Go Ahead, Let Santa be the Heavy

 
Email To Friend
 

Last year, a bearded portly guy came to town and made me an attractive offer. He’d get my kids to behave if I built him up to be some kind of present-giving hero. Never mind that he employed unpaid elves and a team of mutant flying reindeer, what bothered me were the terms of his bargain: If the kids behaved, then he’d dole out presents. If they didn’t, well then...you don’t want to know.

Santa

Was this really ethical? How about the diminutive spies he sent out, code name, Elf on the Shelf, who watched, big brother like, and filed nightly reports on household behavior? Was this all in the spirit of Christmas, or just a way to bribe and threaten my kids?

Several years ago, I sincerely wanted to know. I wrote to the British philosopher and author, Alain de Botton, and asked him about the use of Santa Claus to encourage good behavior. He is a father himself, and wrote back to say:

My feeling is that using Santa is utterly fine and ethical.

The reason is that any parent has such a hard time disciplining children that the self-discipline that comes from Santa is actually of the mildest, gentlest sort and preferable to the more hard-headed alternatives (naughty step etc.).

Also, children are not capable of ethical choice right now, so the claims of Santa are not an alternative to ethical thinking; they are a pre-ethical way of maintaining order and a modicum of calm.

I don't think that kids do take away from the Santa= present equation the idea that being good gets a material reward (as many psychologists argue). They take away the broader underlying point, which is that being good leads to good things.

The trick in the teens is then to suggest that good things encompasses far more than material advantages. But that's definitely for a later stage.

If you can believe it, I have even had to resort to the idea of a friendly sleep ghost in order to lure my four year old not to get up at 3am every morning.

With very good wishes,

Alain
  

Oh, Alain, your words now, as did your books The Consolations of Philosophy, and How Proust Can Change Your Life have come at the right time. Soon, I might need to conjure up my own friendly sleep ghost, but in the meantime, for a short while still, I do have Santa. 

May he do his best. 

I firmly believe in Santa.