Is Santa Real? - Welcome To The Neighborhood (A Mister Rogers Tribute Podcast)

Welcome to the Neighborhood, a Mr. Rogers tribute podcast. I'm your host, Rick Lee James of rickleejames.com, and I run the Mr. Rogers Quotes Twitter account found @MrRogersSay. As we again walk into this podcast neighborhood, I want you to know that no matter where you are from, you are welcome here. I'm glad to be your neighbor. Every daughter, every son, every tribe, and every tongue, in the spirit of Fred Rogers and the life of welcome that he lived, welcome to the neighborhood. Well, the topic of our show this week is a special holiday episode topic. It's of episode 1261 of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. The episode was titled "Is Santa Real?" Now, in episode 1261 of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, Mister Rogers arrives with a Santa Claus costume, which he tries on and finds that it is much too big for him. In thinking of someone who might be able to wear the costume, Mister Rogers calls Chef Brockett on the phone at his bakery. At the bakery, Chef Brockett is working on plans to add a soda shop as part of his business, but he gladly takes a break to try on the Santa suit that Mr. Rogers brings by. Chef Brockett surprises the others in the shop by coming into the shop wearing the Santa suit. This leads Betty Aberlin and François Clemmons to talk about how they were afraid of Santa Claus. When they were children. When Chef Brockett later appears in the Land of Make-Believe dressed as Santa, Daniel Striped Tiger is afraid that Santa knows everything about him, especially when he's bad or good. And this scares him because he isn't always good. In the course of the episode, Daniel is assured that good people aren't always good, but the important thing is to try to be good. Mister Rogers helps children know that Santa can look like anyone, and anyone can look like Santa. Not only does Mister Rogers show a full Santa costume in a way that isn't scary for kids, but he also sets children's minds at ease about two great truths. The first truth is that Santa is not a spy, so he can't see and know everything you do. The second truth is that nobody is good all the time, which means that every good person sometimes does bad things. Listen to this quote by Fred Rogers about this particular episode: Kids are very, very concerned about omnipotent beings because they think that their parents are that. And that they themselves really have no life apart from that view of their parents. And so I demythologized to a certain extent that character of Santa Claus. Then Fred Rogers, in the same interview when he was talking about the show, was asked, "Who criticized the show?" Because this was one of the episodes that received a fair amount of criticism. He responded, "The people who wanted to continue to use Santa Claus as a club." Santa Claus, if he's used at all in the family tradition, should embody the spirit of giving and receiving and understanding rather than "you better be good or Santa Claus won't come." I like that quote by Fred Rogers. Where is the line between the holiday fun of pretending and just plain being dishonest. Is it okay to tell our children about Santa? A couple of years ago, the website Fatherly published an interview with psychologist and parenting expert Justin Coulson about this subject. Dr. Coulson thinks that parents are overcomplicating the whole thing. Tell your kid the truth, the whole truth, And nothing but the truth, says Coulson. In the article with Father Lee, Coulson is asked, "What about people who would say telling your kids Santa isn't real takes away some of the fun of Christmas?" He answers, "I would argue that the magic of Christmas can be even stronger if they know the truth about Santa from the beginning. Kids play make-believe all the time." and they find joy in that. They can pretend to be superheroes, cowboys, doctors, or whatever they want. They know none of it is real, but that doesn't make playing less fun. In fact, the fantasy can genuinely add to the enjoyment. There's some great research that shows that kids with greater senses of imagination actually have a better understanding of the lines between fantasy and reality. Then Dr. Colson was asked, "Do you think there's a downside to keeping the whole Santa Claus mythos alive?" He answers, "The other major reason I have for telling the truth is that when we use a coercive, manipulative strategy to get our kids to behave, we are relying on extrinsic contingencies by telling them to be good in order to get what they want. And once that motivation is gone, how do we know they'll still feel compelled to behave? It's morally, ethically, and scientifically dubious at best. Research shows that kids who are lied to by their parents are more likely to lie themselves. So it is always a good idea to tell the truth. If possible. Don't use Santa as a tool for motivating your kid. Let them grow through fantasy and imagination. Letting them grow through fantasy and imagination is positive. Manipulation and lying to them are almost always negative. They're going to figure it out in due time, and there's a risk that they'll feel like you've broken their trust. So at this point, let me ask you what you think. If you celebrate Christmas, how do you handle Santa Claus in your house? I think it's a good question for us to dwell on. How do we talk about Santa? How do we talk about pretending? What would be the kindest and best way to do this?

