The Mystery, Wonder & Existence of Santa Claus

I know a couple who refused to introduce the concept of Santa Claus to their 2 young children. They believed this went against their much-valued scientific principles of only teaching their children facts. I think this is unfortunate. Even aside from the sense of fun, it’s good to do the Santa thing with your kids when they are very young – it introduces them to a sense of wonder, and it teaches them that sometimes their everyday experiences are connected to a meta-reality that won’t reveal all its mysteries and secrets at once.

The idea of Santa Claus helps kids learn about deeper curiosity, and about propositions bigger than themselves that they can’t quite understand. And in some small way, to young budding minds, it teaches them some of their first deep considerations about existence itself. As any who have seen the marvellous film Miracle on 34th Street will know, the ontology of Santa Claus is a rather complex set of considerations, especially on top of the propositions about existence contained in the works of Descartes, Hume, Kant and Russell. 

As a young boy, I was told about Santa Claus, who supposedly visits every house on Christmas Eve, leaving presents and indulging in mince pies and alcoholic beverages left for him. Having observed the logistical challenge of visiting millions of homes in a short time, I questioned how Santa could accomplish this feat. Realising my parents were unprepared to answer, I decided to investigate by hiding in a cupboard. This prompted more anxiety, especially since the surprise gift they bought for me was also concealed there. Attempting to divert my curiosity, my dad warned that Santa would only come if I had been good, leading to an unwanted discussion about the nature of goodness. "Come on now, bedtime, son," he urged.

I’m not surprised my agitated father tried to rush me off to bed. The question 'what is good?' is just as profound now as it was then, but it’s easy to see today why, back then, my father had difficulty satisfying my curiosity. The truth is, goodness in its primary form resides in the person of God; all earthly goodness, wonderful in itself, is but a pale reflection of Divinity.

And this is what I think we see in the meaning of Christmas. We celebrate the birth of Jesus, and we share in those celebrations with our family and friends by trying to bring goodness, happiness and love into their lives. I fancy that Christmas is so widely seen as the most special time of the year because it’s the time when we more Christ-like in our goodwill to others, and in our desire to bless those we love.

As an adult, thinking about Santa Claus, it makes me ponder the qualities children have that Jesus encourages for us in discipleship. G.K. Chesterton once made a good point about children and stories:

"We all like astonishing tales because they touch the nerve of the ancient instinct of astonishment. This is proved by the fact that when we are very young children we do not need fairy tales: we only need tales. Mere life is interesting enough. A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door and saw a dragon. But a child of three is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door."

I think that's a salient observation that can be connected to the wisdom of Christ in Matthew 18 too ("unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven"), and how the child still sees what the adult has learned to unsee. Like Blake's 'Doors of Perception', that have been cleansed in childhood, only to have been closed up through age, till all is seen through the "narrow chinks of the cavern". One of the great features of childhood innocence is the willingness to embrace real life as an exciting and enchanting story, without the embellishments demanded from youth and adulthood. The youth and adults are enthralled by the romance, thrillers and drama mixed into their stories, taking the extraneous as boring. But the young child finds nothing extraneous - it is all, in a sense, romance, thriller and drama, because it hasn't yet been uncharmed by the prosaic breath of fiction or stunted by the cold chill of reason.

I recall C.S. Lewis saying he found children's books the hardest to write. But he also made the great point that a children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a very good children's story - which I guess is why it takes great skill to write a good one. I think even the child would see through a writer’s attempt to tailor too specifically to children, and an adult certainly would. It’s like the wisdom about originality – you can never try to create an original work for originality’s sake, just like you can’t try to be happy for happiness’ sake.

Similarly, the great children’s works are good simulacra to children-adult conversations. An adult becomes creatively childlike when taking an interest in the child, and a child becomes more adult-like through talking seriously to an adult. That’s probably why children tend to advance more quickly when adults speak to them with unaffected adult communication. So, a children’s book is similarly good for adults in the way that a garden is beneficial when we are tending to it, as well as when we are enjoying it in relaxation. A garden that could only be enjoyed during relaxation would not be a garden that gives the full experience that gardens elicit.

Returning to the opening line of enquiry - my advice would be this; Don’t be afraid to allow your kids to enjoy the idea of Santa Claus. The chances are, it will open their mind to metaphysical horizons that will hopefully bear fruit later on, when they think about who Jesus is, and the gift of salvation He brings to us all.

Why Shops Stock Up On Christmas Goods So Early

For the past few weeks I’ve heard/read several people bemoaning the fact that shops are stocking Christmas goods earlier and earlier. You only need to see a tree and tinsel in the shop window in late October and there will be a mass moan. Here’s what the moaners don’t understand – you cannot really blame the shops for opening earlier and earlier, it isn’t really their fault. If the critics knew about non-linearities and feedback effects they would understand what is happening.

