Bill Fish: Santa's selfless gift-giving a lesson for life

Professor Bill Fish says through Santa, children get to experience being the recipient of selfless giving.

In the lead up to Christmas, many parents may feel a pang of uncertainty about whether they are somehow deceiving their children when they excite them about Santa's impending visit.

Is this really a form of dishonesty? Or is there something else afoot?

The Ancient Greek philosopher Plato encouraged the use of stories involving fictional elements as an important element in the moral education of young children.

And of course, Santa Claus is a bravura role model for altruistic behaviour: Santa is happy and kind, gives to all equally and - most importantly - gives entirely selflessly, without any expectation of thanks or reward.

What is critical to Santa, though, is that Santa is enacted. It is not just that we tell children stories about someone performing altruistic deeds; through Santa, children actually get to experience being the recipient of selfless giving.

Through living these experiences, children learn to love and value the characteristics Santa embodies.

As children get older, this in turn inspires them to explore being more like Santa themselves.

As parents, we can further encourage this by introducing them to the pleasures of selfless giving (say, by allowing them to choose gifts for other children and donating them to Kmart's Wishing Tree Appeal).

So even if we see ourselves as indulging in a certain amount of deception with Santa Claus, it can perhaps be excused on the grounds that it plays an important role in teaching children about altruism. But even then, the case of Santa Claus is not quite as fictional as we might fear.

Philosophers often distinguish between the essential and accidental properties of an object, where essential properties are those that are essential to something's being what it is: if it didn't have these properties, it would be a different thing.

When it comes to Santa, then, we can ask: what properties does Santa have to have to be Santa, and which are merely accidental?

Well, the red suit, North Pole postcode, and preferred point of entry to a property all look to be accidental - after all, these features vary across different times and different cultures.

But altruistic character traits and selfless gift-giving?

Those properties seem essential to Santa - they are the threads that link all the way back to the original Saint Nicholas of Myra. Santa is someone who gives gifts with no expectation of thanks or reward, just for the pleasure that they will bring to the recipient.

If we focus on these essential properties when we talk to children about Santa - if children think about Santa as the bearer of these properties, and see the red suit as how we imagine Santa to be - then when their stockings are filled on Christmas Eve by someone who has no expectation of thanks or reward, their stockings are being filled by someone who has all of Santa's essential properties.

In such a case, there will be more truth to Santa's visit than we might have ever imagined.

- Professor Bill Fish is a lecturer in philosophy at Massey University's School of Humanities. He also teaches a specially tailored philosophy course to primary and intermediate children.