Most Grown Ups Still Believe in Santa
And they are ruining Christmas for the rest of us.
As Christmas approaches, every grocery store clerk, extended family member, and jolly cashier we encounter asks my toddler, “Are you excited for Santa to come?”
My husband and I exchange knowing smiles. Our son, who is turning three in the spring, knows who the man in the red suit with the long white beard is, but he has no illusions that this mystical man is going to come down his chimney and bring him presents…if he’s on the ‘nice’ list.
Our son does not believe in Santa Claus in the way that most children do.
What kind of treacherous parents would not tell their children that Jolly Old Saint Nick exists, lives in the North Pole, and squeezes down the chimney of every household in the world on one night of the year to deliver free stuff to all obedient kids?
Even before our son was born, when I was very pregnant during our first Christmas as a family, my husband and I talked about Santa. “I don’t really feel comfortable lying to our son about him.” I said. “It’s like the first big lie — and once you tell that lie, when your children figure out that you lied to them, how will they be able to trust you? How will they be able to trust their own intuition?”
My intuitions over the Santa Claus situation were further validated when my family and I were watching the classic ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ movie together recently. Charlie Brown’s little sister asks him to write down her Christmas list for Santa, and she says:
“Dear Santa Claus,
I have been extra good this year, so I have a long list of presents that I want…
All I want is what I have coming to me, all I want is my fair share.”
Good grief!
My suspicion, that the big Santa lie is less benign than the average person thinks, might have something to it.
Let me explain.
After the first big lie, come many little lies, and many other big lies.
There are many lies that we are told growing up. You have to share, otherwise you’re not nice. If you’re not nice, you get coal in your stocking. You have to listen, or else. Wait to have children, or don’t have children at all, because travel and career are more important. You have to go to school, go to university, get a job, and then you’ll be set for life. Doctors, followers of The Science™, have ultimate authority over your body. Your psychological problems are mostly pre-determined, and a pill can help fix you. Live in the moment and don’t think about tomorrow. If you don't have enough, don’t worry, the government will save you.
We have seen the results of all these lies as it begins to show its fruits in our society. People are lonely, aimless, hopeless, hedonistic, nihilistic, single, childless, broke, and morally without a compass. They have psychological problems which are glorified as ‘living their truth’. They do not seek meaning as an answer to their unhappiness. Their envy, resentment and entitlement has caused them to blame the success of others for their failures.
In a recent discussion with
, we talked about how living by our grievances is the kind of mindset that primes us to demand collectivist solutions. They want their fair share. People who feel like they don’t have their hands on the wheel of their own life want someone else to make the hard decisions for them. With freedom comes responsibility, and so the reverse is also true: if you don’t want the responsibility, you hand over your freedom to someone, or something, else.For many, freedom is not among the highest goods. They prefer being taken care of, being told what to think, and what to do; living like an infantilized adult. A subject who expects an easy life with handouts is the yin to the nanny state’s yang. Adult children believe they are entitled to a magical fat man in a suit shoving gifts down their chimney while they sleep. They still believe in Santa Claus, except this one is here to redistribute the Christmas presents bought by hard working parents in other households, sometimes in other countries. There are no slave-labour elves making toys out of the goodness of their hearts.
The gifts they expect are the fruits of someone else’s labour.
Collectivist mass movements like Marxism, National-Socialism, Communism, Wokeism, and Islamism necessitate the consent and participation of a critical mass. For example, big government guys like Trump could never have initiated lockdowns, printed trillions of dollars that created years of high inflation and economic malaise, and launched the greatest and most reckless mass medical experiment in human history, if he didn’t have a critical mass begging for this insanity. But he, and the administrative state behind him, got away with it because enough people joined the hysteria. They wanted the lockdowns, the candy of stimulus packages— to sit and work from home, or to take incommensurate ‘long covid’ sick days—, but they don’t connect the dots with the resulting inflation, and persistent erosion of freedom.
And yet many people still support him, and see him as some kind of saviour. Many people like big government, even while claiming to like freedom. They have become accustomed to it.
While most Americans are still debating which brand of Santa Claus they’d like as a their collective saviour, the Argentinians, or at least a critical mass of Argentinians, finally turned down the collectivist delusion and chose sanity.
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A very rare breed of Argentinian Grinch has stolen Christmas from all the collectivistas down in Whoville. He hasn’t stolen their Christmas trees, or their stockings, or their Christmas ham.
He simply told them that Santa Claus does not exist.
Argentina’s new libertarian President Javier Milei has promised to take a “chainsaw” to overbearing laws & regulations that stifle Argentinian creativity, to make drastic reforms, to shrink the size of government bureaucracy, and to give a shock treatment to the bloated state using Austrian economic principles.
This shock therapy, as Milei calls it, will undoubtedly be painful for some in the short term. This is especially true for the entitled unproductive caste who have been addicted to cushy handouts and other administrative state perks like a plethora of non-jobs.
