The Santa Clause Syndrome

By Ethan Indigo Smith

This Christmas… be sure to tell your kids a pack of lies and placate their material desires!

Symptoms to look out for this Christmas. Why we should never lie to children or childish adults. This year there will be no false idol. Santa Claus never was and this year he’s dead.

This is a description of the affliction Santa Clause Syndrome. Santa Clause Syndrome results in societal complicity in or complacency to lies and the belief that’s ok. Santa Clause Syndrome might be at the root of many mental disorders and nearly all cases of Seasonal Affective Disorder. The Santa Clause Syndrome suggests one industry is a near sham and it’s not Christmas tree growers.

Take a moment to imagine yourself an outsider and visitor to a new culture. Imagine if you will an annual global celebration so fantastic, people excitedly await it all year long. Imagine the celebration correlates the winter solstice. Imagine the celebration is so spectacular and grandiose that it spurs the sales of products worldwide and some businesses exist solely because of it. Imagine that nearly all businesses profit from it and promote it. Imagine that the main part of the celebration, for most people, aside from sparkling decorations and elaborate gift giving, is openly lying to young children! Most everyone celebrates the holiday, but those who do not celebrate it are expected to go along with the tradition of broadly lying to children and accepting the excessive materialism.

It’s a children’s holiday, they look forward to it the most, children and the profiting corporations, of course. Children receive presents, bought from the corporations, and are deceived about the goodness of the world and the existence of a powerful fat man from the North Pole who watches them. ‘It is better to give than to receive’ they are told along with elaborate lies about said fat man. But the world is about getting they observe. Children inquire of their parents and strangers alike about the phenomenon of the holiday and the fat man. And they find everybody is in on the lie, practically everyone lies to them or is expected to lie to them. Even the local and national news spouts lies.

The celebration involves cutting down young trees for decoration and wrapping gifts in paper from other trees and putting them under the tree on the last night of the celebration and saying the fat man did it. The children are told the fat traverses the civilized world on a sled powered by flying reindeer, the lead one with a glowing nose, stopping by the homes of good little boys and girls, entering through chimneys, staying crispy clean the whole time, having cookies as he drops off plastic guns and dolls. And the fat man, Santa Claus isn’t just generous, he’s mysterious. He doesn’t simply give because it’s better than receiving. He and his elf workers in the North Pole watch all the children of Earth all year long. He decides who receives based on who’s been naughty and nice.

The Santa Claus story is as about as elaborate as any childish conjuration and everyone knows the majority of the story. We were all influenced by it in one way or another and most of us are glad to share it with little children. Most everybody in the world is aware of it.

It is the first load of garbage people have to mentally digest. It’s the first lie that everybody is in on and everybody is fed. The main part of celebrating Christmas is lying to little children. And the lie is completely over the top too with abstract nuances that most everyone can validate to the kiddies who question, so that by the time your average kid contemplates the world and realizes the lie, it is well understood that not only are lies commonplace, but people will lie happily -and you should accept it for to accept gets you gifts. Children are normally so overwhelmed with gifts that there really is no inclination to question the global celebration of lies. Eventually though, through persistent and maturing questions and exposure, the lie is realized.

Christmas is supposed to be a celebration of the birth of Christ and yet for most it’s ultimately a celebration of lying to kids, the Santa Clause. Everyone who was lied to by one’s parents, teachers, strangers and local weathermen in synchronization about something they were steered into immense emotional attachment was exposed to and now is possibly burdened with Santa Clause Syndrome. The holiday is all about lying to kids and it trains people to be complicit liars.

It’s disgusting to lie to children, and this is no lie to protect their innocent minds, it’s a total conjuration. The worst part of the celebration of lying is not the lie itself, but the results of it. Lying to kids in this way is a mockery of a tradition substituted with a tradition of mockery. But that’s only stage one of the illness. Stage One is transmission of the syndrome, lying to the unaware youth. Stage Two is acceptance of adult lies. Just like a kid sees the local weather reporter tracking Santa’s flight path an adult with stage two Santa Clause Syndrome will believe other lies in the news, like conventional food is just as good as organic or there is nothing wrong with Genetically Modified Organisms. Stage Three is telling adult lies. Stage Three Santa Clause Syndrome is also indicated by people who would lie about other topics such as the safety of “conventional crops” (conventional means experimental, large factory farms are not the convention) or genetically modified organisms as crops for you to eat, in order to profit. Or war. Or hemp/marijuana/drug prohibition. Or nuclear experimentation. Or insert any number of lies here ____ concerning corruption people tolerate and perpetuate. Stage four is notable in attacks on those who question the lies.

