The teacher had to apologise after claiming Santa was not real
3:55pm UK, Sunday December 04, 2011
A New York teacher has apologised after telling her class of seven and eight-year-olds there was no such thing as Santa Claus.
Leatrice Ann Eng, 58, called each of the students' parents with a yuletide mea culpa for her gaffe.
Ms Eng was in the middle of a lesson about the North Pole on Tuesday when one of her students pointed out that was where Santa Claus lives.
The teacher replied that not only was there no Santa but it was their mums and dads who left their presents under the tree.
The comment outraged parents who branded her a "real-life Scrooge".
"It's sad. She was wrong," said Irene Hoffman, a mother of three children at George W. Miller Elementary School in Nanuet, New York.
"This whole thing is being blown out of proportion. I think we should focus on our children's education and just move on."
Do we have the right to tell a child Santa Claus is a legend? Honestly, I don’t really care about. My 7 year-old sister still believes in this and I don’t feel the right to break her imagination about all this “Christmas magic” thing. What I care more about is all this concept of Christmas and how it became important, even essential for companies. Christmas : a nice old man with a white beard or a real profitable business ?
To understand this phenomenon, we have to come back to the early 1800s with St Nicholas, formerly bishop of Myra (an old city of actual Turkey), imagined by Washington Irving as an Elfin Dutch burgher with a clay pipe who comes down chimneys to bring gifts to people. After lots of poems, and all kind of portrays, he became Santa Claus, icon of Christmas consumerism, largely popularized by Coca Cola ads. This history has its importance.
Indeed, today French people spend around 500 euros for Christmas gifts, and they seem really cheap because English people can spend around twice more to celebrate Christmas! Lots of companies wait for Christmas to increase their sales around 10 times compared to another month of the year. And people, even during economic crisis context seem to stop looking “sad” news about failures of European economy and try to be happy by buying and offering gifts to their family and friends.
Christmas became so important that even a teacher has to apologize for telling the truth to children, is it for Christmas Magic or for Christmas Business? The only thing I know is that we are December 5th and I am part of the 70% of people who still don’t have any gifts to offer, and certainly 50% of people who don’t have any idea of what I can offer to my girlfriend. Any ideas?
Matthieu Demey
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