Throughout the decades Argentinians have been both the victims and the perpetrators of their own demise. But how much more pain can a country suffering from over 160% inflation really bear? The free market principles that Milei’s government is implementing will bring Argentina enormous prosperity and economic opportunity. Not for the state— but for the people.
"The problem is not the chef but the recipe – the ideas which failed in Argentina and all over the planet where they were tried have been an economic, social and cultural failure and cost the lives of millions of people,” said Milei.
“That doctrine that they call leftism, Communism, fascism or socialism, and that we call collectivism, is a way of thinking which dilutes the individual in favour of the power of the State. It is based on the premise that the reason of the State is more important than the individual, that the individual must submit to the State and that, therefore, citizens owe obeisance to their representatives: the political caste," he argued.” - Buenos Aires Times
This is the kind of rhetoric that got Milei elected as president. Before embarking in a collectivist experiment that lasted the better part of the last century, Argentina was a wealthy, flourishing society. But, as it always inevitably does wherever a society succumbs to the intoxicating allure of collectivism, their utopia failed spectacularly. Milei has been fulfilling his promises, taking swift actions to undo the damage. As one would expect, people who have been used to candy canes and unsustainable government spending, led by unions and government “workers”, have taken to the streets to protest.
They call him an economic grinch.
“To end inflation, a chronic evil in Argentina, Milei has proposed drastic public spending cuts equivalent to five percent of gross domestic product. On Wednesday he announced a multiple decree on a gigantic scale to repeal or amend over 300 laws and norms, among them rental and labour legislation, provoking a cacerolazo saucepan-bashing in several Buenos Aires neighbourhoods and a spontaneous demonstration in front of Congress lasting until 4am.” - Buenos Aires Times
So why are the people banging their pots and pans? Do they not want to be free from despotism, cronyism, extreme inflation and living by handouts? Do they not want a life beyond subsistence?
The thing is, the people out in the streets have bought the lie. They believe in Santa Claus. They want magical solutions. They would rather have coal in their stockings, a miserly gift from the state, than to accept the truth: socialist policies have ruined Argentinian’s Christmas, and every other day of the year, for decades.
Commenting on this Christmas in Argentina, one mother said:
"Before I purchased in a very well-known chain of toyshops but now I hunt in smaller neighbourhood stores to find better prices.”
The younger boy "believes in Santa Claus” and “wrote an immense letter." Even if she can only buy one present from that list, "he’ll still be happy," she says.
"Beforehand we bought more. Now only one each but fortunately I’m still privileged to be able to do so," she comments.
In the end, it turns out the Grinch isn’t so bad after all. Milei’s dismantling of the collectivist infrastructure will be painful for those who know nothing but the lie; that someone else will take care of them. These reforms, once the dust settles, will removes obstacles in the way of Argentinians to make money, start a business, seek employment, grow their wealth, be successful on their own terms, harvest the fruits of their efforts, and forge a better future for their children.
But this will come with the responsibility of making something for themselves, and of themselves. This will be a hard task for those who maintain a collectivist mindset of envy, victimhood, and grievances that they think will be resolved by the state.
A free and prosperous society is only possible when people are left to their own devices, and the government stays out of the way.
Our toddler might not believe in Santa Claus like the other kids, but I don’t think the truth hurts him. He’s sitting on the couch, rolling around his new Christmas hot wheels from his uncle. He knows they came from a real person, who works to get money to buy stuff like these cars. He already understands what work is. When he sees me working on my laptop, he knows I am working to make money, and he sets up his little keyboard to ‘work’ beside me. When he wants to buy more trucks, he asks me if he can have money or how to “buy” money. And when he’s older, he will learn that he has to make his own way, and not expect the government (or Santa) to give him what he wants. He won’t learn that being ‘nice’ entitles him to his ‘fair share’ of candy.
Santa might not exist, but there’s good news: you don’t really want him around anyway, and you’re much better off not believing in him.
And as it turns out, the Grinch didn’t really steal Christmas - he just told the truth.
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I was wondering where you were going with this and you didn't disappoint! Your son is a very lucky boy and you're teaching him well.
Brilliant way of connecting the lies we tell our children about gifts mysteriously showing up if we're "good" with governments taking from some and mysteriously depositing "gifts" to others. We'd go a long way toward dispelling myths if we simply taught people how money works. I have started by correcting anyone who says "government funded" by replacing that phrase with taxpayer funded. The government does not create wealth, it merely redistributes other people's wealth. But it's a great way to ensure dependency and lack of personal responsibility.
Indeed, we should reflect on the lies we teach. The two biggest lies parents (out of their own ignorance) teach their children by example:
1. Your feelings come from other people and circumstances.
2. Your heath depends on pills and shots.