What do aspies think of Santa Claus?

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I might get some slack by parents for posting this, but let's face it ... Why do parents then let our kids watch things like the Travel Channel or the Discovery Channel? Why would parents let their kids watch this show called the Mysteries of Christmas, or it tends to be called something like that? I mean, you can watch regular G-rated programs on these channels and find out quite easily that Santa Claus is a lie.

So, we aspies tend to be rational and truthful people, for the most part. So, I'm just wondering ... what do aspies think of Santa Claus? I am wondering, because of how literal some of us can be, if there are aspies who really believe Santa Claus is real at the age of 30?

- Ray M -

Santa Claus has to exist! How else could the presents get under the tree overnight?

As a kid, I was real pissed-off that my mom wouldn't acknowledge the make-believe nature of Santa Claus. She finally conceded that Santa Clause embodied the spirit of Christmas. Those spiritual answers always worked for me. So do you believe in a Sanity Clause?

I think I was fairly old when I knew that: 10 or 11, well, I forgot

a younger cousin told us that, and my brother, who from my point of view is NT, already knew that, and he was only 7!

to be sincere it struck me hard, I wish I'd rather knew that from my parents...

Last edited by computerlove on 17 Jul 2006, 11:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

Santa claus....

1981 - Picture taken with santa
1982 - Picture taken with santa
1983 - Picture taken with santa
1984 - Sat on santas lap at day care, saw my name on santas list, Left milk and cookies for him x-mas eve
1986 - Up until 2am xmas eve enjoying festivities, forgot totally about santa claus
1988 - Santa comes to visit my class. I know it's just the father of another student dressed up. I'm not dissapointed.
1991 - Had to BS letters to 1st grade kids from santa as a class project. We had to be careful in writing so as not to explicitly promise anything, or blow santa's cover. I thought it to be stupid. Espeically the proof-reading process.

There never was any "HE'S NOT REAL!!" moments with me. It just sorta wore off after awhile.

I knew Santa was pretend since late preschool. However, that never bothered me one bit. I viewed Santa and his supporting characters (e.g. the elves, the reindeer, etc.) as one big theatrical act that adults put on for the kids, with some interaction between the "audience" and the "stage performers". Interestingly, watching the whole Christmas thing was just as fun this way as I think it would have been if I thought Santa was real.

Santa was just an innosent lie though my eyes. It wasn't our parents falut they wanted to keep us happy for one day of the year though gifts.

I was talking to my 4 year old nephew on the subject(he maybe an aspie to).
His parents told him Santa's real. Its funny because he is very logical. He
knows there is no such things as monsters in the darkness. I was joking with
him because he called the hair on my legs fur. I said "I'm not an animal". He said
people are animals to. I told him he needs to thank Santa for Christmas gifts. He
said "I do". My guess it want take him long to learn the truth.

Or is that flack?



Father Christmas (UK), for me fell foul of a different aspect of AS, though I had no idea at the time that's what it was. An epistemological observation that was most disturbing:

It's true, but not true like 2+2=4. It's not true, but it's not a lie.

If your parents will lie to you over this, where can you go for reliable information on ANYTHING? That my parents could not explain this in logical terms went a long way to showing me that there were strange categories of "truth" out there which were not really compatible, and that even more strangely, most people didn't worry about that.

No, I didn't call it epistemology at the age of 8, or express my worries exactly that way. But it was an early and striking observation of the world "not making sense", using nice logical thinking. It took me a long time to develop another way of handling half-truths, myths and irrational beliefs.

Try pinning most folk down on the differences (and the implications of those) between fact, truth, belief, faith, myth, popular consensus... They just don't go there, consciously.

And of course, if you dig into it, you find the history of St Nicholas is very differenet, and changes through time, and from country to country. Swamp and shifting shadows, not a simple tale at all.
And that's just Father Christmas. History and theology is much, much, worse.

I found alot of logical problems with Santa as a kid, but suspended my disbelief in order to get wrapped up in the magic. I suppose realising that Santa, the easter bunny and the tooth fairy don't exist is growing up and losing that bit of innosence. Next is God

Children don't believe in Santa Claus here. We have Sinterklaas, or Sint Nicolaas in The Netherlands. He was a bishop who helped the poor. He celebrates his birthday on the 6th of december. Children get presents then. Almost all children believe it is real untill about 7 or 8 years old and they believe that Sinterklaas comes to The Netherlands from Spain with a boat. We have tv shows about that and protocols (tv chanels may not organize tv shows about their own Sinterklaas coming in in an boat, only one chanel may show that on one day, so that children won't be confronted with several Sinterklazen on the same day).

I never told my daugther that Sinterklaas was true. I always told her, from the beginning, that it was a story and that parents tell their children that it is real and that that is some sort of game we play. I told her to join in playing the game and that we were not alowed to tell the truth because the parents of the other children would probably be mad with us then.

For her it didn't mind, because everything she saw was real anyhow. A clown was real too, though she knew it was just someone with funny clothes on. I saw her being tense anyhow. And she's had nightmares sinds she was a toddler. She only started talking about her anxiety since last year. Making her believe that some bearded old man and/ or his helpers (no one knows) would come into our house once or a couple of times a year would probably not have been good for her inner peace

There must've been a time I believed he was real, but I don't remember when I stopped believing.

But when I was younger, I thought maybe there really is an ancient race of people living somewhere underground (kind of like with the "hobbit"). We'd call them elves, and they have a leader who somehow came to be our Santa Claus.

I live in his back yard, BTW.

Yeah, thumbs up to Holland!

Do most of you realize that Santa Claus, in most cases, is nothing more than a huge corporate scam designed to rake in massive profits for almost any kind of industry you can think of? Christmas, after all, is what determines many economic factors, and can even determine whether or not a company goes bankrupt or not. Societies are quite gullible, and they manage to intertwine many aspects of religion and capitalism together to create the ultimate persuasion invasion.

- Ray M -

Yeah it was a Coca Cola ad that popularized the image of the fat jolly red face
Santa we love in America.

i thought santa claus was real when i was younger. sometimes id sit outside the indow at night looking out for the sleigh! i left carrots and milk and cookies out 4 the reindeers and santa which were all eaten or half eaten by morning and i never thought that anybody else would have eaten it other than santa.
i belived in it till i was 12.. i remember what happened here...
it was cristmas eve and i asked dad i wonder what santa will bring this year
and my dad says santa doesnt exist
i was very surprised and upset and i didnt know what to think
i thn asked him who brought us presents the previous years, because i really did not have a clue
my dad said that it was him and mum that crept around in the night and put the presents out.
my mum told my dad off for telling me the way he did but she agreed with him that i should have known that santa didnt exist by myself.
i beieved in the tooth fairy aswell till all my 1st teeth had come out and been swapped for £ coins. because sometimes id bury it in a tissue right under my pillow underneathmy head and in the morning there was a £ coin wrapped in tissue in exactly the same place as i put it.

He wears the right colours.

Last edited by CockneyRebel on 18 Jul 2006, 9:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.