12/25/2024
Merry Christmas, JRB,
Have you heard of SpringBee? It’s a game you can play on your phone & every time you do, the NUG gets a few cents. Just another example of the ingenuity of the youth fighting for their freedom in Burma.
Thanks for signing the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act along with 49 other bills. I’m sure that Paris Hilton is rejoicing, knowing that the Troubled Teen Industry will be scrutinized.
How did the phone calls with the kiddos go last night? Are you sure you want to be perpetuating the commercial aspects of Christmas by participating in the pretense that Santa flies around dropping presents on “good” children? My relationship with my mother was altered when I found out the truth about that charade & I wish our nation would let go of it.
Since your website is still on the blink, I can detail my experience for you. In 1965, I was the kindergartener who insisted to the naysayers on the playground that Santa was real. When my classmates made some good points about the impossibility of one person visiting so many places in one night, I began to have doubts, so I asked my mom directly while Christmas shopping one day, “are you Santa?”
Her affirmative answer outraged me & I told her she was lying. She then said, “have I ever lied to you?” I should have responded, “yes, you deceived me into thinking there was a Santa.” I’m not that quick.
The intensity of that moment rocked my world, so much so that I wrote about it in grad school when invited to consider whether children thought like adults in a developmental psychology class where I learned about the “theory of mind” construct which explained my gullibility.
Beyond sending the message that grown-ups like to deceive children, the myth of Santa harms economically disadvantaged kids who infer that they are “bad” when Santa does not come to their house.
I like to imagine the day when every child in the world would receive a gift on this day. Let’s work toward that eventuality.
Peace on Earth,
BYBS,
