How to deal with Santa Claus?

Honestly, for the vast majority of children I don't think it matters what you tell them. Personally I find it interesting to lie and see what age they figure it out at. I regularly lie, use sarcasm, tease, etc... to children as a way of messing with them, as one might to a gullible friend. It's a game, and I think young children benefit from being exposed to a rich behavioral repertoire.

However, I can imagine a certain sort of child who takes it a little too seriously - so you basically have to use discretion. Never, ever tell a real lie to a child, where something real is at stake, if you want them to trust you. If you think the kid is putting real importance to the idea of santa such that they'd actually be upset when they figured it out, don't lie to them. Don't take the game too far.

I guess it helps if the child knows that you are in the habit of tricking them into believing ridiculous things and playing mind games, as is often the case for kids who I associate with. That doesn't mean that the children know it's a game - I often say things that are true but sound ridiculous to avoid that situation. It's that they are uncertain about whether I'm telling the truth or that I'm messing with them, and that uncertainty is in itself a game.

It start with little lies like "I ate your toy...oh wait, it's coming out of my ear" and gradually escalates to more plausible things like "there's a rabbit leaving chocolate eggs everywhere". You're aiming for a situation such that they're comfortable with it and when they figure it out, they feel like "Gaah you got me" rather than hurt. And then they keep playing along.

The set of all statements does not neatly partition into Honest Statements of Fact Meant to Strengthen You Through Knowledge and Dishonest Lies Meant to Deceive and Weaken You.

People will tell you all sorts of things. Some of those things are trying to describe the real world, like a map or a science book does. Some of those things are stories. Some of them are songs or poetry. Some of them are analogies or metaphors.

And yes, sometimes people do tell lies so they can trick you, weaken you, or push you around. Figuring out whether that is going on is a really hard problem that a lot of adults can't solve consistently. People really do get tricked by con-artists, fake charities, medical quacks, and other liars. And that's not because the people who get tricked are stupid; it's because some people are really good at lying.

But stories, folktales, and myths aren't the same as malicious lies. They're not literally true, but that doesn't mean they're evil. We have to think about each particular story to tell whether we like what it says or not.

We know that characters in stories aren't real in the sense that books and houses are real. But if someone asks you whether Dorothy Gale is from Kansas or from Washington, you'd say she's from Kansas. If someone asks you if Anansi is smart or stupid, you would say Anansi is smart. If someone asks you if Harry Potter is a wizard or a muggle, you'd say he's a wizard. Even though you know that Dorothy is not a real girl, and that Anansi is not a real spider, and neither Harry Potter nor wizards are really real.

There are a lot of stories that try to teach you a lesson. Speaking of spiders, remember Peter Parker? "With great power comes great responsibility." That's a lesson that's still worth learning, even though Spider-Man is just pretend.

But there are other stories with lessons that aren't so great. There are stories that teach that everyone is alone and that nobody cares about anyone else. That's just not true. There are stories that teach that you should only care about people who agree with you on everything, and that everyone else is a horrible person who deserves to be tortured. That's a dumb idea that causes a lot of hurt in the world.

So when we look at a story, like the Santa Claus story, we can ask, "What good does this story do?" Does it tell us how people want to be kind and give each other things? Does it mess people up, by telling them that they have to accept gifts they don't want? Does it make people scared and guilty, or happily surprised?

Or ... a story might be good for one person and bad for another person. Or it might depend on how you tell it.

Unless you're using the myth to manipulate behavior ("better be good or Santa won't bring you any presents!"), the stakes are very low.

Somewhat seriously: Isn't the Santa myth a great opportunity for a child to learn that they will be misled by authority figures for ambiguous cultural reasons?

First, don't sweat the small stuff, and this issue is definitely the small stuff., Second, you seem to be doing OK by putting Santa on the same level as talking animals, TV cartoons and other make-believe characters. There is no need to emphasize that Santa is not real, as long as you treat him the same way as Bugs Bunny and the Little Mermaid. Eventually she'll figure out what's real and what is less so, as most people do. If it so happens that she figures out that Santa Claus is not real and informs her peers instead of the other way around, that's perfectly OK. Just don't push the issue.

