'Be good and you'd get a present from santa' Anyone else feel this is wrong wrong wrong!

[tigermoth]

Over the years I admit I've have said to my son, only good children get presents from santa/me etc, but the more I think about it the worse this sentiment seems.

Do I really want my son to grow up believing that poor children are bad and rich children are good?
And the number of presents you get directly corresponds to how many brownie points you tot up? Is christmas just a reward ceremony?

And what sort of man is this santa anyway? If he's this jolly and generous chap, the spirit of christmas, would he really forget naughty children? And what sort of parent am I, that my generosity is conditional? What happened to unconditional love, that thing parents are meant to have?

I'm not saying do away with santa - I just think he's not meant to judge children.

Could you actually resist buying a particular present just because your child hadn't been good enough? I don't think I could do this. I'm all for reward systems, but isn't christmas a time to call a truce?

PS sml if you are reading this, I've a feeling this topic was touched on while back as part of anothe topic - sorry if this is going over old ground for you!

[Lil]

Crunchie, does that mean that before say 70BC there was no jewish winter festival?

Seeing as it takes a few generations to set the new festival/traditions up, I wonder if there was some sort of connection. I mean this was all going on at the same place - at the same time, and while Romans were conquering everyone, christians were trying to convert everyone and jews were trying to keep their faith alive!
If you take a step back and look at it from a historical/ sociological view, its quite fascinating!

Wish I'd joined in the religious thread now!

[anais]

Sorry to reinstate this controversial thread, but this arrived in myinbox and I didn't know where else to put it:

In an ever-continuing effort to justify Political Science as a
science, the following speculation about Santa Claus is submitted
in recognition of the holiday season:
---------------
1)... No known species of reindeer can fly. There are, however,
some 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and
while most of these are microorganisms, this does not completely
rule out flying reindeer, which only Santa claims to have seen.

2)... There are approximately two billion children (classified as
persons under the age of 18) in the world. Since Santa apparently
doesn't handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children,
that reduces the workload to 15% of the total -- 378 million
according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average rate
of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One
presumes there's at least one good child in each.

3)... Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the
different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he
travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to
822.6 visits per second -- that is to say that for each Christian
household with good children, Santa has 1/1000 of a second to
park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the
stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat
whatever snacks have been left, hop back up the chimney, retrieve
the sleigh, and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of
these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth
(which, of course, is false but we will accept for our
calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household,
a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do what
most of us do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc.
This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second,
or 3000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the
fastest man-made vehicle (the Ulysses space probe) moves at a poky
27.4 miles per second. A conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15
miles per hour.

4)... The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element.
Assuming that each child receives nothing more than a medium-sized
Lego set (about two pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons,
not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On
land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even
granting that "flying reindeer" (see item 1) could pull ten times
the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight or even nine,
but instead some 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload
(discounting the weight of the sleigh) to 353,430 tons. For the
sake of comparison, this is four times the weight of the QE II.

5)... Thus 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates
enormous air resistance, heating up the reindeer just like
spacecraft reentering the atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer
would then absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy . . . per
second . . . each. In short, they will burst into flame almost
instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create
deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team
would be vaporized within 4.26 thousands of a second. Santa,
meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times
greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously
slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015
pounds of force.

In conclusion: if Santa ever did deliver presents on Christmas
Eve, he's dead now.

[Rhubarb]

I liked the conclusion bit best Anais!

[zebra]

There are some sad people in the world to work out Santa's workload...!!

Mind you, DH has expended a lot of brain power trying to calculate how many bricks there are in the world. Hmmm....

[FillyjonkTheFireEater]

um

don't think there were a huge amount of Jews in Northern Europe circa 70AD

Xmas is based on Saturnalia, a very old Roman festical, and also some Norse festivals and so on.

[FillyjonkTheFireEater]

Also Channukah is not a vastly important Jewish festival really compared to say, Pesach/Passover-I kind of always saw it as the other way round-Chanukah balanced Xmas, Jews moved to northern climbes, were cold like everyn=one else, channukah got increased in ritual importance.

[harpsichordcarrier]

psst Filly you do know this thread is four years old...

[BudaBeast]

Wow Filly - this is an old thread!

Obv yesterdays thread got you going!!!

[FillyjonkTheFireEater]

lol

no I didn't



but I stand by my every word

[Bozza]

I actually remember this thread from the first time round. When it came up on active convo's I knew who the op was. Does that suggest I have not had much of a life in the last four years?

[FillyjonkTheFireEater]

OMG I had NO kids when this thread was written!

Ds was but a twinkle that I didn't even know about

freaking hell, one of these posts here is, statistically, going to be on the day he was concieved

eeek

(yes I know thats tmi but sod it)

[FillyjonkTheFireEater]

actually no its pre ds's conception even

I truly had NO KIDS

[Bozza]

I was a rather naive mother of a 1yo. I now have a nearly 6yo and a 2yo.

[Bugsy2]

Good thread though wasn't it Bozza! I can't tell with all the name changes who is still around these days (apart from the obvious ones).
Pleasantly surprised to read that my take on FC hasn't changed in the intervening 4 years.

[Bozza]

Yes it was definitely one of those that stuck out in my mind. Makes me feel a bit old though, because then with a 1yo it was all a bit hypothetical, but now with 5 and 2 yos we are right at the height of the Santa years!