Strange question about Santa Claus

[Petie1104]

This is an honest question....

Today I was watching Fred Claus (or something like that, Vince Vaughn was in it).  It got me thinking.  Those of you who celebrate christmas and do the Santa thing, I have a question...

How do you handle the "naughty/nice" concept with your children.  It just hit me as so wrong that Santa was saying that the children were naughty or nice.  I don't know why, just the judgement of the child was there, it wasn't the behavior being judged but the child himself being a "naughty" child.  So I am curious as to if that comes up in the whole santa thing in gd/ap homes, or do you avoid that aspect of Santa?

By the way, I love how the show handled it when Fred marked all the kids as nice and told Santa that there are no naughty children.  LOVED THAT!!  But that is what caused me to wonder how it is handled by parents.

[Storm Bride]

We never did that in my house when I was growing up, and we don't do it now. I see no value in it, and never have. We simply don't discuss it. If it comes up from somewhere else (eg. Fred Claus, or someone irl talking to the kids), I ask them what they think, and tell them that I don't believe Santa would ever not give a child a gift, simply because their behaviour wasn't perfect. So far, they agree with me. DD1 did think, for a while, that the "Naughty List" and "Nice List" really existed, but she's over that now. (And, in her world, the Naughty List was mostly a place to put Daddy, to let him know that she didn't like his jokes.)

[zebra15]

I think the whole 'naughty/nice' concept is inter-woven into the santa story, being that you should always be nice, fair, kind etc.  The whole santa/christmas/north pole thing is OVERLY happy IMO.  However if someone is going to bring you a present, they aren't going to give you something if you've been nasty all year, right?  But the magic of santa is even if you are a little 'terror' santa will give you a second chance to redeem yourself in the days before christmas.

Then again my son was about 3 or so and we were in the store holiday shopping and he was asking for something and I said 'well maybe santa will bring it, you never know' and he replied back "maybe you never YES!".... that was the day the santa magic was over LOL

[onlyzombiecat]

When we did Santa, gifts from Santa were not tied to behavior. He brought one gift and filled the stocking regardless. In our Santa story all kids deserve presents. You'd have to be setting fire to kittens not to be deserving of a present.

We never had a question come up with dd about why Santa brought some kids a lot of presents and other kids one or none. I think that aspect could make the "naughty and nice" issue downright troublesome to kids who compare and wonder what they did wrong to get fewer presents than their friend.

[ChristyMarie]

Yeah, Santa is not tied to behavior here either.  There is this horrible Dora episode that DS watched about the naughty list but we just explained that was just a cartoon, Santa brings gifts to everyone, etc.

[Llyra]

We don't do that aspect of Santa. Santa gives unconditionally, in our house.

[SeekingJoy]

We don't talk about that aspect of Santa (actually, we don't talk much at all about Santa even though there are presents under the tree "from him" on Christmas morning). To me, the idea of Santa is pretend play about unconditional giving. A naughty and nice list has no part of it.

[hopefulfaith]

We don't do that aspect of Santa. 

In fact, I'm going to be sad if my kids ever find out that there's a List thing - i.e., Make a list of what you want Santa to bring you! -- ugh.

So far, my kids know that there was a guy named St. Nicholas a long time ago....liked to give gifts to people because it made him/them happy....we call him Santa Claus, and he gives gifts to people just to make us happy and spread joy.  That's pretty much it.

I don't even take my kids to see Santa in the mall because I don't want to get tied up in the whole thing.

I definitely don't do the whole "Santa's watching you!" bit and "only gifts for good kids" part, either.  I spend a lot of time with the kids on social justice issues and giving to people who don't have as much as we do, etc., and we spend serious time talking about/doing gifts for the human services tree in our community (pick a tag and buy gifts for that family's kids) --- I don't want my kids to perceive kids who aren't receiving gifts as "bad" or whatever.  It sounds silly, but I really hate the whole good/bad thing associated with gift giving.

A family came over to our house last night and their daughter threw a fit when leaving (she's 3.  every one of us has had a 3 yo throw a fit when leaving somewhere.  no big deal.).  Her parents were embarrassed and were trying to halt the tantrum with "Santa's watching you!  You had better be good!" .... which just made me inwardly cringe.

That being said, anybody want to buy an "Elf on the Shelf" doll/book? 

It's new in the box and never opened.  Given to us a few years ago.  I couldn't bring myself to even go there.

[liberal_chick]

Ds knows that kids who behave poorly all the time don't get gifts (supposedly), but I don't know where he got that idea.  Not from me.  Probably from school.  All he knows is that he is on the nice list. :D

[flower01]

My DD has picked up most details about Santa from outside sources...tv shows, other kids, IDK where else.  All we have told her is that Santa Claus comes from St. Nicholas and he gave toys to all children.

[Smokering]

There is this horrible Dora episode that DS watched about the naughty list but we just explained that was just a cartoon, Santa brings gifts to everyone, etc.