To see why shops are opening earlier, consider this simplified feedback model. Suppose we have M & S, Debenhams, John Lewis and Jarrold’s in the city centre. A long time ago all four shops used to stock their Christmas goods from December 1st. One day M & S try to obtain the advantage over the other three by stocking their Christmas goods a week earlier (from November 24th). 

Debenhams, John Lewis and Jarrold’s have three choices; they can do nothing, they can emulate M & S, or they can go one better and stock their Christmas goods earlier (say, from November 17th). If they do nothing they risk losing a week’s vital Christmas trade from opportunist shoppers to M & S; if they emulate M & S then there’s nothing stopping M & S doing the same again, leaving Debenhams, John Lewis and Jarrold’s on the November 24th date and stocking their Christmas goods a week earlier (from November 17th).

So, quite naturally in response they pick the best of the three options by stocking their Christmas goods earlier than M & S. But it doesn’t stop there – what then happens is that each one of their competitors will look to outdo the other by choosing a date earlier than the others. This continues over the years – and if you obtain the statistics you would find a pattern of increased early Christmas stock to match and/or outdo the competition. .

This is what happens when feedback effects occur; the shops are continually under pressure to stock their Christmas goods earlier and earlier to obtain an advantage, which is why you see all these shops beginning their Christmas trading at times that are, to many of you, premature. Their hand has been forced, lest they lose vital trade time to their competitors.

The shops are subject to "feedback" effects – whereby a particular parameter x changes and via a "feedback" route the change in x causes further change in x (thus x is "feeding" back to itself). Feedback systems, depending on the kind of feedback involved, can produce varying "curves" of change when plotted on graph paper – some of which are quite chaotic.

There is a ‘but’ of course – if it were just down to procuring an advantage by trading earlier, then M & S, Debenhams, John Lewis and Jarrold’s would all begin their Christmas trading on January 1st. But, of course, it isn’t like that – there is a balance to be struck, because the shelf room they take up with Christmas stock amounts to a loss of shelf space for other more saleable goods if they are displayed too premature for the festive season. 

The decorations, wrapping paper, cards and bumper chocolates would be counter-productive stock if they were displayed in August in the hope of obtaining a festive head start on the rival shops – which is why the balance between being too early and too late in the year is of huge importance.

* This article was first published here at the Adam Smith Institute.

Taking the £ out of £hristmas

There's a famous paradox called the Abilene paradox, based on an account of a family who had taken a day out to Abilene even though none of the family members really wanted to go. Each family member expressed an interest in going on the trip due to thinking the other three family members wanted to go, only to find out on their return that none of the four had wanted to go in the first place. They did it to keep the others happy – which is a noble gesture, even if initial honesty might have produced a better outcome.

The situation with that family is a bit like the situation most of us are in regarding the excessiveness of Christmas gift buying and card-swapping – except in this case keeping our family and friends happy is only a small part of it - the biggest part is the intense cultural pressure we have put on ourselves as we’ve become caught in a knotty web of unwanted card and present buying– one that most of us don’t really want, but from which many don’t feel able to escape. 

Let me be clear, this is not meant to be a commentary on present buying for immediate family or close friends – I am talking about the much wider circle of friends, family, colleagues, and extended social milieu with whom we are entangled in this web of cultural pressure to exchange cards and presents. 

You know what it is like – you receive a card from someone to whom you hadn’t planned on sending one, and before you know it the emergency card is pulled out of the drawer by way of compelled reciprocation. And think of the dozens of gifts that have been exchanged from within those “much wider circles” I mentioned a moment ago. Auntie, cousin, niece or neighbour drops round a bag of presents for you and your family, and you hand them your bag of presents to them – both families are caught in a cycle of obligation that neither really wanted, and one that doesn’t really benefit either of them very much. 

 

The width of your card-swapping and present exchanging circle is much wider than that of your parents when they were your age, and theirs was wider than their parents’ circle. The reason being; each decade has seen an increased effort by shops and businesses to have more £s put into Christmas – and before long it has become the social norm; a norm that has been adding heaps of pressure on most people in Britain for quite a few Christmases now.

Most gift exchanges tend to be in the region of financial equivalence; you open your present from Jenny and find a £20 set of cooking utensils. Jenny opens her present from you and finds a £23 bath robe. Unless you wanted to spend £23 on cooking utensils, and Jenny £20 on a bath robe, no doubt you and Jenny could have done better things with your money – treated the kids, paid a house bill or a bit of money towards school fees, or reduced your debt, or one of the many other things that take priority over the £23 on cooking utensils that you probably already have. 

