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Post by swankivy on Jul 1, 2011 22:58:14 GMT -5
I Want to Believe
Many families perpetuate innocent fantasies with their children--most notably, the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus. Describe your experiences with these things when you were very young--whether your family did it and whether you believed in it--and if you like share your experiences with yourself or other small children finding out the truth about imaginary beings.
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Post by SHO! on Jul 2, 2011 0:01:17 GMT -5
I really don't like all of that stuff. The way adults do it (especially when I figured out the truth) always seemed really condescending. Whenever they talked to me about the various imaginary characters they tried to make me believe in (e.g., The Tooth Fairy, Santa, Jesus, the Easter Bunny, God, the Boogey Man, etc.) it was like they were practically laughing and saying "Kids are stupid little s**ts aren't they? Ha Ha Ha." Whether someone wants to say it's harmless it is still lying, but worse it is a completely unnecessary lie that can ONLY end with the breaking of a child's heart and trust.
I can remember staying up all night looking for the tooth fairy when I was just barely four. And the b***h never showed (even though I could've sworn I'd seen her at one point)!  I was very sad on my way to brush what was left of my teeth. When I got back there were eight quarters wrapped in a napkin where my tooth had been under my pillow!  ;D I was so excited. Telling the story to friends (most of which were older) later on was rewarded with new shame and heartbreak resulting from the ridiculing I received. 
WHAT is the point of lying to your kids and screwing with their heads?! 
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Post by swankivy on Jul 2, 2011 0:23:48 GMT -5
I agree with you, SHO!--I don't think adults really understand quite what they're doing when they trick their kids into believing in the "magic" of imaginary beings visiting and leaving you gifts. They're exploiting the children's trust when they're at an age where they're SUPPOSED to depend on adults to lovingly show them the world, and I think it's only natural to start doubting everything you ever knew when you find out they've been LYING to you.
So, what exactly do parents GET out of it? Do they just enjoy tricking children and laying a false world view into their children's impressionable minds? Or do they actually have faded happy memories of believing in Santa that they want to pass on to their children? I think capitalizing on the thin sliver of time where children are old enough to understand what you're proposing but too young to know better is rather insidious, actually. . . .
And if you're the kind of child who treasures your imagination and loves to have an open mind and delights in stories, finding out this sort of betrayal can really warp your mind.
I wasn't raised with a belief in Santa Claus (we weren't Christian and did not celebrate Christmas), and though my mom did sort of joke about the Tooth Fairy, I don't remember believing in it. I remember having to pretend to be asleep so she could reach under my pillow and give me tooth money, and I felt more like I was tricking HER.
However, we did have another imaginary visiting creature unique to our family. I didn't find out until many years later that this was only something that our psychotic family did, and I have no idea how it started (except that all my cousins were also familiar with it). When kids looked at me funny for suggesting that the Red Bellybutton Man would come if they ate their vegetables, I figured it out pretty quickly.
The Red Bellybutton Man would literally color your bellybutton red while you were asleep if you ate all your vegetables. (I believe it was done with lipstick.) I have no idea why we wanted this. But we did. Perhaps because it was pitched like it was a reward.
When I was very young, I demanded to know how the Red Bellybutton Man knew to come. My mother claimed that after I went to bed, she would call him on the phone. I wanted to know what his phone number was, and she said she had to look him up in the phone book. I pestered her and demanded answers until she weakly opened the book and turned to the R's. There she randomly pointed to an entry and claimed that he was "Mr. Redman." I was skeptical to say the least. ::snort::
Also, one December when my sister was about four years old and was sitting in the shopping cart at the grocery store, a well-meaning cashier cooed at her and asked her innocently whether she was excited about Santa Claus visiting for Christmas. Undaunted, my sister replied that Santa Claus was not coming to our house. The woman was flummoxed and kept assuring her that "of COURSE he is!" My sister got very angry and serious and began yelling back, "He is NOT! He is NOT COMING!" My mom found this amusing but eventually had to explain to the cashier that we didn't celebrate that holiday and that was why we were not expecting Santa.
Kids are awesome.
