NEWS: British Teachers Systematically Kill Off Santa

CULTURE: British Teachers Systematically Kill Off Santa

The UK has been hit with a rash of teachers telling 9 and 10 year-olds that Santa doesn't exist. When you steal Christmas from the children you're stealing Christmas from all of us.

Last month, teacher Jane Woodley viciously told the children of Calcot Junior School that Father Christmas wasn't really some jolly old fat philanthropist who sets up shop up north somewhere. She told them while she was educating them on the holiday practices of other religions such as the Muslim holiday of Eid. Woodley a teacher of 28 years should know better than to think a 9 year old might have figure it out by then.

Now, as children adjust to a world without love and magic, they will also be forced to adjust to a new curriculum, one where a teacher tells them no secrets about the world and confusion and ignorance can continue unabated because it's so cute.

Calcot was only the first in a string of such incidents. Boldmere Junior School is also wheeling from 9 and 10 year-olds finding out about stuff they're more than old enough to know about already. This time, Boldmere didn't take the death of Christmas lying down with some nancy curriculum changes, they fired the goblin posing as a teacher.

Christmas is one thing but elves and fairies too? The teacher was stopped so the children could make it to adolescence before finding out the truth about unicorns and calmly assured the little ones that the Lord of the Rings was based on a true story.

Ladysmith Junior School was the most recent victim of this casual heartlessness. This case was the most horrifying, putting the 9 and 10 year-olds to work asking them to reply to Santa letters written by younger kids – I always wondered why Santa's handwriting sucked. The irony must have tasted sweet for the teacher before parents made the school apologise.

I think we should preempt this situation. We need to agree on an age to tell our children when Santa was really just a ploy to make them act nice rather than like total "brats." Plus, my Dad said the look on my face was priceless. I know that when the day comes to tell my kids, I'm gonna have a camera ready. I'll keep it hidden, candid is always better.

Wait... he....

oh...

oh god....

*sobs*

PS - Honestly though, I think I figured it out when I was four or five, and it did not faze me one bit. I think it's only when you've been lied to until you're fucking 10 years old that you get really upset.

I refuse to believe that 10 year-olds anywhere believe in Santa or the Tooth Fairy.

It's much more humane to tell kids that Father Christmas did once exist, but that he died of asphyxiation whilst trying to climb down a smoking chimney. Worked for all those bloody carollers who were always knocking around here. I wonder whatever happened to those kids?

If christmas actually stood for anything anymore, and hadn't been utterly bastardised by having to remain PC so as not to offend people to whom the event doesn't even concern anyway, then i'd say it was worth you typing all the inane drivvel above.

Unfortunately, these days christmas is little more than a capitalist instrument by which the poor are kept poor by being encouraged to believe they need to waste all their money and/or get in debt to celebrate a poxy 24hrs one cold december.

You think they're killing the magic of christmas but is there anything left worth killing?

(humbug)

I can't remember how old I was when I figured it out. My parents waited until I was 13 before taking the actual step of telling me. By then of course I'd pretty much figured it out long since. A cousin of mine believed until at least 10 or maybe even 11, which worried me. What's normal, anyway? 7 or 8?

Are you always this much fun? You must be a joy at the proverbial office christmas party. Anyway no one to the left of Bill O'Rielly really believes there's some kind of a PC War on Xmas. Seriously, when's the last time you were told it was wrong to wish someone a Merry Xmas? It's bullshit. And don't the poor have enough feewill and self-control to decide for theselves what they can afford?

One of my better friends believed in Santa until he was about 14.

I'm going to side with, it hurts kids more to have their parents lie to them for ten years. I found out from my cousins when I was 3. My parents were upset, but I think I'm probably better adjusted for having learned.

wait...are you saying there IS no Santa?

Look there are millions of adults who believe in a benevolent bearded old guy who uses magic to provide gifts for all the good people. I think their called Christians, Muslims and Jews. The Buddist just have the fat guy with no beard.

Santa is cool. Believing in Santa is cool. Kids are not commerical and give fuck all about capitalism, communism, or any other isms for that matter. Santa isn't about or for adults or stores or commerce. Its about kids. Kids for the most part are completely innocent in that regard, and there is nothing wrong with letting them stay that way for as long as they can.

Santa offers children a chance for a little bit of magic in a time when people are on some kind of war path against anything and everything not completely PC.

It's not lying to your kids, its telling them a fantastic story and allowing them the opportunity to live in that story for a while.

As a icon Santa himself couldn't be more harmless. He doesn't carry a cross or other overt religious symbol (most people have no clue he wears red because the real saint nick was a cardinal), and while he is a symbol of Christmas, Santa is almost so far removed from anything having to do with Christ that you wonder whose holiday it is.

He gives out toys, he doesn't sell them or anything else. He says be good. That's it. And apart from the freaks from PETA who are spreading rumors about him using drugs to get the reindeer to fly and the American Heart Association, I can;t imagine what anyone would have against the guy.