Well, it's good to welcome back the person I call the Mr. McFeely of our show, David Dalt. David is a teacher at Loyola University in Chicago. Chicago, and he's an expert at helping people tell their stories. He produces engaging, innovative media for public radio, public television, and public events. He is the executive producer of and host of Things Not Seen: Conversations About Culture and Faith, which airs weekly in Chicago and is distributed by PRX. He also is the executive producer of The Francis Effect podcast, as well as many other things. David is a very busy man. I call him the Mr. McFeely of our program because he always brings something new and interesting to our conversation, and I am so glad for that. David, welcome back to the neighborhood.

Rick, it is so good to be back with you, and I am glad to reconnect with all the listeners of the Welcome to the Neighborhood podcast. I have enjoyed very much all of the episodes you've been making since our season ended, and I'm hoping and looking forward to when I can be back with you in a more regular way. But I'm, I'm so thrilled to be with you today.

Well, same here, and it's been way too long as far as us having a conversation together, and I'm really glad for this opportunity to chat. And this is a special episode that has to do with the holiday season. And we, in the intro to this show leading up to our conversation, we were talking about a particular episode of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood where he deals with imagination and pretending, and he actually wears the Santa Claus suit and it's too big for him, and several different things happen. And I won't recap everything that I spoke about in the intro of the show, but it makes for some interesting conversation, especially for us, I think, as parents. And I did want to let our listeners know as we begin our part of the conversation together that we're going to be speaking about Santa Claus today in a bit more of an adult way than you might want to talk with your children. So that just means that if you have children who are listening with you right now, you might want to turn off the show and come back to it later when you have some time alone without your children in the room, just because I know parents, uh, we tend to talk about this subject in different ways. So With that, David, what are some of your thoughts on this matter that we're going to discuss today?

Well, I'd be interested to talk first of all about some of the choices that your family has made and my family has made regarding how we talk about Santa in our homes. And I'll start by simply saying, you know, my wife Kira and I had long conversations about this when our children were very young, before they were verbal. We were talking about kind of how we would be engaging with, I guess, what we could call the fables of our society, like Santa Claus, like the Tooth Fairy, like the Easter Bunny. The decision that we made— and our home is a Christian home, and the way that we understand that is we take the reality of Jesus Christ to be a reality that is more like kind of you and me, physical beings. We don't think about Christ as a mythological figure, but we really asked ourselves and thought about what it was going to be like if we were to suddenly say, well, there's a very real person who comes down the chimney, and there's There's a very real adult-sized bunny that shows up and gives you, gives you candy. And there's a very real kind of fairy that comes when your teeth fall out and gives you a little change under your pillows. And we wondered what it would be like for our children to find out one after the other that these entities that we said at first were very real weren't real. We were worried what effect that would have when we said, and also Jesus Christ, your Lord and Savior, is very real. And they would start to say, well, is Jesus Christ real in the way that the Easter Bunny is real, or in the way that, that Santa Claus is real, or the Tooth Fairy Mary is real. I recognize that different families make very different choices around this, both from the religious side and from the, from the side of the kind of legend and mythology. And I respect families raising their children the way that they wish to. For our family, we made the choice to kind of make a bright line between entities like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the way that we talk about someone like Jesus Christ or Moses or the Virgin Mary. And so those become important in our home and get talked about in a way that is different in its quality than the way that we talk about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. And so what we'll say, what we've been saying to our children since they were verbal, is that it's a very important part of our culture, it's a very important part of kind of the way that families raise their children, and that oftentimes people will show up in spaces like schools dressed as Santa Claus or dressed as the Easter Bunny. Both of these things happened at my children's school, and when that would happen, we would talk about, you know, it's important important not to simply point and say, "That's just a guy in a suit," but it's also important to recognize that it's not more than a guy in a suit when that happens. And if you ever have questions about that, you can come back and you can talk to Mama and I about that. So that's how we chose to deal with this, but I'd be interested— Rick, you've got a son that's slightly younger than our kids who are 9 and 11. I think your son is 7. Talk to me a little bit about how you and your wife are choosing to raise your son.

