i'm not qualified to answer on SO many levels and yet here i am answering.

my kids are all furbabies so they don't know about santa. i have never been christian so it would never occur to me to tell a human kid about santa. i'm an atheist so even if i'd been raised christian i wouldn't bother my kids with santa... but they'd be exposed to him elsewhere (tv, school, etc.) so i would have to tell them who he purportedly was, that he is fictional, and that they could have fun with him if they liked, but not to believe. all moot of course, under the circumstances.

g

The most important duties of parenting are to protect and nurture while preparing our young for life as strong, perceptive adults.

We betray our responsibilities to them by intentionally interfering with their perceptual and reasoning faculties by knowingly telling them things that we know to be false. By nature children implicitly and instinctively trust parents to nurture and strengthen them. It is no secret that children become angry at parents who die prematurely on the instinctual level because that natural expectation is thwarted.

Extreme meddling with their faculties sometimes causes irreparable damage. Stages of healthy development occur as seasons; 'windows of opportunity' that open and close at different ages, never to reopen. When we feed them bullshit as part of their formative diet, they become much more susceptible to others doing the same to them both as children and later in life. Instead, we should sharpen their bullshit detection abilities with which they are endowed to begin with instead of dulling them with fables and fantasy represented as reality.

How many little girls and boys face real life with expectations of one day meeting an enchanted princess or a prince with whom they'll live happily ever after? How many falsely believe that merely being good entitles one to another's largess or that being 'bad' within doctrinal definitions will result in doom or undoing? Good guys and gals don't always win and bad ones don't always lose; but many of us grow up, with the help of parental fantasies, believing that such things as fairness and justice occur naturally in the real world? How often do we then get angry, even vengeful, when they don't occur? Those are only scratching the surface as interference with our ability to reason.

Constantly saying it, sorry, but our society is pathogenic in so many ways, while ironically claiming to prevent the very conditions it causes.

I taught my kids that Santa was "the spirit of Christmas", that he embodied kindness, service, & giving & how its important to be "Santa" all year round. Even when we had nothing but a roof over our heads, a single chair & their beds (trust me, this is not exaggeration), I tried to instill in them that a sense of kindness requires more than feeling, it requires action. When we were better off, we always adopted an angel tree child & would spend the months of October, November & December making "weekly grocery boxes" to drop off at the local food pantry that had helped us when we were in need. January & February, we would collect for the local homeless shelters.

We were always involved in a community event.

The cool thing is, my adult children are passing that along. I caught my oldest son & granddaughter coming out of my vet back in March. When I asked which pet was being seen, he said he'd just dropped off a 50lb bag of feed for the humane society. My 6 yr old granddaughter said, "yeah, we do this once a month & I help pay for it too." Evidently she insists that she pitch in part of her allowance.

I did. He's 11 now and has known about the Green Man and that the colors didn't change to red until a Coke campaign for a couple years. He also knows the story of how St. Nick became the patron saint of thieves and prostitutes. History is, and should be, fun.

That is a damn good question! I've been thinking about if I ever had a child... Pros; not lying. Cons; bout every one of their friends will be disapointed, and be ostrisized. I do not know the answer to that. I don't want my kid to believe the word of adult figures that are lies. When I went to CCD, one time they told us to bow our heads and close our eyes. If we believed in go we'd hear a bell ring. I looked up, and the bitch had a bell in her hand! Fucking lying. I can understand about lying to your kid about a surprize birthday party, or something of that nature. But not that.

I think it's great that we have Santa in our culture; it makes it easier for us to realise that God (probably) doesn't exist either.

Nobody is ever TAUGHT about Santa! We shouldn’t disillusion children, let them believe in the Magic, they will find out soon enough that he isn’t real. God, however, is a whole different thing and should be countered at the earliest.....it may be useful after the child knows that Santa isn’t real to use him as an analogy.

Kids grow up and realize that Santa is a fable invented by man. Parents are fine with this, they don't tell their children that there really is a Santa. And there are no threats or consequences for letting go of this fable. Now put this alongside religious indoctrination and you see the problem.