If you aren't down with Santa thats fine. Your loss. But anyone who actively kills the myth for kids, whatever age they are, is someone who is just an asshole and shouldn't be the least bit surprised when some angry parent comes to deliver a little personal christmas cheer.

~S

Santa is dead. He remains dead, and we killed him!

pah - the way things are in engerland some of those 9year olds will have kids of their own in 2 or 3 years - they'll find out the truth about St Nick then.

I dunno, truth and lies are complicated concepts, certaily moreso than you're making out. Teaching and encouraging children to believe in abstract concepts seems important to me, and instilling in them the idea that there may be more to the world than the mundane seems fundamentally important. In that sense I think ideas like "Santa Claus" are important to the mental maturity of a kid. At the same time something like Santa, which at some point most children grow to believe isn't real, may not be the best tool for this.

I think a better answer to a kid who asks "is Santa real?" would be "I don't know." It's the truth in the most strict sense of the word know, and it leaves room for a more interesting world than the one we live in. I guess I might have a different perspective than a lot of people around here though, I don't think ideas like religion or myth have to be either/or propositions. They have their own reality in the way they shape our minds.

All that said I don't see why people are making such a big deal of teachers telling kids these sorts of things; asking kids to think critically about what they believe in seems worthwhile to me.

i'm not sure if thats the funniest or saddest thing i've read in a while

Yeah, man, I didn't find out about Santa until I was six or seven. And now I'm twenty-four, live with my mother, and it's taking me over seven years to get my undergrad.

We still make fun of him once in a while, around christmas time; I think funny describes it better.

Psh, my parents lied to me or encouraged me to believe my own fantasies all the time. That they might send me back to the gypsies where they got me. That my hair would get curly if I ate the crusts of my sandwiches. That I had to duck as we were driving past the Ladue science station because that's where the sea monster lived. That when my dad was wearing the Creature from the Black Lagoon mask, he was actually a monter out to get me. It's childhood mythology and I think it's to be encouraged.

Telling a fantastic story and pretending it's true is lying.

Yes, the magic of getting free shit. It's not like Santa Claus teaches children important lessons or values. He's an obese man who gives toys. What's important about that? If kids want some fantasy, they can read a book, or make something up themselves.

I agree. I believed in Santa for a while, like most do, and then at some point - I'm not sure when - that belief simply faded away. Believing didn't harm me, and the end of that belief didn't traumatize me, either.

I expect it will be the same for my children. My five year old told me this year that he doesn't think Santa is real, and yet there's still an open window of possibility in his mind. My oldest son, at seven, believes much the same. Both of them know, to a point, that Santa is mom and dad, but the fantasy still lingers. They disbelieve, with 75% certainty.

And it isn't just Santa. My five year old still believes, vaguely, that Superman really exists, though he asks me when I'll be the one writing his comic books; he knows that the kid in the Mickey Mouse costume isn't really Mickey, but he still reacts as though he were; and he knows there are no monsters, but he still speaks of them as though they lurked just beyond the corners of the house, and he quite happily terrifies himself imagining their hideous, hungry intentions.

Right now, they still half-believe, and I let them. Soon enough, they'll shed that layer of childhood skin, and I'll let them do that to, without trying to make them believe in what they no longer wish to be true. If that makes me a liar, then I'm comfortable being one.

I thought he only gave toys to good kids; am I mixing him up with some other figure?

That whole post makes me sad.

I was under the misapprehension that the myth of St. Nicholas was used to encourage good behaviour in children, what with tales of bad children getting nothing but a lump of coal and the well used phrase 'Father Christmas doesn't come to naughty children'. I know that you may like to call that bribery, and yes, in a world as driven by consumerism as it is today, it's not about rewarding good behaviour in children anymore. But are you saying that we should ditch that story because people have allowed it to get distorted?

As for your second point about not concealing the truth from children, does this mean that you would advocate the abolition of all fiction stories for children? I know it's taking a point to the extreme, but for the sake of not lying to people, shouldn't all fictional works be outlawed?

And your comment about the word magic making you want to vomit makes me saddest of all. Although an ardent realist myself, I like to foster the imaginations of children, the world is doing it's damnedest to try and get children to grow up faster and faster, to try and beat any sense of wonder out of them, to turn them as cynical as we all (evidently) are. But at the end of the day, they're children! Permit them the frivolities of the young, let their imaginations run wild with magic and enchantment. Because in a few short years the wonder in their eyes will be beaten out by the harsh realities of the world.

I know I''m rambling a bit, but the stories of Jolly old St. Nicholas were originally used in the same way as most tales to children, to try and encourage them to understand that there are consequences to how they act, like the tale of the Scissor man for instance. I personally see no need to rip away what little innocence a child has left because it's merely a tale.