Have a good Christmas all the same, canberra boy. When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind
Maybe the best way to go would be to tell kids, early on, that we're only just playing along, that Santa is symbolic or something?
Anyhow, you're right about a lot of kids getting nothing, afew.
Though as of now, we're lying to hundreds of millions of kids, and they love it (and we love it too). And one day, suddenly, we tell them "it was a lie" or they find out through someone at school. The horror, the horror ...
Problems are sown when, for political purposes, people's worldview is constructed on false premises. Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
The problem is, how do we (and do we) deal with the poisonous lies we tell children to scare them and control them? The boogie man, the "man with the bag", or "gypsies will come and take you away"... Do we ever bother dispelling the fear, the mistrust, or the prejudices we sow?
There are political lessons to learn from these light topics. Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
Here we are, floating around on a sea of past time, with this kind of atavism bobbing up around us. Why should a young man (outwardly very successful, runs a money-making business) of thirty-odd talk like this to his three-year-old? And what do you do, beyond (which I did) look the kid in the eye and say, "no, you're not naughty at all"? When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind
This paragraph of mine is really about who people really are behind closed doors. Who knows how people really are, in the cosiness of their homes. Who knows what they say to their kids, or do with their partners!
I had this one telecom teacher, a nice, gentle guy, who'd command some authority with his pupils without being scary. And one day, this was maybe ten years ago, for some reason I was watching "Ca se discute" (even back then it was already a cheap debate tv show) with a few friends. The topic was "sex something", the kind of topic you'd expect to see on this show. So here we were with all the mainstream and less mainstream sex fads and habits ... blabla and blabla ... and then we come to "sado-masochism". We get to see this guy in a latex suit, with a mask on, being treated like a dog by this woman in another latex suit. It's kind of silly really, almost funny. She makes him drink and eat off a plate on the floor, tells him he's a bad dog, then pats and scratches him etc. After this short clip, the guy takes the mask off to give an interview (for the show), and ... it's my teacher!! He then gives this speech on freedom to do what you want at home, to not be judged for what you are at home, and concludes with some citation about men being to society only what society can perceive them as being. Interesting. Me and a few friends who had that teacher (not all did) initially laughed, and then after a short while, we actually thought "wow, that man's got balls, going on TV like that". And we all agreed that we could have never thought/imagined that this soft-spoken but somewhat charismatic (and liked) teacher, had this secret about him.
I agree that Santa doesn't exist for the majority of the people on this planet. It is a struggle to know how to deal with this reality with our children. I think that it is important to provide a childhood with optimism, wonder and hope. At the same time, we talk a bit about the reality for the majority on the planet.
My partner sponsors a girl in Bangladesh, and I assist with the mentoring of a schoolgirl in Australia. I'd like to think that our daughters can find some understanding about and connection to them.
