SCIENCE AND SANTA CLAUS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 339, 21 December 1945, Page 12

SCIENCE AND SANTA CLAUS

Has The Atomic Bomb Blown Him Up?

D° you still speak to your children about Santa Claus? If you do, is it from habit or conviction? If you don’t, has science killed the kind of make-believe in you that your grandparents practi§ed without difficulty? : Last month a Canadian psychiatrist told an audience in Ottawa that allowing children to believe in Santa Claus is permanently injuring theit power to think; and that statement was cabled round the world. Well, here are some New Zealand opinions on the subject obtained for our own readers. (You will see from the article on page 6 that Santa Claus has not exactly gone out of business.)

The following was the cable item from Ottawa: . AJOR-GENERAL BROCK CHISHOLM, the noted Canadian psychiatrist and Deputy-Minister of Health and Welfare, raised a storm of criticism by telling an Ottawa audience: "In this atomic age it is entirely wrong to teach children to believe in, Santa Claus. Any child who believes in Santa Claus has had his ability to think permanently injured. He will become the kind of man who develops a sore back when there is a tough job ahead, and who refuses to think realistically when war threatens," General Chisholm claimed that peace could be assured only by a new concept, by the bringing up of children so that there was a Strict basis of reality free from escapism. "‘We cannot give them our own rules, right or wrong, because we have been so dreadfully wrong ourselves," he said. "We have messed up every aspect of living. No other animal in "treation has made such a mess of it. How can we. teach children realities when we pay movie stars two hundred times the salary we give professors?" Bg he * These were the comments we secured: "0 God! 0 Montreal!" \ ¥ head is bloody but unbowed. My : thoughts do not move with the pinpointed accuracy ‘demanded by the Major-General and the Atomic Age, for not only did I believe with unrealistic faith in the Father of Escapism, but later on, and for a paltry three or four pounds a week, I helped to injure the minds of hundreds of girls and boys. This, I hasten to say, was before I became a University Teacher. I still remember the bright, shiny faces of those who should have been rescued from my clutches, and put to play with the bright, shiny gadgets of the Scientific Age, but my sympathy goes rather to those of us who suffered the discomfort of false hair and beard, grease paint, and arctic clothes in a temperature rising one hundred degrees. I remember the hundreds of letters addressed to Santa Claus which had to be opened and read, the small confidences, the hopes, the excitement. I remember how tac!ful we had to be, for there were adult letters as well, and how we had to explain to little Johnny when he arrived that Santa Claus could not bring a pedal-car this time, but only a-trumpet. I hear the Major-General cough: "Tell the child the’ truth. No money. Dad out of’ work. No pedal-car." I know all about the commercial racket in connection wih Christmas, but there are also the rackets of the so-

called experts. There are myths about Christmas, and there are myths about experts. Yes-and I remember my elephant, and myself as a resplendent rajah producing presents from nowhere, unless the mechanical equipment of ‘the Scientific Age went wrong, and the happy little faces of those who lived in a world of illusion, unaware that their ability to think was being permanently injured, unaware that their backs would become sore in later life. I remember the sharp little faces of those who already had sore backs with bending and straining to see what they weren’t meant to see in order to destroy the happiness. of their younger brothers and sisters: "The Rajah is painted (the truth hurts sometimes), Santa Claus has false whiskers, the elephant is only a trunk." (Applause from the Major-General.) I remember all these things and am unrepentant, even though the MajorGeneral almost persuades me to agree with him for his last telling remark, and yet, believing as I do in equal pay for equal work, I ask myself whether or not he is indulging in day dreams even in the Atomic Age. Does he really

think that professors are able to solve the problems of the world, or that they are always capable of explaining life in terms of what he calls realities? It is conceivable that there are myths about experts as well as myths about Santa Claus. Life sémetimes offers us gratuitous gifts, even the gratuitous gift of a Major-General solemnly making an authoritative pronouncement, and, although belief in Santa Claus may wane as the years pass, the meaning of Santa Claus never dies except for those who have adopted the faith of the hard-headed,

unimaginative superman of the Atomic Age. Of course I don’t really believe in the existence of Major-General Brock Chisholm, I have believed in Santa Claus and a cable from Ottawa doesn’t deceive me. I suppose it was really Montreal"O God! O Montreal!"

H. WINSTON

RHODES

(University Lecturer in English).

Bunk: Major-General"

IKE Major-General Brock Chisholm, I too object to Santa Claus as presented to the New Zealand young, but not because he represents an escape from reality but because he is far too realistic. When Christmas draws near, a long series of threats and promises that Santa Claus will or won’t do this or that culminate in a personal visit to the aforesaid gentlemen. The child is led by the hand through a long dimly-lit and very stuffy maze of cardboard scenic effects commonly known as a Magic Cave. At the furthest end sits a 16-stone salesman from the Men’s Outfitting Department thinly disguised with a lot of cotton wool, a red dressing gown, and a holly leaf or two. Dazed by the midsummer heat, the gloom, and the constant stream of sticky and incredulous youngsters, he asks each child mechanically, "And what do you want this Christmas?’’ When the child replies, "A car," "A Hornby ‘train,’ "A tricycle,’ or "A sleeping doll," he tips Mum a leer and a wink and says sanctimoniously, "You shall have it."’.Whereupon delighted child and reluctant parent are ejected straight into the splendour of the Toy Department, full-in peacetime anyway-of expensive toys-cars, Hornby trains, tricycles, and sleeping dolls. The dazed parent tries to explain that these have nothing to do with Santa Claus but are the property of Messrs. Blank, Blank and Blank, and that this Christmas Jimmie must not expect more than a box of blocks, in fact that S.C. was having Jimmie on when he promised him all he wanted, This is, of course, not all that General Brock Chisholm means. But what he does seem to mean is that we shall have to expurgate our children’s libraries not merely of Santa Claus, who is only one -and a seasonal one at that-in a whole constellation of supernaturals, but of all fairy and magical and mythological literatute, as great a conflagration of vanities as lit by Savanarola or Hitler. But I don’t like burning books or even using them to wrap the meat and I do