Well, I think it's very interesting to have conversations like this, especially when we're talking about, like, when we use a word like what is real or even what is truthful, you know, at times when we're talking with children. Because I've always tried to be very truthful with my son about things, but I don't know that we've ever discouraged him necessarily from believing in Santa at times. And I just want to share quickly as where my thinking comes from a little bit. Fred Rogers used to say children have a wonderful way of discerning the truth, even when we think it's being hidden. And I have actually found that to be true with, with my son. So I'll often talk about, you know, when we're talking about Santa or things like that, when he asks questions, I'll actually say things like, well, as the legend says, you know, things happen like this, some legends say this, or— but I don't know that I've ever actually spelled it out for him. And I'm waiting for the day when he kind of asks us that question. But at this point, he also, in addition to thinking like Santa is real, he kind of thinks Mario is real and Luigi, you know what I mean? Like there's a sense in which in his imagination they're real. He's an only child. And so he, he goes to a lot of places in his imagination, say with his toys. And Fred Rogers would talk a lot about the imagination and the importance of them kind of working out different things in their personality through conversations they're having sometimes with people that they pretend about. So we're kind of letting him guide us along the way a little bit in the pretending realm with this. But at the same time, we're Christians as well. And so we are very adamant about certain things about the faith that we say, yes, we trust these things and we believe these are true. But one thing I was sharing with you just before we started recording today, we've been reading a book together each night called the Christmas Chronicles, and one of the books in that is The Autobiography of Santa Claus, and it's written by Jeff Gwynn, who's a historian, and of all things, he's written about not only like St. Nicholas, he's written about things that are completely the other end, like Charles Manson, and so he's a pretty knowledgeable guy. So one approach that we've kind of had is using books like this to talk about the actual person of Nicholas and kind of looking through history. And this book in particular takes some of the different legends and goes through time from back in the 2nd century up till our present day. And you get to meet different historical figures and characters, and it's all a lot of imagination mixed in with real things around it. So we kind of have fun with the imagination realm. And what I want to come back around to with all that before I want to hear from you again, I once posted something online It was a quote from, I believe it was Frodo in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And it was— I can't even remember the exact quote, but somebody wrote back to me on there and they said, you know, that's not real, right? And I wrote back and I said, well, it may not be real, but it's true, you know. And it's the whole idea of there are some truths we can actually bring about through things that are fanciful. Through things that are imaginative. Fred Rogers himself, every episode would take you to the land of make-believe where you could have a space to pretend and to work out some actual real-life problems in a space that was safe and in a space where you could just imagine and pretend and work out different scenarios. And it was very important to Fred Rogers that there be the house where Mr. Rogers was, and then that there was the land of make-believe where pretend happen. So I think we're trying to do kind of both of those things. Similar to what you've said is we want to be very centered around what we feel is true to our faith, but at the same time making room for some of that pretend and some of that make-believe to help work out some other things. And so I don't know if we're right or wrong, and I don't know if any parent really has the full answer on this. I'm open to a lot of ways of thinking about it, but that's kind of how we've approached it at our home.

I really like what you're saying about imagination, and that dovetails with what in the earlier part of this episode you talked about in terms of how Fred Rogers talked about Santa Claus, that if Santa Claus draws you more towards the notion of giving to others and caring for others during this season, then probably however you're teaching Santa Claus, you're teaching Santa Claus in a way that is useful and helpful. And I'm thinking also about your references to Dr. Coulson in the earlier part of the episode and the notion of using Santa Claus as a kind of manipulation of imagination or manipulation of behavior. In our culture, we have a real problem figuring out the line between what we might call instrumental giving. In other words, I'm going to give you something in the hopes that you give something back to me, and what we might call selfless giving or charitable giving, the notion that I'm going to give something to you not in the hope that I'm going to get something of equal or greater value back from you, but because you have dignity and because I love you. And because you deserve to have good things just like I believe I deserve to have good things. I think that oftentimes even in our families we reduce our love and we reduce a lot of things to kind of instrumental giving. If you don't eat all of your peas, you won't get a chance to play Mario Kart or whatever like that. And that, that is part of a larger system that we exist in where a lot of our relationships are reduced to being instrumental relationships, a kind of economic relationship if you, if you want to go in that direction. And one of the things I really love about Fred Rogers is he, without being preachy about it, he was able to lean into the Gospels and find a higher plane of human relationship than a simply instrumental relationship. I'm not going to love you simply because I hope that I can get something from you. I'm going to love you because you are special just like you are. And to me, that's such a profound message, not only to say to our children, but to say as adults to each other.. And I find myself when I'm on social media, and I find myself when I'm in social situations, although right now during the pandemic I'm not so much in those, but I find myself reflecting on, you know, how am I elevating the dignity of the person that I'm talking to instead of trying to score a point on them or get something from them? Are we both coming out of this exchange with greater dignity and with greater love and the greater capacity to love? I think that's part of what Fred Rogers was trying to teach us as children, and I think that that's what, as I return to his messages as an adult, that's what I resonate with, is this notion that if we're going to bring in a story like Santa Claus, we're going to bring Santa Claus into our family in a way that will help us elevate the dignity of our interactions and the dignity of our love to one another, rather than trying to make it be, well, Santa's always watching. This is Dr. Coulson's sort of notion, sort of like a camera on the wall or the Alexa on your table, always watching, always listening, and always trying to figure out the next thing that you're either going to do to show that you you deserve the toy that you want or you don't deserve the toy that you want. I think that that creates a lot of dynamics in families. Certainly there were dynamics there when I was growing up, and I've spent a lot of my life trying to unlearn those dynamics. I guess what I would ask you, Rick, is, you know, as parents sometimes— and I don't know if this is true for you, it's certainly true for me and my wife— sometimes we're tired and we simply want our children to do what we've asked them to do simply because we've asked them to do And sometimes it's so easy to just reach for that coercive control and say, "Listen, if you don't do this, there's going to be no nice thing that you want." I'm curious, how do you in your family, how do you and your wife, when you're thinking about your son, how do you keep the interactions elevated? And how do you get it so that you're not reaching for that simple manipulative coercive control that both Fred Rogers and Dr. Colson warned us about?

