"I had no intention of undermining their belief in the reality of Santa Claus," wrote Canon Tatton-Brown to the local headteacher after his little Christmas address upset some parents because, apparently, it led their children to question the truth of Santa's existence. Some parents have got so worked up about all this that they have threatened to turn up at one of the good Canon's Christmas services and tell the congregation that Jesus doesn't actually exist either. Apparently, it's not just children that find it difficult to grow up. Perhaps the problem is not with the children at all – they are generally much more robust about these things – but with over-anxious parents thinking their protective role extends to a protection from the truth. The over-the-top reaction of some parents suggests that Santa stands for something way more than a badly dressed Lapland present-giver.

What I find interesting is the assumed connection between growing up and de-mystification – the idea being that we bring children up on lies until a certain age when they are deemed mature enough to know the truth. "When I was a child I thought like a child. When I became a man I put away childish things," wrote St Paul. But why do we lie to our children in the first place? Why not just tell them the truth from the outset? Surely lying to our children erodes their trust in what we tell them about the world.

The problem with this line of argument is that it wants to treat children as mini-adults, thus denying them the important role that fantasy and role-playing has in their emotional development. Indeed, the engagement of the imagination through fantasy can itself be a way in which a child comes to encounter a world beyond him or herself. That is, fantasy can often be a way of mapping out reality, not least, emotional reality. Letters to Santa often include the expression of wishes not expressed elsewhere: the desire for parents to get back together, the pain of a lost sibling, even a sense of identification with children less fortunate than themselves. None of which I would put into the category of fantasy in the pejorative sense.

The full article can be read here