I wouldn't teach a kid that. It's just not true. (Well, yes, the whole Santa thing isn't true, but!) Santa doesn't bring gifts to everyone. He doesn't bring gifts to (some) Jewish kids, (some) Muslim kids, (some) conservative Christian kids, kids whose parents don't "do" Santa, kids whose parents don't do Christmas at all, kids whose parents are too poor to afford gifts, kids in cultures in which Santa isn't known...

I dunno, it just seems like huge misunderstandings could arise if your child assumes every child gets gifts. What will he think when the next-door neighbor kid says "No, I didn't get anything from Santa"?

We do stockings, but not from Santa - in fact, the checkout lady asked DD about what Santa would bring her the other day and DD had no idea what she was talking about. I'm not anti- the concept of Santa exactly, I'd just never thought to bring it up! And I prefer to get the credit for my hard work of gift-buying, thankyouverymuch. :p

OP: I don't think it would be hard to eliminate the "naughty or nice" aspect of the Santa myth if you don't like it. The original "Santa gift" was based on charity, not merit, anyway. And there are plenty of "versions" of Santa, so it's not like you're messing with the plot of Gone with the Wind.

[zebra15]

Originally Posted by hopefulfaith

That being said, anybody want to buy an "Elf on the Shelf" doll/book? 

It's new in the box and never opened.  Given to us a few years ago.  I couldn't bring myself to even go there.

Nope, that is just creepy.... oy!  sorry... back to your regular scheduled conversation

[LynnS6]

We just never talked about the 'naughty/nice' aspect either. When dd found out about it last year (from some neighbors, I think), she firmly insisted that Santa gave presents to everyone and didn't care about the naughty/nice distinction. It confused the heck out of the neighbor kids, but dd was very firm in her beliefs. So, it's very possible to gloss over that aspect.

[AbbieB]

We did not do the naughty/nice list until DD was in on the Santa myth. Now it's a joke between us. I pretend threaten to tell Santa to put her on the naughty list when DD is acting a little impish and then she reminds me that I'm Santa and we have a laugh.

[meemee]

a lot of the santa philosophy these days is straight from hollywood. like a lot of other things we think we know a lot about. like voodoo and voodoo dolls.

[PoppyMama]

My parents were crunchy and tried to bring a less commercial version of Christmas to our home but I also grew up with a big and very mainstream southern family and the "naughty or nice" song was sung at school and people would always ask about where I was on the list but I can never remember a conversation where anyone took the "naughty" aspect as seriously as I'm seeing here.  It was all very tongue in cheek and silly.  I don't remember any friends feeling worried about not getting presents because of naughtiness.   

[4Marmalade]

Originally Posted by PoppyMama 

My parents were crunchy and tried to bring a less commercial version of Christmas to our home but I also grew up with a big and very mainstream southern family and the "naughty or nice" song was sung at school and people would always ask about where I was on the list but I can never remember a conversation where anyone took the "naughty" aspect as seriously as I'm seeing here.  It was all very tongue in cheek and silly.  I don't remember any friends feeling worried about not getting presents because of naughtiness.   

This is what I was thinking.  We've never brought up the naughty/nice aspect with our kids.  They've never asked questions about it .  I'm sure they've thought about it when it comes up in stories or conversations with others but I don't think they worry about not getting a present from Santa due to being "naughty".  We have joked about it with our older dc's but they know we're joking and play along.

[Zach'smom]

Same here.  DS sings the songs with "Naughty or Nice" and seen the Christmas movies with the lists.  He not once questioned it.  Just thinks it's a silly movie/song thing.  I guess in our house we don't get really deep into it.  We just enjoy the fun, spirit and magic of it all.

[Owen'nZoe]

Originally Posted by PoppyMama 

My parents were crunchy and tried to bring a less commercial version of Christmas to our home but I also grew up with a big and very mainstream southern family and the "naughty or nice" song was sung at school and people would always ask about where I was on the list but I can never remember a conversation where anyone took the "naughty" aspect as seriously as I'm seeing here.  It was all very tongue in cheek and silly.  I don't remember any friends feeling worried about not getting presents because of naughtiness.   

This is exactly how it is for us! We do the whole Santa thing, and I have, on occasion, warned my children that they're going to find themselves on the naughty list, but they know there is no such thing.  As a matter of fact, I did so in the Target parking lot just last week. It might have sounded horrible to passers-by, but my kids are in on the joke, and for us it is kind of a light-heared way to say, "Mommy is very frustrated with your behavior right now."

ETA: We always focus on the behavior rather than the person otherwise, so my kids don't generally think of someone in terms of being 'naughty or nice' by nature.

Edited by Owen'nZoe - 12/21/10 at 9:44am

[ssh]

Gifts aren't tied to behavior in our house, even the Santa gifts.  We do talk about being nice or helpful sometimes but we don't label people as naughty or bad except for really bad people who steal stuff, hurt or kill other people. We tend to focus on behaviors as choices then apply adjectives to the choice to do something. For example, "That was a silly/bad/foolish idea, maybe I should have done xyz instead."