From the beginning of the development of a child's cognitive ability, parents indoctrinate to their children the existence of the fictitious person of Santa Claus. The keen debater would argue that Santa Claus does exist in the form of St. Nicholas (4th Century saint and Greek Bishop). Of course this article is not talking about the latter, but the one that lives in the North Pole who gratuitously delivers presents to well-behaved children around the world (predominantly Western-influenced societies) as he soars in the sky with a magical sleigh. We've all heard of him before.
We've heard of him before, we all know it is a lie, yet we still deliberately lie to gullible children about it. The worse thing is, the entire community seems to have established a unanimous consensus to maintain the lie in order to keep the young children ignorant to the conduct of mass deceit: Fat old men hired to impersonate Santa Clauses in all major shopping malls, TV shows and movies all portray Santa Claus going through the list of good kids with elves wrapping Made-in-China toys in the background, every Christmas decoration more or less reminds children of the Santa Claus coming to town... All for the sake of having a so-called fantasy of a Happy Christmas.
Bull-fucking-shit.
Why lie to children? You may say to tell them the truth too early would burst that innocence and fantasy... but from what? The innocence is inborn which gets lost when they realize their parents have been lying to them, whereas the fantasy was again created by the lie itself. It's a cyclical logic of defence. There is no reason to tell them that Santa Claus and all that mythical crap is real in the first place. No reason at all.
It might be fun for adults seeing how gullible and eager the children await for the appearance of the Santa Claus, or that they get so happy when they receive Christmas presents and cards signed by Santa; But what if your children finally realizes that Santa Claus does not exist? They would realize that their parents have been lying to them throughout their whole lives, that the parents deliberately lied to them for their own amusement,and continuously did so with no remorse at all. What message does this send to the kids? What credibility do you have left in the perspective of your children?
On the other hand, once children realize that Christmas presents are given by their parents, it is indoctrinated that the custom of giving gifts among family and friends must be the norm during this time. This brings ahead an equally bad (if not worse) social problem: Consumerism. You see Christmas decorations in shopping centres and in public streets. Because it is the commercial entities and retail businesses who took this opportunity to create an illusion of a community sanctioned goods purchasing and a community expected presents giving. By creating a social stigma of an obligation to give presents (which in most cases, the receiver would not actually like anyway), the obligation inevitably extends to the need to purchase consumer products to satisfy that obligation, regardless of one's financial circumstances. This results in a large amount of the population suffering from immense credit card debts, failed mortgage payments and for the worst cases, bankruptcy due to the inability to repay debts.
You might think it's a long shot. But no, they are all linked within the chain of causation. All because of some fucked up lie your parents made you believe in the first place, and the eventually grasp of opportunity by commercial retailers to manipulate a childhood fantasy into global necessity of buying shit that no one wants.
Why don't we all think about what Christmas is all about? For the Christian/Catholic people, it's about celebrating the birth of their saviour, turning a Nelsonian eye to the fact that it is most likely that Jesus was born around the June/ July months due to the astronomical illustration in the Bible at the time of Jesus' birth. For those who are not so inclined, it is about celebrating the winter solstice where the Earth's axis has tilted to a particular degree, that apparently, deserves global celebration of such. Hence the pagan traditions of pine trees, red and green decorations and all the vegetation crap that you see around you during Christmas time.
That way, we all know it's not really a big fucking deal. And at least we can be sure our new year will not be covered with bills and invoices from credit card companies breathing down our necks for the next month's interest repayment.
