It is perhaps the largest and best-sustained hoax in the world, a blockbuster of immersive theater that implicates almost every adult, media and institution. In any Western country, almost the entire society conspires to make children believe that, at some point around the winter solstice, a being with magical properties is going to visit them and leave them gifts, called Santa Claus, Three Wise Men. , Tió, Olentzero or Befana. In Catalonia, in many families, up to three of them act as gift givers. There are, however, those who prefer to stay out of all this setup and not tell their children stories about bearded men or logs that shit gifts.
Although there have always been families that dissident Christmas paraphernalia, for religious or ideological reasons (Jehovah’s Witnesses and followers of Evangelical Churches, for example), in recent years this practice is more related to ideas around respectful parenting. , telling the truth to children as a way to try to break down the barriers between minors and adults. “We always assume that our daughters are free and independent human beings. Since our first daughter was born, and we have two, we agreed with my husband to never lie to them,” explains Lucila Ferrero, a 42-year-old Argentine living in Valencia. “It seemed the most logical thing to us because later a lie can end in disappointment and we decided to tell them how they are. That the gifts were bought by the parents, but please do not repeat it at school,” she adds.
That doesn’t stop them from participating in secular Christmas traditions. Every Christmas Eve, one of the two parents (this year it’s Lucila’s turn) dresses up as Santa Claus and rings the house bell, and the whole family keeps up the pantomime. “We don’t feel like we killed their hope. They are looking forward to Christmas. Now they want to decorate, put up the tree…” Both she and her partner believe that this way girls enjoy this fantasy just as they would an animated movie, knowing that it is not real.
At Laura Camps’ house they have also preferred not to tell stories to the children: “We decorate a wooden tree with drawings and we collect a trunk from the forest that we feed and drink. We call her la tio, in feminine terms, and on the day she gives us gifts we do not hit her with the cane, because the blows with the cane are given by Brimo.”
“What we don’t do is explain to them that there are unknown men who infiltrate the house at night. We give each other gifts on the 25th, without saying that Santa Claus brought them, and on January 1st, which are New Year’s gifts. Eliminating everything would have been too complicated in such a Christmas society and we have chosen the non-human element, the tio, which does not infiltrate your home without your consent and to which you care and give affection,” confesses Laura Camps.
This year, his eldest daughter has already asked to participate by also giving gifts and for Camps that is important (“gifting is as pleasant as receiving”). For the children, she says, it has not been a problem: “They go to a working-class public school and there are many children from many other places in the world where holidays are not celebrated in this way. At school they also choose tio as a transversal and friendly element.”
It is not always an ideological question. Sometimes it is mixed with practicality. Joan Galera, 58, raised his son, who is now 33, alone in the nineties. The boy’s birthday was on January 2 and the father felt overwhelmed by “expectations of consumerism” that even then, he says, were They were getting out of control. “When he was quite little, I sat him down and explained to him that the Three Kings and Santa Claus and Uncle were beautiful stories that are explained to children but that I bought the gifts because I loved him very much.” He used to give him a gift – the Playmobil boat and a skateboard were successful – on December 21 or 22 so that he could have it all the holidays. And today no gifts are given for Christmas.
Bill DeFelice, an American who has lived in Barcelona for decades (and who prefers not to give his full name), also chose not to fool his son, who is now 25 years old. “I’m from an Italian-American family from New Jersey. When I was a child, we went to church and celebrated all the religious holidays. What happened is that as an adult I traveled a lot and I realized that you can celebrate in many ways. I’m not a Scrooge!,” he says, referring to Dickens’ famous anti-Christmas villain. “When Fausto was little, we never put ourselves in the situation of lying to him. We didn’t give gifts for Christmas or birthdays, we give each other gifts when he feels like it,” he clarifies. Fausto DeFelice himself remembers those different Christmases with affection. “It didn’t seem sad to me, we had our own traditions. If I had children I would surely do what my parents did, although I would have to consult with my partner.”
That doesn’t always happen like that. Often, adults who grew up outside of magical traditions turn it around when it is their turn to be parents and redouble their efforts to make their children believe in Christmas dreams. The journalist Clara de Cominges grew up always knowing who bought the gifts, because her father, also a journalist and writer Jorge de Cominges, who died this year, discovered the truth very late, at the age of eleven, he was traumatized and thought that when If I had children I would do it differently. “We all knew it and we did the comedy. I thought it was because I had been smart and had discovered it very early, but when I was in my thirties, in a conversation with my father, I found out that it had been deliberate. “I was very angry with him for having taken away our hope.” Now Clara is the mother of two little girls. “And I don’t forgive anything, full of enthusiasm, perhaps to compensate for what I had during my childhood.”