Just tell her the truth. Don't lie to children.

Children have deepseated evolved instincts to trust what adults tell them. One owes it to them to return that instinct with the truth.

The only real question should be then whether you ask her not to tell other kids.

Another important question if you choose to tell the truth, is what do you do about other adults that lie to your own kids.

Would it be reasonable to request other adults not to lie to your children?

Would it be reasonable to ask lying adults to correct themselves or even apologize to your children?

A friend of mine was raised with the knowledge of Santa Claus being a part of what goes along with Christmas for lots of people, but not actually real. Apparently they met one of the dressed up Santa's around town as a three year old and...

Santa: (stereotypical santa greeting)

Friend: I was a rabbit for Holloween.

Santa: Tough customer, eh?

The relevant post on Marginal Revolution.

Two quotes in particular. One is by Will Wilkinson:

Well, we’re atheists. I don’t intend to proselytize atheism to my kid, because I’m not interested in getting him to believe anything in particular. What I’m interested in is teaching him how to reason in a way that maximizes his chances of hitting on the truth. Now, one of the most interesting truths about the empirical world is that there are all these powerful systems of myth that are kept afloat by a sort of mass conspiracy, and humans seem disposed to pick one from the ambient culture and take it very seriously. But it can be hard to get your head around the way it all works unless you participate in it. Santa is a perfect and relatively harmless way to introduce your child the socio-psychology of a collective delusion about the supernatural. The disillusionment that comes from the exposure to the truth about Santa breeds a general skepticism about similarly ill-founded popular beliefs in physics-defying creatures.

and the other is by Tyler Cowen:

I say why not leave them guessing, hovering in a state of Bayesian Santa doubt? My parents never told me Santa “was real,” but they didn’t tell me he “wasn’t real” either, so I slid rather gracefully into my Santa non-belief. I don’t recall ever feeling disillusioned by a sense of loss and in fact those presents kept on coming. I even had a clearer sense of the appropriate channel for making gift requests, what’s not to like about that?

Malcolm told me, that he likes best the strategy, when you say that Santa Claus is a game that everyone plays. People pretend that there's a big guy in a suit who does the thing, and if you ever let down the pretense to your friends, you lose the game.

I'm guessing there are lots of games like that going on. It's the essence of social organization.

It seems just too implausible that everyone in an ideological tribe believes the crazy things they profess, and there is always evidence of less public discussions endorsing the Noble Lies.

Smile and say "You figure it out" :-)

You can tell your kid there is no such thing as Santa Clause.

You can tell your kid you will never lie to them. Everything you tell them is the truth.

But what if you're wrong? What if you aren't the perfect embodiement of knowledge?

At what point do you teach a kid to think, instead of just trusting their teachers?

You could raise your kids entirely in atheism and forget about Christmas altogether.

Believing in Santa was not acceptable to my Christian fundamentalist parents. However, they also had the excuse of being immigrants, so they implied (and perhaps it's even true) that believing in Santa was not common in their culture: "The children in this country think that Santa is real. I don't know why their parents want them to believe in fairytales!" I was never told to hide the truth from other kids, and I don't recall if the subject ever came up in my interactions with other kids. We still had Christmas gifts, a tree, sang Christmas songs, and even took pictures sitting on Santa's lap at the mall. I just understood that it was all for the sake of participating in fun customs.

I think the main result of this was to teach me to feel comfortable with being different. But there were lots of other things in my upbringing as well that had this same effect.

I prescribe Invader Zim.

Relevant article by EY, and discussion in comments

Just tell your children that rationalists figured out that the presents get under the tree through random chance.

Santa is merely real. His true name is Eliezer

I am an Atheist, but people who do not let their kids believe in Santa Claus are advanced retards. I doubt these people have the legitimate ability in other areas to make their kids not believe other overtly false things, but are actually much worse.