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I take it this was a topic on another thread, but I haven't scrolled that far down yet.
I don't like it when parents who insist to their children that Santa is real long after their child has doubts, but i have no problem with letting kids learn about the myth and believe it as long as they actually believe it. I never told my daughters that Santa was real, but I never tried to convince them he was. I never told them anything, I just played along with what they picked up in school. We never pretended Santa brought presents or was watching them or anything else. My oldest asked if Santa was real when she was five, and I asked her what she thought. She said no. I told her he was a man who lived a long time ago, and so people still honored him at Christmas by telling stories about him. Basic stuff like that. My youngest questioned it about six, and I told her basically the same thing. It was a good way to introduce them to the idea of myth, and frankly, much before five or six my kids didn't really understand what it meant to say Pokemon was not real but Bill Clinton was. Neither was real to my kids, except in abstract ways. Santa is a benign myth, and my only real problem with it is when parents lie to their kids for too long, for whatever reasons.
The whole American foundation myth is sinister, though. It was created by nationalists desperate to justify the slaughter of the late 19th century, and is continually used to build the lie of America's unerring ethical character, not to mention the supremacy of the white male (too many literature and art classes further that same myth). It's damaging to the individual and the American psyche, and it's dangerous to all non-white or non-American people in the world, since every demagogue like Bush and Reagan tap into it to incite wars and other forms of genocide.
I'm all for teaching history classes that focus on the tremendous good America has done in the world, and the significant role we have played in the transformation of political ideologies and realities. But I believe there is just as important a message in teaching kids how bad people can become in pursuit of ideals, or sometimes in pursuit of money and land. The Santa myth can be a good one, the American myth is often deadly to too many people, and one day, if that day has already come, it will bring about our destruction.
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