You know that those in the “much wider circles” very rarely buy you things you actually need (nor you them) – much less things that you would spend the value of your gift to them on.  And things are worse, of course, for those who cannot afford to reciprocate, but feel obliged to do so due to seasonal pressure. If you buy a gift for someone who cannot afford to buy you one back, you’ve probably made things worse for them, despite your nice gesture. 

I think we would be doing each other a favour if we broke this taboo and wised up to the fact that we have gotten ourselves under the thrall of consumerist pressure - and I'd hazard a guess that most people agree. Here's why I'm fairly confident people generally agree with me. Apart from the extreme unlikelihood that these feelings are unique to me, there are two protocols in place in offices that give exhibition to this feeling of avoiding excess in obligation; one is Secret Santa, and the other is the written agreement that people send round via email saying we as a team have opted out of card buying because we feel the money spent on cards would be better going to charity. 

They are right. The charity option is a method of transferring money from the unwelcome obligation of card giving (not to mention the environmental issues) to more worthwhile causes. Secret Santa is good too; it is posited as each team member buying a gift for the one person they draw out of the hat. In reality, though, it is each team member entering into an obligation to not have to buy for the rest of the team that they didn’t draw out of the hat. This is understandable too – a work team of 8 members would exchange a total of 54 gifts if they all bought one for each other. The total number of Secret Santa gifts purchased is 8, which makes Secret Santa fun and worthwhile. 

Whoever originally thought up the Secret Santa idea did so because he or she knew that things are better when all the pressure is off staff members - when they don’t have to worry about who is buying what for whom, whether there will be an imbalance in the giving-receiving ratio, and whether exchanges have price equivalence. There is sound economics behind Secret Santa and sound economics behind opting out of card giving to make a charitable donation to a good cause.

Is Christmas good for the economy?

It’s clear that many people share the same view that the mass consumerism of Christmas has got way out of hand. So the other question that needs asking is this; is Christmas good for the economy? I think not, for two reasons: one it engenders poor use of spending (as we’ve seen, a great many gifts are either unwanted or not the sort of items the recipient would buy for themselves); and two, as a consequence of this, given that many presents are not ideally suited to the recipients, that means an excessive waste of labour, energy and raw materials that would have been more beneficially employed in the hands of people who actually want the things that are produced. 

It's equally false to say that Christmas must be good for the economy because people spend more in December than the rest of the year. Such people have this picture of all the extra money spent 'tricking down' and being 'good for the economy', but this is a myth. Most of the money spent excessively in December would have otherwise been more thinly spent throughout the rest of the year. If instead of buying cards and presents in December the money was spent throughout the year on clothes, furniture and having the decorators in, then retailers and tradesmen gain. If the money stays in your bank, then people who want to borrow from banks gain.

And here’s the real key thing; given that all those unwanted or unneeded gifts are bought predominantly because of social obligation – if everyone could help catalyse a big culture change and bring an end to the mass consumerism of Christmas, it would lift the burden of festive obligation and free us up to spend the money more wisely. If we turned all the money spent on unwanted or unneeded gifts into money given to the neediest people in the world, we really would make Christmas something even more special. Whether it be helping to save starving children across the world, helping to provide fresh drinking water in deprived communities in third world countries, or clubbing together to fund the local help centre that gives support to troubled families, I think it would better than what we have now.

Of course, I’m not trying to take the joy out of gift buying – there will be plenty of gifts given and received that will add joy to our lives. But how sad that this cultural pressure has crept up on us gradually over the years, as shops increase their powers of selling, kids become more acquisitive, and adults become more pressurised into meeting the demands that society imposes on them. 

Not only have we let it get out of control, but my guess is that just about everyone probably can put their hands up and say they too can recognise the need for a cultural change. I suspect fear of being the first one to bring this up in the office or the family gathering makes you reticent; and I assume that it’s easier to go with the flow and avoid the ‘Bah humbug’ or ‘Scrooge’ or ‘Party Pooper’ accusations. 

But I suspect that what I’ve said is a forecast about a change that will surely come to pass at some point. I predict that when our distant descendants look back on how we let Christmas consumerist pressures get so out of hand, I think they will recognise in us a fault that went on to be corrected by a changed consensus, once people found the courage to speak openly and honestly about feeling trapped in this culture of excessive gift buying and card-swapping. 

This is not a call to become mean and stingy - just the opposite, in fact - it is a call for extra generosity, but a generosity that will do more good than excessive present and card cycles. Besides, if you’re worried this might bring forth the stigma of stinginess, you can always spend extra on people when it is their birthday.

Finally, remember that giving can be much more; to give to those you care about, write an email or make a phone call more frequently throughout the year; or treat them to dinner; or offer to babysit their kids so they can have quality time together; or help with decorating; or offer lifts; or do something to help your elderly neighbours – these are the kinds of giving that really enrich people’s lives in addition to well chosen presents.