few friends.

stargazer59 wrote: »

I think maybe me using the word isolating was inappropriate.

She just seems to still have very few friends.

I am not sure what your point is about the parents? Parents do not tend to choose their kids friends do they?

I am sorry if you are offended by what i said,

I'm not offended in the slightest, don't worry about that, I just am trying to understand fully your point and the situation you've used to illustrate it, which has transpired to be not the case.

Parents do have quite a big influence on children's friends when they are young. If a parent doesn't like a child then they don;t have to allow playdates with that child.

stargazer59 wrote: »

i just wanted to point out this situation as a warning that is all

But how is it a warning when you have no true idea whether people fell out with this girl as a result of what she said about FC, no idea if the reason she has few friends now is because of what she said about FC, and no idea therefore if it constitutes a warning at all?

ziggy2004

peachyprice wrote: »

So you wouldn't have felt left out if all the other children in your country were celebrating St. Nicholas on 5/6 December but your parents had chosen to not let you be part of that tradition?

I never believed that st nicholas was anything other than a tradition to be celebrated, my children get gifts from us/my family at st nicholas and from their UK family at Christmas. Not actively doing santa is not the same as completely rejecting Christmas. We have a tree, decorations, will have a Christmas meal, go to a carol service, go to the local Christmas market, take part in a local Christmas event etc etc. If we happen to come across a santa

pulliptears wrote: »

Yes, a pivotal part of childhood, especially in the UK. Ask your average adult if they could imagine a childhood without the magic of Christmas. A Christmas Eve without lying in bed convinced they could here sleigh bells.

Father Christmas is a harmless yet important part of childhood in this country. So you grew up without it, fair enough and thats normal for where you are from, but here Santa Claus is important and tbh if you aren't from this country and never had it I don't see how you can testify to its significance.

Well I have lived in this country for a long time and have a DH who was born here who never had santa either, he has extremely fond memories of Christmas time despite having missed out on what you class as pivotal. Pivotal by definition is 'of crucial importance in relation to the development or success of something else'. So when saying it is crucial you are condemning all children who do not have parents who pretend that Santa is real to an unsuccessful childhood which I do believe is ever so slightly over the top.

I am fully supportive of other parents choosing to do Santa and inserting magic into their Christmas in that way just don't imply that what I am doing is giving my children an unsuccessful childhood

Idiophreak

podperson wrote: »

But, as you say we love to 'suspend belief' - we watch movies, go to the theatre, read a book etc to escape into a story. We know that the story isn't real but that doesn't mean it's not still enjoyable and fun for us. I'm a writer, so I think it would be rather sad if knowing that something wasn't true didn't mean that we couldn't still imagine things about it.

Maybe I wasn't as clear as I should have been.

As adults, we try to "make belief" for ourselves....Belief brings out emotions, thoughts and reactions in us that we can't access otherwise. The better something makes us believe (the more seamless the magician, the more compelling a story, the more rich and detailed a book) the more we enjoy it.

Children are *blessed* that they do not need to make belief - they can just have it. So, as adults, we can enrich our children's lives, not by "making belief" for them, but by "making them believe".

Cynicism, education and (frankly) disappointment beat our belief out of us as we go through life. It's such a shame to squander this wonderful ability children have by not encouraging them to believe in things while they still can.

stargazer59

skintchick wrote: »

Right.

So when you originally posted this:



you were saying something that's not in fact true? In that post you heavily implied that this child had no friends because she had told other children that FC was not real. in fact, that was the whole point of your post.

And now you say that you have no idea why she has few friends.





I'm not offended in the slightest, don't worry about that, I just am trying to understand fully your point and the situation you've used to illustrate it, which has transpired to be not the case.

Parents do have quite a big influence on children's friends when they are young. If a parent doesn't like a child then they don;t have to allow playdates with that child.



But how is it a warning when you have no true idea whether people fell out with this girl as a result of what she said about FC, no idea if the reason she has few friends now is because of what she said about FC, and no idea therefore if it constitutes a warning at all?