Ah, man, that's a good question. It's a hard question to answer too, because I think we've all fallen into that at times, trying to manipulate our children to make them do something that we want them to do. I don't know if there's any better answer than just, you have to learn to not do that. In some ways, that might be a terrible answer, but there are times when I've had to apologize to my son and to my wife too, for that matter, if I felt like I have kind of crossed that line into manipulating them, like, do this so that this outcome can come about. Like, you, you have to earn my love or earn this. And I, I think that's a really hard thing. And yet one thing we know about somebody like Fred Rogers, for instance, since we're on this podcast, which is a tribute to him, I think if we learn anything from him about things like this, his whole life was about cultivating a personality like the kind that he had and being a person who works to become the person that they want to be. So he wasn't just this kind, beautiful person just by chance. He grew into that. And there are times when he would share stories about when he just got it completely wrong. I love the story that he tells about when he scolded his grandchildren for squirting him with water. Realizing later that he was the one that interrupted their play and that he had to go back and call his grandchild later and say he was sorry. And I think maybe that's part of it. I think any of us are going to have times when we haven't behaved as well as we should as parents, and we certainly probably have all in the worst of ways probably tried to manipulate our children to get something that we want them to do. And it can be so difficult. But I think if we can admit, once again getting back to where I think children will see the truth more than we think they might, I have found that the times when I've apologized to my son and he's been gracious enough to accept that from me means that also he has done that same thing for me in return, that there have been times when he's come to say, "I'm sorry, Daddy," for this and something else, and I hope that we can learn that we don't have to actually perform perfectly all the time. That's something my wife and I do talk about, and I think that gets to the heart of this as parents too. Just as we may have a tendency to try to manipulate our children to perform a certain way, and we want to make sure as parents we're not holding that standard to our own selves, that, that we for some reason are not a worthy parent if we haven't performed the way that we feel like is just and appropriate and right. There is something to be said about trial and error with these things, I think, and being honest enough when we need to, to come back and say, "I'm sorry," and to maybe even correct ourselves on when we have told them wrong. And I think that's perfectly okay, and maybe that's part of the process too of helping them understand that we as parents are not omnipotent and that We're humans like they are, and I, I don't know if that's a good answer, but that's the answer I have for us today.

