Does the bearded old man exists? (what if he wasn't?)

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Up to what age is it normal for a child to believe in Santa? Is it good to encourage fiction and set up every year the staging of the magical arrival of gifts, or would it be better to overlook it? And how to handle the discovery that the bearded old man in red dress exists only in the imagination? Not many people ask these questions while they prepare the packages requested in the famous letter addressed to the North Pole.
And - although there are not many - there really are research on the benefits (or damage) of believing in Santa Claus.

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IMAGINATION IN POWER

It seems first of all that there is no danger of making children believe santa is real. Contrary to what was thought until a short time ago, even very young children are well able to distinguish between imagination and reality.

"When children" pretend to ", they exercise a crucial capacity from an evolutionary point of view: that of imagining alternative ways in which reality could be," wrote Alison Gopnik, authoritative psychologist who deals with cognitive development in children.

It is a useful exercise to train counterfactual reasoning skills. In short, brainwashing on how the old man can deliver the gifts all over the world in one night or go down with his big belly from the narrow mantel of the fireplace, would be the same type of imagination required to find the solution to a scientific problem.

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NOT REALLY A LIE

Even without thinking of being able to encourage future careers as inventors, most experts agree that believing in Santa Claus, like many other fantastic creatures, is a normal phase of cognitive development.

"At the end of the day, the one about Santa Claus is not a real lie, but a sort of exhortation to participate in a fantasy story," says Jacqueline Wooleey, a psychologist at the University of Texas.

But there are also some bastian opposites, for example David Kyle Johnson , professor of philosophy, which considers that of Santa Claus "an unnecessary lie" that undermines confidence in the great. According to him, the discovery of the truth could provoke trauma.

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THE AGE OF INNOCENCE

Up to five years, children usually believe unconditionally in Santa Claus. At seven there are many who doubt, at nine don't believe anyone anymore.
But, contrary to what one tends to think, revelation does not come suddenly. Even what has the appearance of a dramatic incident, for example, dad or mum caught at night in flagrante of crime to place gifts under the tree, is usually only the confirmation of a previous suspect. If the child has not yet reached the right age, it is possible that even such evidence does not make his faith collapse.

Two researchers have investigated in a study some years ago the reaction of 52 children to the discovery of the truth. In most cases they realized this on their own, and most expressed positive feelings after the revelation. Or, if little drama happened, it was still short-lived. On the other hand, parents were brought back to nostalgia and sadness. Which, as another study shows, a key role: how much the child believes it depends also on how much they have invested in the fantasies and how they are elaborated the stories they tell.

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The Clue

Slotterback analyzed more than a thousand letters addressed to Santa from 1998 to 2003 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, described in the book The psychology of Santa : many children asked the old man questions about how he was able to make his prodigious journeys, but they concluded saying they were sure of his existence.
Whether it is "dissonance" (you can recognize the rubber band that holds the fake beard, or the shoes of the father disguised as Santa Claus), for the doubts instilled because the myth to a certain point presents too many inconsistencies, for each child at a certain point

It is time to do two plus two

When signals are received that the time has come, better according to the psychologists (written in the book ) do not make "revelations" (unless you have to answer direct question) but let the truth be discovered gradually by the children themselves ... perhaps by stopping to disguise the calligraphy on the tickets left by Santa, or sowing some clues useful for their investigation. If they arrive on their own, it will be a small milestone for them, a welcome to the world of adults. And they can always console themselves by helping to set up the staging of Santa Claus for younger brothers and sisters. ...

Big thanks to @suesa and the whole @steemstem team for this opportunity

Merry Christmas everyone!!!