My point in my original post was that the child upset the other children and parents. What followed was that the children were upset with her and did not want to play with her. That was the warning, that it can and did happen. So in fact what i said was true. Therefore what transpired was the case.

Whether she has continued to tell them the same this year i do not know.

I can only go on my own experience but i believe my children played at school with whoever they wanted to, i had no influence in what happened in the playground, i do not know if that is still the case.

I hope that explains it more clearly.

balletshoes

broace wrote: »

Which is how the world works, everyone has different opinions .

Should a Sikh pupil have to convert to Atheism simply because of the majority of their classmates are... no but your argument is that they should just because atheism is the norm in that situation.

see I don't see that - no-ones asking the child to believe in Santa if she hasn't been raised that way. But in the same way that you'd tell a Sikh child that their classmates believe different things about God(s), you tell a child who doesn't believe in Santa that other people do. Its not about converting anyone to anything.

skintchick

stargazer59 wrote: »

My point in my original post was that the child upset the other children and parents. What followed was that the children were upset with her and did not want to play with her. That was the warning, that it can and did happen. So in fact what i said was true. Therefore what transpired was the case.

Whether she has continued to tell them the same this year i do not know.

I can only go on my own experience but i believe my children played at school with whoever they wanted to, i had no influence in what happened in the playground, i do not know if that is still the case.

I hope that explains it more clearly.

Not really. In your original posts you set out to make it sound like this girl had been pretty much ostracised by her peers since she told them FC didn't exist.

Then you said you didn;t know if she was ostracised or not, she seems to have friends.

Now you say you don't know about her situation currently.

She might well have experienced a small bump in the friendship road at the time of the original revelation, but you extrapolated that out to say that she no longer had any friends.

Clearly, from your later posts, that is not true.

It makes a big difference to this discussion whether you are referring to a minor issue at the time, or continued ostracising since then, and you know it.

Now that we've finally got to what I hope is the truth of it, that at the time there was a minor amount of friendship fallout that is now resolved, then all I can say is 'so what?'.

Kids fall out all the time over all sorts of things. It happens. I'm not going to lie to my child about FC in order to attempt to avoid such fallouts.

What I am going to do is parent her in such a way that I give her the skills and emotional stability to deal with fallouts like that, and to overcome them without too much upset.

skintchick

balletshoes wrote: »

see I don't see that - no-ones asking the child to believe in Santa if she hasn't been raised that way. But in the same way that you'd tell a Sikh child that their classmates believe different things about God(s), you tell a child who doesn't believe in Santa that other people do. Its not about converting anyone to anything.

Yes. But haven't we all been saying that anyway?

podperson

Idiophreak wrote: »

Maybe I wasn't as clear as I should have been.

As adults, we try to "make belief" for ourselves....Belief brings out emotions, thoughts and reactions in us that we can't access otherwise. The better something makes us believe (the more seamless the magician, the more compelling a story, the more rich and detailed a book) the more we enjoy it.

Children are *blessed* that they do not need to make belief - they can just have it. So, as adults, we can enrich our children's lives, not by "making belief" for them, but by "making them believe".

Cynicism, education and (frankly) disappointment beat our belief out of us as we go through life. It's such a shame to squander this wonderful ability children have by not encouraging them to believe in things while they still can.

But children adore 'make believe' - they don't have to think something is real to imagine things about it. I was visiting a friend at weekend with two young boys - they were playing 'superheros' so they were flying, jumping over buildings, climbing up walls etc. They don't believe that they can actually 'do' those things, but it didn't spoil their enjoyment.
I remember as a child we would play at characters from cartoons, or explorers, or witches and wizards, or that we were animals. We didn't believe those were 'real' but it didn't mean we couldn't imagine things for them.
I'm not saying kids shouldn't believe in Santa but if people choose not to tell their kids it's true then I don't think it will stifle their imaginations or their sense of wonder in things - they will simply find their own things to imagine.