There's so much in that that I think is good, and I want to circle back to a couple of pieces. One is you're pointing to the fact that relationships take time and they take work. I think sometimes we have— since we've been talking about mythologies, uh, one of the mythologies that we share in our culture oftentimes is that children somehow are innocent and that they come out sort of already with all the skills that they need to be good. And what I'm hearing in your answer is learning the habits of being good and elevating dignity and spreading kind of more love and more care, these are all skills that take effort and they take practice. And it takes also being willing to come back and say, you know, I reached for this but I didn't grasp it that time. Please forgive me and let's try again. As I was listening to you, I was thinking of a strange little poem that a math teacher when I was in high school had on the wall, and it stuck with me all my life. It's a poem that goes, put up in a place that it's easy to see, the cryptic admonishment TTT: when you see how depressingly slowly you climb, it's well to remember that things take time. And raising children can't be an absentee effort. And being a spouse, being in a deep, intimate, loving relationship, even if you're not married to someone, it takes effort, it takes emotional vulnerability, and it takes the willingness to try and fail, ask for forgiveness, and try again. If within that relationship both parties feel like the other is trying to elevate their dignity and trying to, to not treat them as instruments. I think that these are good ways of embodying kind of what Fred Rogers was trying to say, not only in this episode but in the entirety of his television career. This notion that we're not there to— we're not there to use each other, and we're not there to get things out of each other. We're here to enjoy the genius of each other, because your child is a genius at being your child. Your wife is a genius at being being your wife. You're a genius at being Rick Lee James. And interrupting the play, the genius of that, is in some ways making the relationships less. Trying to stop for a moment and get something out of you other than the best Rick Lee James that I can ask you to be, I'm asking for less of you, and I'm asking for you to interrupt something in the same way that Fred Rogers interrupted the play of his grandchildren. I really like your answer because, I mean, there's so much richness there, and I feel that it's rooted in kind of what Fred was trying to teach us. And I love the fact that I just called him Fred as if we were on a first-name basis. I kind of feel in these conversations sometimes like we are. So if we're going to be sort of offering any advice, I don't know that we're even in a position to offer advice to listeners, but if you were to sum up in maybe one or two sentences what you think the takeaway from both our conversation but also what Dr. Colson wrote, but especially what Fred Rogers taught, kind of how would you summarize what's most important for parents to be thinking about, not only with Santa Claus, but with regard to the entire Christmas season?

Yeah, well, you know what, I'm, I'm just gonna defer to Fred Rogers here because I have a couple of quotes right in front of me, and I think he answers it probably better than I could. And if anybody is able to give advice, it's probably not me, it would be him. So I'm gonna do these two short little quotes that I think answer that question from my end. One thing is, is something Fred always would say, was pretty well known for saying this, I think. He would say the greatest The biggest gift you can ever give is your honest self. And I think that's one thing that's very important through all of this. And then another quote that comes to mind says, no matter what our children ask us, we can always say, I'm not quite sure how to explain that right now, but we'll talk about it later. That's a promise that needs to be kept. But as a response to questions about touchy subjects, it's often the simplest truth of all. And I think maybe what Fred was saying there might be some of the best advice that I could give to anybody today. It's okay to not have the answers about these things, and it's okay to say to your kids, "Let's talk about it later because I need some more time to think about it." Uh, we are such an instant gratification society. I think it's as important to teach our children that it's okay to wait as it is anything else that we might try to teach them. I wish I had all the answers in the moment. Usually I'm one of those people that, you know, 3 days later I think of a comeback. But boy, this would have been a great zinger, you know, if I would have added that to a conversation. But I'm just not that fast or quick-witted usually. I think it's really okay for us to take time and stop and tell our children when we're unsure about something or that we don't know how to talk to them about this right now, to take some time and come back. But to really be honest and to be as honest as we can be, because it truly is a great gift that we can give, they will find quickly in this world that there are a lot of people who are not honest with them. And hopefully, as their parents or guardians or people who love them, we can embody what it means to be truthful and honest to them in the most loving and kind ways possible.

I really like that. You know, you're a gift to me, Rick Lee James.

Thank you.

You are as well, friend.

Well, incidentally, this episode aired on February 19th, 1973. This is the first series episode to use the closing song "It's Such a Good Feeling." This closing song continued as the closing song until the end of the series. Series in 2001. As I leave you with these questions about how to handle Santa Claus in your house and how to celebrate Christmas and how to best care for our children, I think maybe one of the best things I could do is leave you with that closing song by Fred Rogers himself, "It's Such a Good Feeling." It's such a good feeling to know you're alive.

It's such a happy feeling. You're growing inside, and when you wake up ready to say, "I think I'll make a snappy new day." It's such a good feeling, a very good feeling, the feeling you know that I'll be back when the day is new, and I'll have more ideas. For you, and you'll have things you'll want to talk about. I will too. You always make each day such a special day. You know how, by just your being you. Only one person in the whole world like you, that's you yourself. I'll be back next time. Bye-bye.

Thank you for joining us here this week in the neighborhood. Music featured on today's podcast was Nouvelle Noël by Kevin MacLeod. Special thanks to the Mr. Rogers Say community on Twitter. I'm your host, Rick Lee James.

My Twitter account is @RickLeeJames.

My website is rickleejames.com.

My other podcast is Voices in My Head: The Rick Lee James Podcast.

And I look forward to being with you again next time. Until we meet again, remember, you make each day a special day. You know how? By just your being you. There's only one person in this whole world like you. And people can like you exactly as you are.