in the movie, ” life is beautiful”, the films protagonist who gets sent to a nazi labour camp with his son protects his son from the reality of the time by telling his that it is all a game that they are trying to win. This is a very lovely film by the way, if you’ve never seen it. My question to you: do you think the father did the right thing by making up a colorful story about the war rather than telling his child the truth? Isn’t it a similar thing with Santa Claus and the tooth fairy? do we instill magic into the minds of children to soften the burdens of reality? does that make it right?
© 2026 – SoulSequel
7 responses to “santa claus, the tooth fairy, and war as a game.”
Creatures in the closet and monsters under the bed…
Things that go bump in the night…
The Goops they lick their fingers, the Goops they lick their knives, they spill their broth on the table cloth, and lead disgusting lives…
The Gobbledygook’s are coming to get you…
The Goth’s will get you…
I would rather be told the reality. I am better able to deal with the reality of the hardship.
There was a day when I was 8 years old and my big brother told me that there was no Santa Claus and Mom could not afford to get me a hula hoop that I wished for. My brother’s friend (Lowell Henry) went to the store and bought a hula hoop and hid it behind the Christmas tree. He also bought a Santa hat. Mom was defrosting the freezer and Lowell took a clump of ice and threw it on the ground in the yard. He threw the Santa hat on it. He took me outside to see the ice and the hat. He told me that my brother was lying and there was a Santa. Then he showed me where the hula hoop was hidden. I had a joyful Christmas! Then the next year, I was told the awful truth. I kind of knew that it was Lowell Henry that did all that, and the girl in me was flattered that my brother’s 14 year old friend liked me enough to go through all that expense and trouble for me. He became my buffer zone to harsh realities. He was a lifelong clown and always made me laugh. He was my future husband, but I did not know that when I was young.
Behind the fantasy, I knew the harsh realities of life. I resented that when a death occurred, that I was kept away from saying a proper good-bye. I could have handled it.
When it came to all the mysteries of life with my two sons, and my five stepsons, I would ask them to tell me what they thought. “Is there a Santa? Tell me about Santa.” Then, I would respect their opinions and beliefs.
The truth that I wish I had never taught my sons came when my Grandma died. I had a feeling that something was wrong at Grandma’s house and I wanted to take my kids to go there and see her. My husband, Bill, forbid me to go. He stood in the way and demanded I stay home. I told my kids that this is what you do when an asshole keeps you from leaving. You go into your bedroom, open the window, remove the screen. You go out the window and you are free. We escaped out the window and went to Grandma’s —– only to find her dead. She fell out of a tree and broke her neck. My Mom was crying and did not know what to do. I handled the situation and called the mortuary for instructions and pick-up of her body. I was adult enough to handle the situation. My sons stood by with wide eyes, but they accepted the truth as it unfolded before their eyes. They were wise, even at 10 and 12. But, they learned to escape out a window when they were told, “NO!”
The whole tooth fairy thing is about crass-consumerism teaching children their body parts have a cash worth. Get ’em started young. Santa Claus is completely real, he’s just bound by a blood-oath to never deliver presents to the naughty. I get the most grand wooden marvels hand-carved by “elves”.
(They’re really fruitcake-addicted Inuits with clipped ears.)
@luftballooneyegouge
While consumerism factors into many things, I think there’s a lot of anti-Western ideological hatred in trying to cast all faults at the feet of capitalism.
Let’s not forget that capitalism has reduced the world rate of abject poverty by 50% between 2000 and 2013. I know marxism hates this. Every human system is going to pale when cast against collectivist Utopian visions.
But let’s not forget which one celebrated the value of the individual, and which one cast tens of millions on the pyre as if they were no more valuable than chaff.
I’ll have to check out the movie.
Did the father’s lie make his son better, or less able to endure the reality before them?
The the lie make the son less dependent upon the father, or more?
Again, without watching the movie I only have my training to fall back on. And I’ve seen a pervasive and growing pattern of entrenching parental dependency in the children and calling it “love” or “protection” (when it’s really “The Devouring Mother” archetype).
Things like Santa and the Tooth Fairy have over time proven relatively harmless in most cases where the parents are at least partially conscious and “awake” enough to know when it’s time to end it. Again, I’d have to watch the movie. But there was a lot more at stake in various forced labor camps on both sides of the Germany/USSR border.
I’ve just read the chapter in the Gulag Archipelago where Solzhenitsyn talks about the kids in the forced labor camps. (It’s chilling. I had to put it down several times).
And I don’t have the wisdom to say whether spinning a fantasy that would ensure your child a swift death once you were no longer there to support the fantasy is the lesser evil as opposed to letting them be re-made in the image of evil.
But where there is life, there is hope?
It could well be.
There are real ‘Santa Claus’ and real ‘tooth fairies’ out there. All of that fiction, out there, which people so gleefully consume regarding “imaginary beings” from ‘other realms’, and ‘other realms’, is a distant echo of what really is going on.
But, these are matters of spirit, not matters of the flesh. As a sage from another realm advised Mr Morrison, ‘the truth does not matter, people believe what they want to believe’.
Those who yearn for another world, a better one, because they are outcast and trampled on in this world, will find it.
It does not matter much how one dresses it up, as long as they are guided, and can make their way through the echoes that are full of deception. A true heart does not settle on the fanciful fraud.
Oz, Zion of the Matrix, Narnia, Asgard, the Promised Land, Wonderland…. so many names.
Jews in the old days, of good heart, when in exile, would be better able to see the glory of their ancestors and ancestral land.
Life is a game, depending on what one means by that. Everything can be seen as ‘gaming’, depending on what means by the term.
There is a win, and there is a better place. It is not ‘the Next world’, but it is ‘the Otherside’ (“Break on Through”)… it is found in the heart, and among us.
Because others do not see that, means simply they can not see it. It has no bearing on the person who is already there. Anymore then you could be talking to a billionare posing as a cat, or a presumed dead rock star pretending to be a retired spy.
According to the lecture series @griz sent ne EVERYTHING is a game. The questions become do we play? Do we recognize the rules? Are we playing something else?