Would you lie to your kids about Santa?
Every December, millions of otherwise scrupulously honest parents look their children dead in the eye and describe a man who does not exist. They produce evidence: half-eaten mince pies, boot prints in flour, letters answered in disguised handwriting.
It is, by any plain reading, an organised deception lasting years. It is also, defenders say, the single most magical part of childhood — a gift you can only give by lying.
Would you (or did you) do the Santa thing with your own children?
The counter-argument has teeth. Philosophers who study trust point out that children eventually discover the truth, and that a minority feel genuinely betrayed — not by the story, but by the production values. The flour footprints. The commitment.
And there's a quieter question underneath: whether the myth is really for the children at all, or for the adults who miss believing in something.
Is Santa real, to you?
Perhaps the honest answer is that we don't extend the lie for the children's sake or our own, but because ending it feels like agreeing that the world is exactly what it appears to be. Which nobody quite wants to sign.