I guess I once told a boy about santa who still believed at age 7 or 8, and his parents got sort of pissed off. But I don't know if kids really carry away such deep symbolic meaning from santa claus etc... I mean... possibly to a small extent or subconsciously - but if I had kids I probably would still do tooth fairy and easter bunny type stuff. Because there are 365 days to the year during which other messages of the same nature are reinforced, and this is probably much more significant in sum.
What I am sort of annoyed by in the media during this time of year is how they have all sorts of stories about people doing their yearly charity and volunteer work for the poor, and also every year, there are a few stories that get printed about some isolated instance where a poor person tried to take advantage of the system or somehow looked selfish - there was one where these mothers brought their kids to a toy giveaway where these senior citizens had made all these wooden cars dominoes and old fashioned toys and some kids whined that they wanted plastic action figures etc. and so some reporter made a whole story out of this. My relatives were over and were reading the paper and totally latching on to this sort of anecdote and carrying on like they (middle class taxpayers and saps who continually and fruitlessly keep writing out their $20 checks to the shelters) are the real victims and the 'poor' kids are probably going to get more donated toys than their own kids. I think that upper and upper middle class people (which isn't really what my relatives are) require a library of this sort of story in order to conscionably keep going.
?Christine On Sun, 27 Dec 1998, Gar Lipow wrote:
> For some reason this season made me think not about the real meaning
> of Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza, Ramadan, Solstice or any other
> holiday, but about the real meaning of Santa Claus -- and all the
> valuable lesson Santa teaches for living in corporate America.
>
> Think about what a kid learns on first discovering there are is no
> Santa Claus. She learns (if she does not already know) that authority
> figures lie, and that lies by authority figures are good lies, lies
> you are rewarded for believing, lies you should go believing for as
> long as possible.
>
> If (as is usual) it is another kid who tells her there is no Santa ,
> she learns that those who expose the lies of authority figures are
> wicked destroyers of innocence, that the proper response to learning
> that an authority figure has lied is to protect others from the awful
> truth.
> --
> Gar W. Lipow
> 815 Dundee RD NW
> Olympia, WA 98502
> http://www.freetrain.org/
>