General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: As a child, did your parents/guardians tell you that Santa brought you gifts at Christmas? [View all]whatthehey
(3,660 posts)by pretending that a fat fur-clad guy with flying reindeer breaks into hundreds of millions of homes on a single night. That particular lie doesn't have much societal impact to be honest, with the possible exception of tacky decorations 4-6 weeks out of the year. Others do however, and raising our children to believe nonsense can have seriously deleterious consequences on their ability to distinguish nonsense from reality. It's not that millions of people spontaneously decide that a herb diluted a hundred million times is a better choice for treating cancer than chemo or surgery after all, or just get the blinding flash that a Canaanite warrior god and his Jewish zombie son/self will cure their kids from a burst appendix by the magical power of prayer. They believe such bullshit because they trusted the parents and surrogate authority figures who filled their heads with that garbage.
Far far fewer people would be credulous marks or get away with being dangerous charlatans if people were instructed in appropriate critical thinking and taught to keep fact and fantasy separate as children.
There is nothing wrong with fantastic magical tales and imaginative make-believe. Not as a child or an adult. I enjoyed and still enjoy both enormously. But it's at best a terrible disservice to confuse them for reality or cause others to be so confused. Keep fairy tales, please, but keep them AS fairy tales.