A Christmas Lie
Santa Claus is important to the holiday season, but when does the lie go too far? by ashley guddat Santa is such an imperative part of the Christmas season, sometimes we forget that he doesn’t exist. Children spend hours writing letters with their Christmas lists, setting out cookies for him on Christmas eve, and staying up late, waiting for him to bring them toys. Most parents encourage this notion to stimulate Christmas magic. Although Christmas is a time for having fun and entertaining fantasies, sometimes these festivities can get out of hand. When I was little I remember that my older sister, who was in second grade, once told a girl that Santa wasn’t real. Later that day, my mom received a phone call from the other girl’s
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mom who was upset that my sister had told her daughter Santa didn’t exist. She wanted her daughter to believe Santa was real so badly, she asked my mom to tell my older sister to lie to her daughter the next day, telling her that Santa was real. Why would parents go to such lengths to lie to their children? Not only does it upset children when they find out Santa isn’t real, but think about how this could create a lack of trust between children towards their parents. And, while some might say that Santa is an innocent lie to create a spirit of joy during Christmas, this one small lie often snowballs into many more smaller lies to uphold the bigger one. “I believe that honesty trumps all else 99% of the time [and] Santa is not one of the exceptions,” my father Josh Guddat said. “We were always very real with our kids in terms of letting them imagine Santa like a fairytale, but we absolutely told them that Santa was not real.” Jasmine Ortiz Garcia, a junior, has a different view. “I mean, it is all part of the joy as a little kid. [Parents] want to make [their kids] happy so I don’t think it would be bad [to tell them about Santa],” Garcia said. However, what a lot of parents don’t look at, is the long term effects of this small lie. How can you trust what your parents say when they lied to you about one of the most important figures in your life? These lies can also leech over into other figures you once believed were real like the Easter Bunny or the Tooth fairy. One small lie is not going to ruin a relationship especially as a small child, but honesty is a fundamental part of a healthy relationship, and lying over time will have a negative effect on it. So while it is fun to imagine a jolly, old man with a white beard and a red coat bringing you Christmas presents in a sleigh pulled by magic reindeer, you might also want to imagine what the ramifications might be for perpetuating a myth.
graphic by carson pope