How Santa Made Me an Atheist

Tuesday, December 30th, 2003

I got a kick out of Julian Sanchez’s How Santa Made Me an Atheist:

I don’t remember clearly when my parents first told me about Santa Claus, but I do remember being skeptical. Flying reindeer? How was that possible? Bringing presents to every child on the planet? Surely that couldn’t be done in a single night. Even if it could, how could you possibly fit enough presents on a sleigh without constantly running back to the North Pole for reloads? If someone had this kind of technology, why weren’t we trying like crazy to replicate it?

I don’t think my parents had expected these sorts of questions. They just looked at each other, seeming a bit surprised, and let it drop. Come Christmas day, they gave it one final attempt: “Look, Santa ate the cookies we left out.” I considered that for a moment. I don’t think I’d encountered Occam’s Razor yet, but the first thing to occur to me was: “I bet Dad just ate them! That’s more likely than flying reindeer.” At which point they gave up.

I was slightly resentful at first — why were they trying to deceive me? I thought perhaps they’d hoped that the idea of a magical old man watching my every action, and doling out (or withholding) presents accordingly was some kind of threat to make me behave well. In the end, I concluded that probably that was what some parents were hoping to do — I knew the story was told to lots of kids — but that mine had just thought that it would be fun for me, a game of make-believe. That’s why they’d just given up when I didn’t seem inclined to play along.

Sometime soon after, when I started kindergarten, I first encountered the notion of “God” via another child. Again, I don’t remember the specifics. But I remember thinking: “Oh, I know this game.” I decided not to spoil the make-believe for the other kid. When he was older, surely his parents would explain that they hadn’t been serious.

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