The tooth fairy called; she wants her delusions back

"Don't go over the edge

You'll make a big mistake"

 

Gorillaz - Don't Get Lost In Heaven

 

 

My recent reminiscence about learning the concept of mortality was kicked off by a blog post I found elsewhere, in which the writer claims he won't yet be telling his NINE year old son that Santa Claus isn't real. Also, after talking it over with the missus, it was decided to wait several more years, and even then hedge by saying that our shared human myths are somehow "real" even if they're not "real"-"real" and I'm sorry, you lost me several moronic details ago. There's no point in specifying the blog itself, since you run into this "Yes, Virginia" crap every Christmas.

Am I the only one thinking it can't possibly be possible for a nine year old in the internet age to still think Santa's real? Unless he was raised in a barrel or something. I mean, I sussed out the Santa myth when I was four to five years old, and forget internet, we barely had television. I like to think I'm just that smart, but my parents blame my uncle the history major, whose reprisal of the role supposedly would've gotten him booed offstage in any grade-school play in history. Same parents, when I speculated the nine-year-old referenced above might be going along with the act to please his family, scoffed and provided the more parentally savvy interpretation: "oh please, kid's in it for the presents." But be it a folie a deux or a folie a dosh, you are either emotionally blackmailing or actively bribing your child to lie. For years on end. To the people closest to him. Helluva life lesson.

Without bothering to delve the intellectual harm thus caused (since truth underpins all interpretation and action) for me it felt emotionaly hurtful even dragging it out to five years old when I finally worked up the nerve to officially pull the proverbial beard. I'd figured it out, but was continually prompted to look forward to Santa's visit, and I couldn't figure out why my parents had lied to me or were still pretending I didn't know. Were father and mother making fun of me? Testament to my patchwork theory of mind, it did not occur to me at that age that not everyone had been notified of all my conclusions. (Come to think of it, I still struggle with that.)

But okay, assuming, for the sake of argument, even if - IF! - somehow, it were possible to drag the charade out ten whole years, you're not doing the child any damn favors on the playground! You're just condemning your progeny to be endlessly mocked and slapped around by all the other sadistic little monsters when word gets out, and after getting the Santa news broken to him far less gently than you would do it. And for what? Ignorance is not innocence.

As for the mass delusional "we make myths real" angle, that's an observation, not an aspiration, a diagnosis of mental disease and not a treatment. Awareness of mythopoesis is critical, but precisely to check that tendency in ourselves, not to indulge it to breed more gullibility.

 

And wait, are we still pretending this is about the child? Will your spawn fail to... imagine... things... if it is not driven by your parental authority to participate in a big lie? Your Little Prince can look out the car window and see a new Narnia, Lilliput or Chocolate Factory in every coffee shop and bus stop, and you want to pretend your lack of participation will dam that nigh-infinite flood? Please. You're not providing anything to your child by playing at Santa. You're just enlisting it in your own power-trip over itself, your own delusion of control over its imagination, its thoughts, its existence.