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Post by monika on Jul 2, 2011 5:44:43 GMT -5
Our parents made us believe in the Easter Bunny, the Nikolaus (6th of December) and the Weihnachtsmann (24th of December). Not the Tooth Fairy, she's pretty much unheard of in Germany. We are not Christians, but most atheists celebrate these three festivities anyway. Santa comes to the house on the 24th, as a real person in a red coat, and the kids sing songs and tell poems and get presents. The other two are not seen. In my family there seems to have been an intersection of Nikolaus and Easter Bunny - instead of just putting candy and small presents into the shoes, Nikolaus additionally hides the shoes  . When I asked "Is the Easterbunny real?" my mom said "Well think about it, can an animal really do this?" That was good. But for Santa (Weihnachtsmann) parents and children's magazins had eleborate schemes to hold up the fantasy: When the kids start to question how Santa can make so many toys, additionally elves are invented etc. I think it's kinda okay to go on with the traditions. But when the kids start to question them, the parents should support the questioning. E.g. "Yeah, that's a really good question you ask there, could Santa really make so many presents in one year? And deliver them in one night?" (remember here he does not just stuff them down the chimney, but talks with the kids for an hour) and not "It's magic" or "The elves help him". |
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Post by customdesigned on Jul 8, 2011 22:20:06 GMT -5
An imaginary world is a real world, although not as detailed as the one we live in (by a factor of about 10^20). The ancients saw the connection between imaginary worlds and ours. 19th and 20th century modernism lost the ability to see that connection. Computer technology has begun to reeducate moderns by helping to create virtual worlds with more minutia of detail and consistent logic than imagination alone. These virtual worlds of computer assisted imagination draw billions of our dollars into their virtual economy. Many ancients regarded our world as a fantastically detailed story with an author. History is his story. Some moderns, like Stephen Wolfram, also think our world is a virtual one.
If you tell your kids about Santa Claus to fool them as a kind of practical joke - that might be a mistake. If Santa Claus is a major personage in a world of wonder and imagination, then there is never any reason to stop. If you imagination is too impoverished to hold their interest, then your child will lose interest on their own. If the world you create, or copy from others, is rich enough, you can enjoy it with your kids and others even as they grow to adulthood.
My wife told stories of Grelfin the troll and her mother. Our youngest at 13 still asks for Grelfin stories, but my wife has tired of them. It is so sad - maybe I can get her to make them into books. In the early days, Grelfin had many adventures learning to brush teeth, brush hair, bathe, control belching, and otherwise render her troll nature less objectionable so as to improve friendships.
The Santa world with Rudolf and Elves at the North Pole is too cutesy for my taste. For that reason, and not because Rudolf was imaginary, we told the story of Saint Nicholas (Santa 'Claus in Dutch), who dropped a bag of money down the chimney of a young girl who had no dowry to marry her beloved (very necessary if the new family is to survive). Lesser known is the fact that Saint Nicholas was a bishop at the Council of Nicea. During the debate (concerning whether God was a Trinity and Jesus was God the Son, or whether God was Single, and Jesus the first created being), he became so incensed at Arius (the father of Arianism), that he struck him in the face, and was banned from the council for a day and stripped of his vestments and copy of the Scriptures (very rare and expensive being hand copied in those days) because of the violence! According to Eastern Orthodox tradition, the Virgin Mary herself appeared to St Nicholas, and restored to him his vestments and Scriptures - and this was a token to the other bishops to accept him back into the council.
You may think that this blends history and imagination - but that makes the story all the more skin prickling. That is one definition of "myth" - stories where our world touches other worlds. And that is the kind of Story our Authoress is creating.
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Post by customdesigned on Jul 8, 2011 22:31:29 GMT -5
My favorite story where history and myth are inextricably tangled is The White Stag. [http://www.amazon.com/White-Stag-Newbery-Library-Puffin/dp/0140312587/]
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Post by SHO! on Jul 8, 2011 23:45:46 GMT -5
If you tell your kids about Santa Claus to fool them as a kind of practical joke - that might be a mistake. If Santa Claus is a major personage in a world of wonder and imagination, then there is never any reason to stop. If you imagination is too impoverished to hold their interest, then your child will lose interest on their own. If the world you create, or copy from others, is rich enough, you can enjoy it with your kids and others even as they grow to adulthood. I think it's kinda okay to go on with the traditions. But when the kids start to question them, the parents should support the questioning. E.g. "Yeah, that's a really good question you ask there, could Santa really make so many presents in one year? And deliver them in one night?" (remember here he does not just stuff them down the chimney, but talks with the kids for an hour) and not "It's magic" or "The elves help him".