The Santa Clause Syndrome is behind every lackadaisical approach to any line that is a potential lie of major consequence. If you don’t question what you’ve been told, the incomplete information, if you don’t proceed with the natural impulse of any human over the age of four, you quite likely have Santa Clause Syndrome. SCS is the main reason people ignore serious issues.

It is no coincidence that around the time when young children begin to ask the eternal why, a series of whys in regard to every subject, they are taught the Santa Claus, which teaches them, teaches us, to replace the endless series of why into an endless series of what. Knowing is made less important than obtaining.

In adulthood we are exposed to big and sometimes seriously dark and disturbing lies, but lies the same and more importantly, because of Santa Clause Syndrome, reaction the same as well. Adult lies, lies told by authorities, are often backed up by the local news reporters and retailers, just like Santa Claus. And just like a child adults too stop asking why in exchange for what.

The Santa Clause Syndrome teaches us that once we are in on the lie we are adult. It is as if it is the first test of adulthood, once you know the lie, the adults check that you repeat the lie to those younger than you. Stage One Santa Clause Syndrome is the first indoctrination to adulthood, the first test that you’re in is if you are in on the lie. Beyond that Santa Claus teaches us that learning of and exposing lies is disturbing. The result is adults, dolts and are basically as gullible as your average four year old, that or liars themselves.

Stage One Santa Clause Syndrome: Insistence on celebrating lie posing as tradition. Elaborate intent on deception of youth including distraction with sparkling decoration and gifts. Repeating the Santa Clause to children.

Stage Two: Servitude of authority to the extent they believe whatever the proper authority states. The childhood belief in Santa Claus and trust of authority leads to adulthood belief that the government, corporate and religious institutions they trust do not lie. Acceptance of adult lies.

Stage Three: Instituting great and broad lies for trifle and temporary gains, often as a way to psychologically trick themselves, as well as others, to believe what they are doing is ok. Conjuration of adult lies.

Stage Four: One has all the symptoms of stages one through three. Further those with stage four are likely to lash out and attack anyone who suggests there is no Santa Claus or exposes lies in anyway. Lashing out at anyone who questions lies.

The culture of lies, the mental and materialistic enslavement of the Santa Claus has resulted in a society where understanding is inhibited. People are taught not to question and not to tell the truth so as not to make the babies cry. The Santa Clause Syndrome is responsible for not only materialistic impulses and confusion as to what’s right and wrong, but worst of all makes people little tolerate and perpetuate great and broad lies.

Evidence of the Santa Clause Syndrome is everywhere. Many personal and societal problems can be theoretically traced to it, but also many institutions can be rationally broken down as disturbingly negative or outright useless when considering it. Most evidently the Santa Clause Syndrome virtually proves the psychiatry industry is a crock based on institutionalization of people, through pharmacology and convincing people that feeling is wrong. It is not based on promoting individuation, bettering the human condition and developing individual and/or collective consciousness and psychiatry is not based on healing people. The psychiatry industry has invented syndromes based on very real human behaviors, but has never once questioned Santa Clause Syndrome.

Instead ritalin is prescribed for kids with ADHD who look out the window while the teacher is talking or shake their leg in class. The invention of this condition was made for the institution. It was arguably concocted so teachers could have an easier time keeping track of thirty plus kids in a class. Psychiatry totally quells free thinking and reinforces traditionalism and institutional adherence as does the Santa Clause Syndrome, SCS. Psychiatry arguably dulls minds, it does not sharpen them. The fact that they come up with ADHD and people in the streets, or in the playground have to suggest it is proof psychiatry and other such liquid ‘sciences’ is at best occasionally interesting jive and more frequently a sham of pharmacological solutions, which is in fact no solution considering the concoctions they administer.

If the opposite were true, if in fact psychiatry were based on bettering the human condition, individually and collectively, psychiatrists would explore conditions which really inhibit people, individually and collectively. They would, and I risk being accused of some excessive and ridiculous thinking here, concentrate on healing people through nutrition and loving attention, not the format they have today, not the format of, for all extents and purposes pharmaceutical lobotomy and desensitizing the thinking and feeling connection people have. Psychiatrists would postulate and explore real sicknesses and syndromes and real healing processes if they had concerns for real individuation.

This year Santa is dead to me. Thank God. This year children will learn the truth if they come around here, the truth about a tradition of lies, which institutes toleration and expansion of lies. This year the blasphemous idol is dead and with that healing from the Santa Clause Syndrome can begin. Merry Christmas!