Should Parents encourage the existence of mythological creatures: Santa Claus the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny?

A teacher in New Jersey was slammed by outraged parents for telling children as young as six that Santa "wasn’t real". The female substitute teacher allegedly trashed the hopes and dreams of her innocent charges by dismissing the idea of Santa Claus and rubbishing other holiday traditions. The unnamed educator unleashed her tirade of nastiness on students at Cedar Hill School in Montville, New Jersey, last Christmas.

Angry parents took to Facebook to lambast the teacher for her nasty act, with one outraged mother saying the teacher didn’t stop at trashing just Santa. Mum Lisa Simek raged: “She told them reindeer can’t fly and elves are not real-elf on the shelf is just a pretend doll that your parents move around.

“She did not even stop there.“ The tooth fairy is not real because mom or dad just sneak into your room in the middle of the night and put money under your pillow, the same goes for the Easter bunny.

“She told them magic does not exist - there is no such thing as magic anything.”

Ms Simek went on to say that her daughter and the other 22 children in her class all saw their festive spirits crushed by the teacher’s thoughtless actions.

According to you, lying to kids about the Santa is correct?

In Favour

Yes, most of the young kids live in a utopian world where magic is real. They are influenced by what they see and hear. They get very excited about the characters in their life that have special meaning for them. Those characters include superheroes, monsters, animals and even Santa. 

a) Every culture has a fairy tale or a myth that belongs to its historical identity. Santa, for many families, is a jolly man with helpers who brings presents to children who are good. Expert of Psychiatry says "If the myths are good and talk about sharing and helping your neighbour, then that's really nice." 

b) For many families, the excitement of leaving cookies for Santa, watching at the window for his sleigh at night, waking up early to open presents and sharing all that goes into believing in Santa Claus is special and unique to their given family. That tradition is what defines them and what makes them different. Blogger of morningsidemom.com, Caroline Jorgensen, a mother of two, introduced Santa to her sons because it was natural to do so, even if it felt wrong at times.

c) There are books about environmentally conscious Santas and about animals, even dinosaurs that dress as Santa. Many parents stick to their traditional "The Night Before Christmas", which comes now in many variations. There is no right or wrong way to tell the Santa story. It totally depends on the child which one to choose. Whatever book you choose, the point is to encourage your child to dream. 

Marisa Conner, from Baltimore County Public Libraries, says As an educator and as a person, I find that fantasy books do engage the imagination. Children learn at some point what is make-believe and not. That's fun of life. It makes us different personalities." 

When is the correct time to reveal the truth?

? When the child starts guessing the truth on his/her own or by someone else. 

Ask What you think? Subtly joke like you know we're too cheap to buy you presents! So by the end kids will know that there's no Santa but they will give signal whether they want to hear it from parents or not.

What's important is carrying on the Christmas spirit. If there are two kids, Tell the elder one before Christmas though signals and give him/her the responsibility for stuffing stockings and being Santa's helper." Let the elder one play Santa to the younger one. This will help the older one to find more mature ways to express the Christmas spirit and a part of him/her will always believe in Santa.

And if you are going to ask me about the younger one?? 

I have a plan as I was also a victim of it. Before revealing, develop habits in kids to become Santa for others. Like take them to the daycare centre and let them donate toys to homeless kids. Even if the younger one got to know, he/she will feel good and will be thankful to parents for being Santa in his/her life.

In Against

No, parents often feel the pain of guilt when they lie to their children about Santa Claus. No ethical book has any record telling if you got tricked, trick others and in this case, it's your children. Where you don't want them to get hurt at any stake. Here you by yourself become that exploiter. 

a) It's an unjustified lie. Telling lie to make your children creative or imaginative is not a justified reason. Imagination involves pretending, and to pretend that something exists, one has to believe that thing doesn't exist. Tricking a child into literally believing that Santa exists doesn't encourage imagination, it actually stifles it. If you really want to encourage imagination in your children, tell them that Santa doesn't exist, but that you are going to pretend as he does anyway on Christmas morning. 

b) It risks damaging your parental trustworthiness. Generally, kids get to know the real story at the age of 8. For them, it becomes a lie from their birth. So, this makes them judge everything they see or hear. They even argue with parents in the upcoming adolescence stating the Santa lie. They start ignoring or doubting the words their parents say and even try to confirm it with friends, neighbours, relatives, etc. This gap between parents and their children increases with age. So it's better to end this gap by not telling the lie. 

c) It encourages ill-motivated behaviour. Through this incident, they could learn that it's fine to trick for fun. Remembering the day they looked like a fool in front of their parents or anyone can become their worst nightmare. This can result in hatred to other people in society as well. Maybe at a later stage, these traits might hamper the future of the child due to some ill-activities. 

Don't you think it's more of a tradition and breaking such ritual can be hard on people?

Yes, it can be hard for people, breaking such a historical tradition. But again Children comes first. In the constitution, we have amendments. If we find a glitch in any law, we improvise it. Indeed, it is not known that children's cognitive development is far more complex and starts much sooner than that was previously thought. Thus, exposure to reading and arithmetic happens much earlier today than it did in the past because we now know that waiting until a child is five or six to start teaching him/her these skills is a bad idea. Similarly, it is probable that a child's deeper, psychological and phenomenological development starts very early, too. Hence, exposing children to systematized, delusional ideas until they are "old enough" might influence their psychological development in ways that are, as yet, unknown but possibly bad. So, just as we now do with other cognitive lessons, perhaps it might be better to introduce kids to psychological realities of life (in an age-appropriate way, of course) as early as possible, too.

After going through both aspects, What's your view?