Almost half of children over seven years old independently find out that Santa is a fiction by analyzing and comparing facts about him, and parents only need to confirm this guess.
Almost half of children over seven years old independently find out that Santa is a fiction by analyzing and comparing facts about him, and parents only need to confirm this guess. Psychologists from the universities of Montreal and Ottawa (Canada) came to this conclusion by comparing the data of surveys conducted among children and their parents in 1896, 1979 and 2000. However, even after learning the real state of affairs, the children support their younger brothers and sisters’ faith in Santa with their stories! And finally, the most interesting thing: it seems that parents over the past hundred years have become more supportive of this character. If believing in it makes their children happy, 80% of modern parents support this childish belief (at the end of the XNUMXth century, there were slightly more than half of them).
Why do parents need children’s faith in Santa Claus?
Parents need a fairy tale no less than children. The desire to preserve children’s faith in good magical characters is a natural reaction of adults to the strengthening of the spirit of practicality, material earthliness in society – and in this sense we are no different from America and Canada, the countries where these studies were carried out. Something should lift above the earth, inspire us; and parents intuitively support faith in Santa Claus in children, collecting grains of magic that the New Year brings. After all, the main source of joy available to us is not entertainment, but creativity, and the New Year holidays give us such an opportunity. In addition, adults themselves experience tremendous emotions when they see the joy of their child: children’s vision of reality is brighter, more powerful than that of parents. So they can, empathizing with the child, revive their childhood impressions, their delight.