Is Santa Claus Real Or Not? What Kids And Parents Should Know This Christmas About The Jolly Man In The Red Suit

He's mostly known as the jolly and portly bearded man who delivers gifts throughout the world to good boys and girls—or so the story goes. But whether or not parents should tell their kids about Santa Claus remains up for debate.

“Not only is the Santa myth harmless, but it might actually be good for kids’ cognitive development,” wrote Melanie Wenner Moyer, parenting advice columnist for Slate. “Fantastical stories foster a type of imaginative play that sparks creativity, social understanding and even – strange as it may sound – scientific reasoning.”

Moyer categorizes Santa Claus as a “good lie,” one that is used for a child’s sake and not as a way for a parent to avoid responsibility. Other pro-Santa advocates argue that although a man might not actually come down chimneys with a bag full of toys on Christmas Eve, Santa Claus is grounded in truth and represents the spirit of the season. The real Saint Nicholas was a bishop who lived in what is now modern-day Turkey in the fourth century and bestowed an inheritance of gold on a destitute family by throwing it through the window.

“I don’t think it’s a bad thing for kids to believe the myth of someone trying to make people happy if they’re behaving,” said Dr. Matthew Lorber, a child psychiatrist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. “Imagination is a normal part of development and helps develop creative minds.”

Others suggest the lie is unjustified and actually not all that helpful for a child’s imagination.

“The Santa lie – does not actually promote imagination or imaginative play,” psychologist Dr. David Johnson wrote in Psychology Today. “Imagination involves pretending, and to pretend that something exists, one has to believe that thing doesn’t exist. Tricking a child into literally believing that Santa exists doesn’t encourage imagination, it actually stifles it. If you really want to encourage imagination in your children, tell them Santa doesn’t exist, but that you are going to pretend like he does anyway on Christmas morning.”

Ultimately, it’s up to the parent to decide what they want to tell their children about Santa, though those that don't support the Santa myth can take measures in their own hands. At the Westgate Mall in Amarillo, Texas, an evangelical pastor was heard shouting “Santa Claus does not exist!” on Saturday.