Adults who encourage children to believe in Santa Claus are helping to foster their moral development, a British child psychiatrist said in a study published on Wednesday.
In the December issue of the Psychiatric Bulletin, psychiatrist Lynda Breen wrote that the belief that Father Christmas ”knows if you’ve been bad or good” helps teach children the difference between right and wrong.
The psychiatrist from Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in the northern English city of Liverpool decided to ”do some research into the social benefits for children of believing in Father Christmas” after seeing her young nephews grow up.
”Teaching children about Santa is a useful ace up a parent’s sleeve as it encourages their moral development as they believe he knows which children are good or bad,” she wrote.
”Most of the evidence suggests that children are actually quite positive when they find out the truth and it is actually parents who mourn the loss,” she wrote.
”I suspect my nephews know he doesn’t exist but they are pretending he does because of all the associated benefits, such as presents, which go with it,” she added.
Writing in the same publication, Doctor Mark Salter, a consultant psychiatrist from Homerton Hospital in London, said the significance of myths and magic, such as the legend of Father Christmas, are being eroded by a society which is obsessed with rationality.
”The imagination which created Father Christmas is being destroyed by a society which holds rationality above anything else,” he added.
”Whenever anything goes wrong we hold an inquiry into it. We no longer seem to accept that bad things may happen in our lives,” Salter said.
”If Santa died, we would hold a serious incident inquiry and if we had any sense we should ask the Tooth Fairy to chair it,” Salter added. – Sapa-AFP