Baidarka

For many children the Santa Claus myth is their first meaningful religious experience. It is also the first great practical joke played over and over on every generation. For many the revelation that Santa is not real is a traumatic experience but it is also an initiation (hazing?) into the real world. The child is immediately asked to join into the mass conspiracy and to keep the secret from other children.
The child not only suffers from the loss of a cherished belief but this is accompanied by the feeling of betrayal. The child has been lied to by parents and older siblings,the entire society, TV stations, shopping malls, have all conspired to play a trick (how ever benevolent the intentions) on each succeeding generation of children.
We tend to dismiss as trivial the traumas of childhood and to see as harmless the Santa Claus fantasy.
My question is this. How does the Santa Claus experience affect our later religious development?
Does it instill skepticism? Does it teach us to pretend to believe things that we really don't believe?
Does it create a kind of mental separation in which many are able to believe the unbelievable?
Is the Santa Class myth a BS inoculation?

Abacus

Considering that most of those children will grow up to believe the Jesus is Risen myth, it must not be working very well.

Straight Hate

I was raised by two parents who, while very religious, told me from day one that Santa Claus did not exist (but that I could pretend he did every 25th).

I suppose if one wanted to reach far enough they could trace my current view all the way back to my parents indirect lesson that you shouldn't believe everything you feel/see/read/hear, but I feel my own atheist position is attributed more to my former sect's own teaching (we're the ONLY way, all other churches are false, blah, blah). being conditioned in such a manner for 15 years and then finding out that The Truth was merely an expirement started in 1897 destroys faith rather quickly.

sullster

Fundies usually do not let their children believe in Santa. Thus, it seems that they support a BS innoculation,as Baidarka terms it, yet with a huge catch.

The fundies seem to desire that their children be innoculated to not believe in any fantasy people, excepting of course their white robed Jeebus.

The fundy innoculation is like a vaccine which keeps a person from getting sick from a hundred different colds and then lets them catch their death from influenza.