Something similar happened in the family of Olga Tamarit, a 45-year-old advertising copy. “I am the middle of three brothers. Our parents never told us that Santa Claus, the Three Kings or the Tooth Fairy existed. My mother felt deceived when she was little and she thought that when she grew up she would not do it with her children, and my father, who was a communist, thought it was very good. It was a strange feeling because we felt less innocent. We have sometimes reproached our parents, because when you are a child what you want is to be equal to everyone and we felt excluded. My brothers have children and they have followed the tradition in a traditional way with their children.”
The writer and editor Sabina Urraca does not have children but, if she did, she says, “she would go to waste with it.” “I am in favor of great fictions, so I would end up overloading the subject, driving them crazy with fantasies.” Her parents did not initially set out to keep her out of her beliefs, but since she found out very soon, at the age of five, because a friend of hers told her, they decided to tell her the truth.
“From then on, the magic was over. Some years I would get up to leave gifts for my parents trying not to look at the tree in case mine were there and I would see out of the corner of my eye that they weren’t there. Many times they gave them directly to my hand,” she recalls.
The same practical spirit reigned in the home of María Domínguez from Zaragoza. Her brother told him the truth about the matter when she was just three years old and he was eight. “My parents thought it was great. The first few years they gave me gifts like on Three Kings Day when I was about eight, they took me to buy them with them and we told the neighbors that they came to my house earlier because we were on the second floor. I never heard from Santa Claus and Ratoncito Pérez.”
María Domínguez, an accounting administrator by profession, assures that she has not had any side effects. “although I would have liked to believe in magic.” She now has two small children and is dedicated. “Full of magic. I make them Kings, Santa Claus, letters and whatever, although I admit that I don’t like to lie to them very much.”
Traumatic reactions can come from stealing the magic as well as from overdoing it. The veteran American public radio program This American Life aired a few years ago a very dark and true story about an American family in which the parents tried so hard to create a convincing narrative around Santa Claus, even paying an old man who appeared in the attic of the house saying that he had gotten lost on his way from the North Pole, that today his three adult children have needed therapeutic help to overcome traditions that generated more terror than excitement.
For child psychologist Margot Ferré, however, it is worth using the social pact to encourage magical thinking. “It is very important in evolutionary development between the ages of two and seven. “This allows us to give them concrete explanations of reality, because they have not yet developed abstract thinking, it helps them to have a vision of the world, to be more creative and to understand their emotions, based on fantasy.” Ferré believes that excluding minors from such a widespread tradition may not have negative consequences “but it is not the best, considering the benefits. “Magical thinking fosters illusion, which is a very valuable emotion.” Ferré also appreciates that something like this exists, designed in principle for the good of minors, in a very ‘adult-centric’ society.
Parenting coach and abuse prevention expert Sonia Dabalsa, on the other hand, has a less positive view of magical Christmas traditions. On her Instagram channel (@dabalsa) she usually warns parents, for example, not to insist that children take photos with Santa Claus or Three Wise Men, the kind that proliferate on these dates in shopping centers and neighborhood associations. .
And he is blunt about the coercive aspect that is sometimes given to these traditions, the classic “behave well or the Kings will not bring you anything.” “For me, what each family does is very respectable – he clarifies – but never through blackmail and manipulation. That is toxic and means that you may disappoint yourself later, thinking that they have been coercing you and emotionally blackmailing you. If you say that to a child, to start you have to define what it means to behave well or badly. Behaviors that are simply typical of children are often reported, such as getting up from the table or running down the street. And then an incorrect, utilitarian message is being given, which children then reproduce. They can tell their friends: either you let me have your doll or I won’t invite you to my birthday.” Ferré also agrees in this regard. “If the illusion is maintained, it must be made clear that the Three Kings or Santa Claus or Uncle always bring gifts, not conditional on behavior.”
Dabalsa finds some more recent trends especially problematic, such as the Christmas elf, who in the days before makes mischief in the house (“the elf can and I can’t?”) and can generate insecurity in children, for example. the feeling of feeling watched. He also denounces some products for sale, such as the Santa Cam, fake cameras that make children believe that Santa Claus spies on them at all hours. There are even some in the shape of a Christmas tree ball or to hang on the car, with the message: “I’m watching you.”