like very many children’s books immensely. And why stop at fairies? Isn’t most art and poetry and music an escape from reality? 1 fancy that a belief in the supernatural or fairy world is as important and real to small children as

music, art and poetry are important to adults. It is also something the average child throws off as easily as his early belief in Dad’s omniscience or Mum’s perfection. It is our job as parents, educators, or psychiatrists to introduce

the real world in such a way that our children want to face it, and not escape from it. But after all I am among the many unfortunates who have hati my ability to think permanently injured, so I end by saying in a small voice, "Bunk, Major-General, bunk."

SYLVIA

SMITH

(Mother of Four Children).

"Escape Into Reality"

S° poor Santa Claus is to be blamed for the way "we (I hope that excludes the everyday parent who would hesitate to enter such august company) have messed up every aspect of living." Perhaps Major-General Brock Chisholm was unfortunate in his brand of Santa Claus. Every sagacious parent and teacher realises that it is the use made of the material rather than the material that counts: that, with the best material (continued on next page)

from previous page) in the world, one can warp a child’s outlook for life while another could lead him in the right direction with the material provided by the average radio and film programmes and second-rate literature. The modern Santa Claus in the hands. of intelligent civilised beings can be a symbol of the triumph of reason and loving’ kindness over the fears and superstitious propitiations of the dark past. The glamour of Santa Claus to the child is that he has gifts showered upon him from an unknown hand without any guilty feeling that there has been a sacrifice on the part of the giver. If at no other time, at Christmas he escapes into the reality of a safe, reasonable and kindly civilisation. But believers in a peace enforced by the atomic bomb would, like our primitive ancestors, who felt obliged to offer up human sacrifices for the Santa Claus

gifts of air, sunshine, rain, and flowers, sacrifice all the wisdom, the light, and the truth to which it has taken mankind centuries to attain. I am afraid these worshippers of power would lead us to make as big a mess of things as the ants and the bees who on a "strict basis of reality free from escapism" have founded a perfect state from which they cannot escape.

A DUNEDIN

MOTHER

"What Did He Mean?" MAJOR-GENERAL BROCK CHISHOLM certainly packs a punch: and I suppose we must commend anyone who attempts to tell us how we can adjust our thinking to the Atomic Age and how mankind can make the colossal effort of imagination, and will necessary to bring about.a social and political adjustment to it. This is a deadly serious subject and many people still find their minds numbed by the whole thing. But it is difficult for us to judge what General Chisholm really had to say about it, for his address has been high-lighted and telescoped in turning it into a news item. What did he mean by teaching children to believe in Santa Claus? Did he mean it literally? Probably not, or only incidentally, Read the news item again. He probably meant giving children any kind of wishful and unreal picture of the world and what it is like, and here he had an arguable enough case. Taken literally the matter of Santa Claus is simple enough. Make-believe is spontaneous. in . childhood. ~ Children

know it is make-believe and love it just the same.’ It is of course possible to harm children by shaking their confidence in their parents’ honesty if they are deliberately deceived about Christmas presents, but parents nowadays, if they bring the commercialised Father Christmas into their homes ‘at all, do it as . part of a shared game of make-believe. That is not how escapists are made. On another point, about the salaries of professors, the Major-General was dead right.

-PROF.

I. L. G.

SUTHERLAND

(Canterbury University College).

**Let Them Be Children" RELISH the downrightness of MajorGeneral Brock Chisholm’s statement, but I emphatically disagree with it. The cardinal axiom in rearing and educating children is, to my mind, to let them be children-in other words, to let them do and think and feel, and eat as befits the immature growth stage they are passing through. If this is done a child will still receive as a result of home, neighbourhood, and school associations an ample ration of realism. Indeed, where life is rough and ready as in congested areas. he may receive too much. The "Dead End Kids" suffered from just such an overdose of realism. In addition to such everyday realism a child needs free play for his imagination and his feelings, for in the paradoxical world we all have to contend against the idealism of thought and sentiment thus fostered is just as essential as the power to grasp facts. Major-General Brock Chisholm seems to me to wish to revert to the sort of matter-of-factness. which Dickens‘ detested and attacked in Hard Times. That admittedly propagandist, story showed pretty convincingly that Mr, Gradgrind’s regimen of facts and nothing but facts for the young minds he controlled was their ruination. , The free play of feeling and fancy just because it.is both free and playful, is as essential to children as fuh and make-believe are to puppies, or tails tu tadpoles. It is part of their way of life. If as children they are lucky enough to disport their imaginations they may later on become those most enviable people, grown-ups who are still able on occasion to play. I see things the opposite way from General Chisholm. Instead of trying to turn children into miniature adults, aghast at perils and problems they are too puny to cope with, I would have adults on-the-make turn their undoubted "making abilities" in the direction of making a world fit for children to play in. Santa Claus would not be out of place in such a world, and later on his power to revive freshness and warmth of feeling at least ofice a year would be a contribution to human fraternity, not an international debit. After all, why should the atomic bomb be such a grim thing? Is it not ‘partly because in our fact-grubbing we have lost touch with the emotions and imaginings that, by poeticising life, can alone give it its true value-a value we from time to time strive pathetically to recover by recourse to the various forms

of. alcohol.

F. L.

COMBS

(Well-known Educationist). |