Cunk on Christmas TV - Apollo 8 - Richard Dawkins TV - Clement C Moore - George Carlin - Francis Pharcellus Church - Tom Flynn - Gamaliel Bradford - Renzo Sereno - Associated Press: Christmyth - News articles - Shirley Temple Black - Lemony Snicket - Cynthia Scheibe - The Office US TV - Rab C Nesbitt TV - Spitting Image TV -
Like Jesus, Father Christmas is used as a bribe to make children behave. Cunk on Christmas, BBC 2017
Santa is the world’s most popular home intruder. ibid.
Apollo 8: Roger. Please be informed there is a Santa Claus.
Control: Hello, Apollo 8. You’re the best ones to know. Apollo 8, cited Moon Landings Declassified, National Geographic 2019
They’re also fed stories about God and about Father Christmas. And somehow children usually got off the ordinary magic spells of fairy tales. And they get off Father Christmas. They don’t get off God. And there’s something a bit different. And I don’t quite understand what it is. Children do seem to have some capacity to filter what they’re told and to work out, well obviously that’s not really true. But it’s a good story. I wonder if it’s to do with the seriousness of the tone of voice that’s adopted by the adult who is telling you about it. Richard Dawkins, In Confidence, Sky Arts 2010
I suppose if you look back to your early childhood you accept everything people tell you, and that includes a heavy dose of irrationality – you’re told about tooth fairies and Father Christmas and things. Richard Dawkins
’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there. Clement C Moore, A View from St Nicholas, December 1832
The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live. George Carlin
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Francis Pharcellus Church, 1839-1906, American journalist, letter to eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon
John Lennon once said that The Beatles were bigger than Jesus Christ. He was wrong. That honor belongs to Santa Claus. An estimated 85% of American four-year-olds believe in Santa. Only 82% of adults in a recent poll told Gallup that they were Christians. Among their respective target audiences, Santa out-pulls Jesus by a nose. Tom Flynn, The Trouble With Christmas
During World War II, labor leader John L Lewis called a coal miners’ strike just before Christmas. NBC opened its radio newscast with the words, ‘John L Lewis just shot Santa Claus’. In the next hour, thirty thousand calls inundated the network’s switchboards. A Texas boy despaired and downed a bottle of castor oil. So frightening was the reaction that NBC hurriedly staged an ‘interview with Santa Claus’ to reassure Americans that the jolly old elf was still alive. ibid.
Reason #1: To Teach and Perpetrate the Santa Claus Myth, Parents Must Lie to Their Children. Reason #2: The Santa Claus Myth Exploits Characteristic Weakness in Young Children’s Thinking, Perhaps Obstructing Their Passage to Later Stages of Cognitive Development. Reason #3: To Buoy Belief, Adults Stage Elaborate Deceptions, Laying Traps for the Child’s Developing Intellect. Reason #4: The Myth Encourages Lazy Parenting and Promotes Unhealthy Fear. Reason #5: The Number of Characteristics that Santa Claus Shares with God and Jesus Verges on the Blasphemous. ibid.
What price are we paying for lying to children about Santa Claus? It may be steeper than we think. Because the myth panders to childhood credulity, some have implicated it in the rising incidence of scientific illiteracy among the young. Because it encourages children to build their world views on authority, not on independent thinking, others have related it to the abysmal judgment supposedly displayed by young adults. Can parents honestly be surprised when children do not consult them before experimenting with sex, drugs, crime, or destructive relationships – so soon after their parents have made it clear that children cannot trust them to provide accurate knowledge of the world? A Christian parent put the issue clearly in a letter to the editor:
‘Certainly we can’t get away with lies for seven to ten years and then expect children to ‘outgrow’ Santa ... then suddenly expect them to believe us when we mention high intensity moral issues.
‘Simply being honest with our children, in my opinion, would outweigh anything Santa ever brought’. ibid.
The fairies are gone ... the witches are gone ... the ghosts are gone. Santa Claus alone still lingers with us. For heaven’s sake, let us keep him as long as we can. Gamaliel Bradford, cited Flynn
[A]ny adult who dares tell a child the objective truth on the matter is considered worse than blasphemous. Renzo Sereno
He who would destroy a child’s faith in Father Christmas, and thus annihilate the exquisite poetry of childhood, should be kept chained up beyond the reach of his fellow man. W J Locker
A priest who told youngsters that Santa Claus is dead and that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer doesn’t exist was acting on his ‘zeal to emphasize the spiritual dimension’ of Christmas, church officials said Tuesday.
The Diocese of Metuchen issued a statement to clarify comments by the Reverend Romano Ferraro at the St John Vianney Roman Catholic Church in Colonia [New Jersey] on Saturday.
Ferraro also had said that parents who tell their children Santa exists are liars.
‘He tried to kill Santa,’ said Joanne Apolonia, a mother who attended the weekend Mass at the Church with her ‘Confraternity of Christian Doctrine’ class. ‘That’s how the kids took it.’ Associated Press article, ‘Christmyth: Priest Says Parents Lie, Santa Dead’, reprinted the Arizona Republic 10th December 1986
David Henry – a PE teacher at Fairwood Elementary School in Kent, Washington – landed in hot water when parents of five-and six-year-old students said it wasn’t ‘his business ... to put away their visions of sugar plums and view the world with Scrooge-like realism’. News article The Phoenix Gazette 1st January 1994, ‘Truth Hurts: Gym Teacher Gives Lowdown on Santa’
Santa Claus handed a book with a singularly blunt message to the suburban Virginia tots who sat on his lap at Tysons Corner Center last week: There really is no Santa. News article The Washington Post, reprinted The Arizona Republic 26th November 1989
Outrage After Teacher Tells 7-Year-Olds Santa is Not Real. Fox News 11th December 2008
I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph. Shirley Temple Black
The real Santa Claus is at the mall. Lemony Snicket, The Lump of Coal
Nobody shoots on Santa Claus. Samuel Butler
Most children believe in Santa Claus because books, advertising, the entire culture tells them he is real. Cynthia Scheibe, New York’s Ithaca College, study co-author John Condry Cornell University
The evidence clearly supports that Santa Claus is real, given what (children) know, given the fact that most adults say Santa Claus is real, that he brings you presents and you can see him. ibid.
Michael: David, guess who I am sitting here dressed as.
David: I’m not going to guess. You can tell me, or I will hang up.
Michael: I will give you a hint. His last name is Christ. He has the power of flight. He can heal leopards.
David: Michael ...
Michael: I am Jesus, David, and you know why? Because Phyllis – a woman – has usurped my role as Santa. The Office US s6e13: Secret Santa, NBC 2009
A female Santa? Where does it stop? ibid. Michael to Jim
With two Santas in the room things get ruthless. ibid.
The belief in Santa Claus is one of the basic pillars on which our society is found. Rab C Nesbitt: Seasonal Greet, Sheriff to Rab, pilot episode BBC 1988
Santa in Sack Rumour. Spitting Image s3e17, Daily Hark front page, ITV 1986