{"id":51408,"date":"2014-12-22T12:00:20","date_gmt":"2014-12-22T12:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=51408"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:27:09","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:27:09","slug":"margaret-mead-on-myth-vs-deception-and-what-to-tell-kids-about-santa-claus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/12\/margaret-mead-on-myth-vs-deception-and-what-to-tell-kids-about-santa-claus\/","title":{"rendered":"Margaret Mead on Myth vs. Deception and What to Tell Kids about Santa Claus"},"content":{"rendered":"

How to instill an appreciation of the difference between \u201cfact\u201d and \u201cpoetic truth,\u201d in kids and grownups alike.<\/em><\/p>\n

Few things rattle the fine line between the benign magic of mythology and the deliberate delusion of a lie more than the question of how, what, and whether to tell kids about Santa Claus. Half a century ago, Margaret Mead<\/a> (December 16, 1901\u2013November 15, 1978) \u2014 the world\u2019s most influential cultural anthropologist and one of history\u2019s greatest academic celebrities \u2014 addressed this delicate subject with great elegance, extending beyond the jolly Christmas character and into larger questions of distinguishing between myth and deception.<\/p>\n

From the wonderful out-of-print volume Margaret Mead: Some Personal Views<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>) \u2014 the same compendium of Mead\u2019s answers to audience questions from her long career as a public speaker and lecturer, which also gave us her remarkably timely thoughts on racism and law enforcement<\/a> and equality in parenting<\/a> \u2014 comes an answer to a question she was asked in December of 1964: \u201cWere your children brought up to believe in Santa Claus? If so, what did you tell them when they discovered he didn\u2019t exist?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\"margaretmead_santa1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Mead\u2019s response, which calls to mind Carl Sagan\u2019s Baloney Detection Kit<\/a>, is a masterwork of celebrating rational, critical thinking without sacrificing magic to reason:<\/p>\n

Belief in Santa Claus becomes a problem mainly when parents simultaneously feel they are telling their children a lie and insist on the literal belief in a jolly little man in a red suit who keeps tabs on them all year, reads their letters and comes down the chimney after landing his sleigh on the roof. Parents who enjoy Santa Claus \u2014 who feel that it is more fun talk about what Santa Claus will bring than what Daddy will buy you for Christmas and who speak of Santa Claus in a voice that tells no lie but instead conveys to children something about Christmas itself \u2014 can give children a sense of continuity as they discover the sense in which Santa is and is not \u201creal.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

With her great gift for nuance, Mead adds:<\/p>\n

Disillusionment about the existence of a mythical and wholly implausible Santa Claus has come to be a synonym for many kinds of disillusionment with what parents have told children about birth and death and sex and the glory of their ancestors. Instead, learning about Santa Claus can help give children a sense of the difference between a \u201cfact\u201d \u2014 something you can take a picture of or make a tape recording of, something all those present can agree exists \u2014 and poetic truth, in which man\u2019s feelings about the universe or his fellow men is expressed in a symbol.<\/em><\/p>\n

Recalling her own experience both as a child and as a parent, Mead offers an inclusive alternative to the narrow Santa Claus myth, inviting parents to use the commercial Western holiday as an opportunity to introduce kids to different folkloric traditions and value systems:<\/p>\n

One thing my parents did \u2014 and I did for my own child \u2014 was to tell stories about the different kinds of Santa Claus figures known in different countries. The story I especially loved was the Russian legend of the little grandmother, the babushka, at whose home the Wise Men stopped on their journey. They invited her to come with them, but she had no gift fit for the Christ child and she stayed behind to prepare it. Later she set out after the Wise Men but she never caught up with them, and so even today she wanders around the world, and each Christmas she stops to leave gifts for sleeping children.<\/em><\/p>\n

But Mead\u2019s most important, most poetic point affirms the idea that children stories shouldn\u2019t protect kids from the dark<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Children who have been told the truth about birth and death will know when they hear about Kris Kringle and Santa Claus and Saint Nicholas and the little babushka, that this is a truth of a different kind.<\/em><\/p>\n

Margaret Mead: Some Personal Views<\/em><\/strong><\/a> is, sadly, long out of print \u2014 but it\u2019s an immeasurable trove of Mead\u2019s wisdom well worth the used-book hunt. Complement it with Mead\u2019s beautiful love letters to her soulmate<\/a> and the story of how she discovered the meaning of life in a dream<\/a>.<\/p>\n

_____________________________<\/p>\n

Brain Pickings<\/em> is the brain child of Maria Popova, an interestingness hunter-gatherer and curious mind at large obsessed with combinatorial creativity who also writes for <\/em>Wired<\/em> UK and <\/em>The Atlantic<\/em>, among others, and is an MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow. She has gotten occasional help from a handful of guest contributors<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 brainpickings.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How to instill an appreciation of the difference between \u201cfact\u201d and \u201cpoetic truth,\u201d in kids and grownups alike. Belief in Santa Claus becomes a problem when parents simultaneously are telling their children a lie and insist on the literal belief in a man in a red suit. Children who have been told the truth about birth and death will know when they hear about Santa Claus that this is a truth of a different kind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-focus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51408\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}