Superstition and Children

There seems to be a very strange reluctance for humans to be rational. The little people tug at my Irish imagination, and demons have been left behind by my Christian upbringing. I remember as a teacher in the 1970s one of my pupils, aged 16, being exorcised by a Christian minister to remove some demon within her - when actually iron tablets and a sense of purpose would have done her more good. People with mental disorders have been accused of demon possession even into the present.

I am interested then to explore how children navigate their path between the real, the pretend, and the irrational supernatural. Perhaps I am a good person to do this. My Christian upbringing declared as real God, with a Son, with supporting angels, who was about to return to the earth at any moment to take Christians up in a twinkling to become his new world generals. This was presented as fact, as was the virgin birth and the resurrection. A young person faced with these declarations of 'obvious fact' unravels them only slowly. On the other hand, projected reality which is clearly stupid struck me very early as shameless adult deception - I refer to Santa Claus and all that jazz. At the age of around 3, I became political and campaigned hard to persuade my siblings and friends that the Father Christmas industry is a con. It was not taken kindly by either parents or children. Where my certainty came from I do not recall, but I recall being a mixture of triumphant and angry, and very impatient of people who appeared not to believe me.

I recall these events in other contexts. A dear friend who believed and continues to feel betrayed 30 years later, so hard did the disclosure of the con take her. And other parents who want their children to know the truth but find their children totally wrapped up in this false belief and find it hard to prick the balloon. The argument for perpetuating the myth is said to be to preserve Christmas as a magic time for children. Actually, it is a consumerist myth: ask, and you shall be given whatever is on your list to Santa. Christmas is a time for receiving goods - toys, sweats, inessentials. It is a cargo cult - be good and believe and goods will come to you from Lapland, delivered everywhere in the world at the same moment by a hairy man with hairy reindeer, finding a way in even when there is no chimney. That a family cannot afford the goods, and prioritise income badly to do this is not considered. I guess at 3 I didn't object to the toys, but was very clear where they came from - Mum, Dad and the shop.

Children realise that they have grown out of the con well before teenage years, and even connive to dupe their younger siblings. But this is an a inappropriate relationship between adults and young children, and abuse of knowledge and power. Young children need better guidance into what is real and what is not. Of course, if Santa is a con, other things may be too, especially things that cannot be seen and touched. It is for example no coincidence that children develop scepticism about God at the same time, another myth pushed at them remorselessly. There might be a better way, showing children from the beginning, without deception, that working out what is real is actually a difficult thing to do.

I believe that children have inbuilt strategies to help them. I mean, the pretend game. I watched some tots at our local playground playing with a rotating wheel. It had become the Titanic. A lad, age 5, very energised, was working very hard to keep the ship off the iceberg. Another child stumbled over to play with the wheel, clearly confused, so the captain shouted, 'Pretend, silly'. The Titanic sank with exaggerated human despair. Children are extremely good at Pretend. They know that truth can be wrapped up in their imaginary world, and that the game helps their understanding - without ever forgetting the difference between pretend and real. Pretend is no deception, it is a deliberate strategy to use the imagination creatively.

A pretend game of giving and receiving, not only gifts but also kindnesses, would foster the magic of Christmas, and Eid, and Divali and Hanukkah, in children. But it is the children who pretend, not the adults. When pretend becomes a dogmatic lie, and not a portal into the imagination, it actually does a disservice by confusing truth with pretend in the child's mind.