This same debate in the past has had me wondering about something. It seems interesting to me how parents seem so desperate to find ways to get their teens and preteens to open up to them and trust them, but many a young person has an ingrain drive to not trust adults. It occurs to me that maybe this is where it starts. The first lies, the first betrayal, at such a young age, leaves a nice deep slice in the id of a world that isn't yet worldly. Not so much a resentment that stays on the surface, but just a dull ingrown feeling to not trust. It's always seemed to me that the people that have and have always had the best relationships with their parents are the ones that "knew everything" growing up because their parents were always open and honest with them. |
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Post by SHO! on Jul 8, 2011 23:54:35 GMT -5
An imaginary world is a real world, although not as detailed as the one we live in (by a factor of about 10^20). The ancients saw the connection between imaginary worlds and ours. 19th and 20th century modernism lost the ability to see that connection. You may think that this blends history and imagination - but that makes the story all the more skin prickling. That is one definition of "myth" - stories where our world touches other worlds. And that is the kind of Story our Authoress is creating. |
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Post by monika on Jul 9, 2011 3:47:15 GMT -5
Or you could not lie to them from the beginning. See here's the thing, if some parents choose to lie to their kids then that really is their own business. However, they MUST realize that if their children interact with ANYONE outside of the family then eventually the lies will come to light. ... they repeated the lies to their peers and were ridiculed mercilessly (as children often do to other children) for still being fooled by the lies. You have that the wrong way around. What you write would only be true if you lived in a country where most children are not told of Santa Claus. Let's say if you moved to China with your family, your kid might indeed be ridiculed for such a believe in kindergarten and early primary school. But if you live e.g. in Europe or North America or another area strongly influenced by European traditions, and you tell your child Santa is fake, it might be the only one or one of very few children in the preschool group or early primary school class. He or she would probably be ridiculed for not knowing about Santa or not believing in him and the other kids might even call your child a liar angrily. Think back to your first or second grade, which is about the time when most children figure out Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are not real. Was any kid who was a late believer really ridiculed mercilessly? I certainly don't recall such a thing. I was not particularly angry at my parents for this lie, nor were my siblings. We insisted for a long time for Santa to come, even when we knew this was a person dressed up. And for the Easter eggs to be hidden, as well as the shoes for Nikolaus, when we knew our parents were doing this. |
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Post by swankivy on Jul 9, 2011 13:36:13 GMT -5
You have that the wrong way around. What you write would only be true if you lived in a country where most children are not told of Santa Claus. Ummm . . . that's not really true. There is no controlled doling out of information to children about Santa Claus based on their ages, and there is no regulation of the information, and there is no rule that separates children from their older peers who are much more likely to know that Santa isn't real. Think back to your first or second grade, which is about the time when most children figure out Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are not real. Was any kid who was a late believer really ridiculed mercilessly? I certainly don't recall such a thing. Yep. I can personally recall two such instances, and I can imagine SHO! probably spoke about this happening because he experienced it. "I never saw that happen" isn't the same thing as "so it doesn't happen" or "it's ridiculous to think that could happen." Isn't it commonly said that children are cruel? Bullying is very common (against some children more than others, in some areas more than others), and you don't have to give bullies much of a reason. Kids who are especially trusting and naïve get it the worst. And Santa isn't told like a normal story. It's told as if it's reality--as if this person literally comes to people's houses and gives them presents, and that he really eats your cookies. If this bullied kid runs to his parents and says "They were picking on me for saying Santa is real!" what do you think the parents are going to do? Tell the kid to keep believing in Santa (and keep getting his ass kicked), or admit that actually they were making it up all along? (How does the justification for this sound, too? "We told you this story because um . . . people in our culture like to trick small children into thinking the world works in ways it does not." People think they're making Christmas magical by introducing this story, but isn't what it's actually about magical enough?) I was not particularly angry at my parents for this lie, nor were my siblings. But I think we can agree that clearly some children are, as in the examples SHO! offered above. If your parents put a lot of effort into making sure you're in the dark, you may wonder later what the adults got out of banding together and pressing you to believe in something untrue. I think it's true that many children either aren't affected by it or they don't remember being affected by it. But some children are devastated, and when THAT memory is one of the earliest ones they can recall and it involves their parents telling them untrue things for no conceivable (to them) reason, it's not hard to imagine some guardedness and lack of trust developing. What else might Mommy and Daddy be lying about? (And this isn't just lack of disclosure; it's deliberate, calculated, willingly orchestrated falsehood that the children are asked to participate in.) People do react differently, especially sensitive children, and even when you have examples of Santa myths not doing any harm, I don't think it's therefore fair to dismiss the practice as "harmless." It can do harm because it has. And the children who have been bullied often don't get angry at the bullies. They get angry at whoever or whatever set them up to get bullied. When they find out their parents have conspired to trick them and taken advantage of their naïveté, sometimes things aren't ever the same. The people you trusted most in the world set you up to believe in (and give cookies to) someone who isn't real, and sometimes went out of their way to hide reality from you. If it never happened to you or anyone you know . . . . . . lucky you. |
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Post by customdesigned on Jul 22, 2011 23:45:42 GMT -5
An imaginary world is a real world, although not as detailed as the one we live in (by a factor of about 10^20). The ancients saw the connection between imaginary worlds and ours. 19th and 20th century modernism lost the ability to see that connection. Every age has its blind spots - including ours. The ancients were not stupid, and you would do well to learn from them - or at least compare notes. |
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Post by SHO! on Jul 24, 2011 7:12:16 GMT -5
Many ancients also believed headaches were caused by unrested demons trying to get out of your head. So they drilled holes into people's heads to let them out. So next time you have a headache will you reach for a product made by Tylenol or Black&Decker? Every age has its blind spots - including ours. The ancients were not stupid, and you would do well to learn from them - or at least compare notes.
Hell, to be honest, they don't even have to be all that ancient. I snicker over Scientology, Numerology, Astrology, and "doom cults" too. |
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I was very sad on my way to brush what was left of my teeth. When I got back there were eight quarters wrapped in a napkin where my tooth had been under my pillow! 
;D I was so excited. Telling the story to friends (most of which were older) later on was rewarded with new shame and heartbreak resulting from the ridiculing I received. 
.