’Children are wronged by such deceit’
White lies about Santa hurt kids, philosopher says
The beginning of summer, with its simple sunny pleasures, marks an annual low point in parents ceremonially lying to children.
But soon enough, fall will roll around, and their schemes will darken. They will start summoning a fear of spirits on Halloween, toying with kids’ credulity for supernatural claims. Then comes the great winter deception of Christmas, with its straight-faced lies about a benevolent intruder in the chimney. After that, an Easter Bunny must seem quite plausible in the twisted childhood worldview.
Parents claim many noble motives for these scams, but lying to children about Santa Claus is just as morally wrong as lying to them about being adopted or conceived via an egg or sperm donor, according to a new philosophical research paper.
“In a world of fake news, the need to be discerning about what is real — and what is not — is a critical skill,” writes Kira Tomsons, a philosopher at Douglas College near Vancouver.
“Even if children are never emotionally betrayed, psychologically scarred, or harmed in some way, it is still wrong to deceive them about their ontological realities,” Tomsons argues. “Children are wronged by such deceit, even if they are not harmed.”
Going as far as some parents do — showing documentaries that purport to prove Santa exists, tracking him with NORAD’s annual radar gimmick, telling children disbelievers are on the naughty list, or worst of all, using the “Elf on the Shelf ” metaphysical surveillance system — are more dangerous than frivolous.
“Philosophically, it went very well,” Tomsons said of the “robust” discussion her arguments engendered at the recent Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Regina. Anecdotally, she said younger scholars without children seemed most supportive of the view that lying about Santa is morally wrong.
People also chimed in about God, “lumping it in with religion,” but she contrasts this to the Santa case, saying people who genuinely believe in God and pass that along to their children are not deceiving.
“It’s the knowing deceit. That’s where the lacking respect for the (child as a) moral subject comes in,” she said in an interview.
The danger lies in what happens when it all comes crashing down and the child discovers or realizes they have been duped.
Tomsons argues Santa is not just a quirky false belief that can be indulged in for fun once a year. Santa is an “ontological lie” that serves as the basis of so many other beliefs that it becomes an entire world view, with lasting effects on how children regard the world, their place in it, and how to live their own moral and social lives.
“It is not merely the presence of Santa as an entity in the world that is now given as a reality, but an entire set of beliefs about how the world works and also moral values; for example, that naughty children do not receive presents,” she writes.
One consequence is broken trust. Another is the burden on the child to “reposition themselves with respect to their foundational beliefs.” Deliberately allowing children to form false foundational understandings is a moral wrong, she argues, even if they get presents out of the deal.
She contrasts these deep deceptions to “white lies,” or untruths told to children with purely consequentialist justifications, such as saying “No, I can’t buy ice cream, I have no money,” when one is not actually flat broke, but simply wants to get home without a “fuss.” These might be morally problematic, but they do not threaten a child’s core world view, Tomsons argues.
In laying out this controversial case, Tomsons draws parallels with another sort of lie often told to children for ostensibly noble reasons, but which likewise builds up a false worldview. That is the case of sperm or egg donation, or adoption.
For parents, these origin stories carry risk of stigma. Parents sometimes fear that knowledge of a child’s genetic origins could be upsetting, so they lie in service of the child’s happiness, just as they do about Santa.
It is a tempting strategy, lying to get along. There can be stigma in being “that parent” whose kid does not do Christmas and insists on spoiling it for the others, just as there can be for nongenetic parents. But as Tomsons argues, parents who lie often wrongly assume all the consequences will be beneficial, and they ignore other reasons why they might be wrong.
Tomsons’ work is part of a series of philosophical investigations into gay and lesbian parents, for whom dishonesty about the origin stories of children cannot possibly last forever. As she puts it, disclosure is not optional. Eventually the child will ask how two men or two women conceived a child, in a way that the child of heterosexual parents might never think to.
In this, she draws a parallel with the Santa case. The Santa story is also “selfdestructive.” It cannot last. Neither social stigma nor the risk of missing out on traditional holiday fairy tales lessens the “moral importance of disclosure,” she argues.