Leo D.M.J. Aurini - December 22, 2017


Telling Children About Santa Claus


Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

111.16669

Word count

889

Sentence count

51

Harmful content

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I talk about Santa Claus and St. Nicholas, and how they came to be the first people to discover that Santa Claus is not real. Is lying to your kids about this a good or bad thing?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Thank you.
00:00:30.000 Hey, folks. In this video, I'd like to talk about Old Saint Nick, Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas himself.
00:00:42.140 Now, I should start off, premise this video, by saying this is a video for the adults out there.
00:00:49.060 So, if your children are listening in the background, you might want to shut it off right now.
00:00:55.160 And we can have a private chat, mano y mano.
00:01:00.000 So, with that said, I think you understand the topic of this video.
00:01:07.500 From Santa Claus to Saint Nicholas.
00:01:11.260 That event that we all experienced growing up, the first Christmas where we realized that there is no Santa Claus, there are no magical reindeer, and that it's been our parents putting presents under the tree all of this time.
00:01:28.100 You know, this is a big debate that you get in the skeptic circles, in the atheist circles.
00:01:34.460 Is, should you lie to your children about this?
00:01:39.900 Is it appropriate?
00:01:41.400 Because I think for a lot of us, there's quite a bit of heartbreak connected to this discovery.
00:01:48.280 This realization.
00:01:49.860 Even a sense of foolishness.
00:01:53.580 Because, for most of us, for all of us probably, by the time we figure out that Santa Claus is our parents, we should have known it quite some time before.
00:02:04.060 It's not just some kid telling us on the playground that made us realize it, but the fact that he told us and it made perfect sense. 0.92
00:02:14.060 Making us feel foolish.
00:02:15.700 Making us feel tricked. 0.99
00:02:17.640 Making us feel betrayed.
00:02:19.520 And so in the atheist circles, they ask that question, is the magical joy of Santa Claus worth the inevitable heartbreak, the demystification of the world which occurs when you find out that he's not real?
00:02:39.960 And so what should we do about this?
00:02:45.600 Because a world without Santa Claus is a much grayer world, isn't it?
00:02:52.260 It's one much less colorful, much less welcoming, much less heroic.
00:02:57.200 Well, and I would say, I would say, what I would do with my children, when they are old enough to figure out for themselves that Santa Claus isn't real, is to sit them down and explain,
00:03:19.340 no, no, the guy in the red outfit that comes down the chimney, that's not real.
00:03:24.020 Well, that's a simpler version of the truth, which we told you when you were very young.
00:03:33.160 Now, I'm going to tell you about the actual Saint Nicholas.
00:03:40.720 Now, I'm not going to delve into an entire hagiography right here.
00:03:45.440 You know, I'm sure you know about the time that Saint Nicholas punched out the Arian heretic at the Council of Nicaea. 1.00
00:03:52.980 You might not know that of the many miracles that he performed, one of them is still ongoing at the Basilica of San Nicola in Mira.
00:04:03.500 Every year, on December 6th, the local monks harvest, from his burial tomb, the manna that seeps out of it.
00:04:14.880 It's a liquid that has a, it smells like rose water.
00:04:18.740 Every year, it's still seeping out.
00:04:21.080 And they harvest it, and there's apparently many miraculous properties connected to it.
00:04:26.460 So, even, what was he, he lived 270 to 343, I believe?
00:04:33.980 Even 17 centuries after his death, he's still performing miracles.
00:04:38.880 He was the one that originated the trend of anonymous gift-giving.
00:04:46.660 Supposedly, it started off with three young girls that the family could not afford a dowry for them,
00:04:53.480 and this would result in either possibly them being forced into prostitution,
00:04:58.180 or, at the very minimum, everybody assuming they were prostitutes because they were unmarried.
00:05:03.160 And so, St. Nicholas went to the house at night, and the legend varies a little bit.
00:05:08.900 Some of them say he went, you know, every year as one of the daughters came of age,
00:05:13.040 and he threw a sack of gold through the window.
00:05:18.260 When the father of these girls finally caught him on the third year,
00:05:22.440 he said, no, don't thank me, thank God.
00:05:25.400 I had nothing to do with it.
00:05:26.980 And thus, the Christmas tradition of giving one another presents anonymously.
00:05:37.120 So, the story of Santa Claus that we tell to young children,
00:05:41.060 about the magical reindeer coming down the chimney, all of that,
00:05:45.200 it's not false.
00:05:49.280 It's just simplified.
00:05:50.520 And when the children become old enough that they figure it out,
00:05:58.500 or they hear that, no, it's not really happening,
00:06:03.040 we say, well, yeah, you are old enough to understand now.
00:06:07.460 That was the simple mystery, the mystery for children.
00:06:12.680 Now, let's tell you about the deeper mystery.
00:06:16.360 Let's tell you about the Saint Nicholas who actually lived and who did all of this.
00:06:22.280 Let's tell you about the saint who continues to perform miracles to this day.
00:06:27.000 Let's tell you about the beauty of generosity.
00:06:35.920 You see, the Christmas spirit,
00:06:38.100 it's not something on a Hallmark card or on an old black and white movie,
00:06:43.320 but it's a very real and very present force,
00:06:48.920 a grace that exists in our world right now
00:06:54.000 that all of us can participate in.
00:06:57.500 And so, instead of letting the magic fade away
00:07:01.000 as your children grow into teenagers and young adults,
00:07:05.600 teach them about the real magic,
00:07:12.420 the real heroism in this world,
00:07:16.520 embodied by men like Saint Nicholas.
00:07:23.100 Merry Christmas to all of you folks out there,
00:07:26.160 and have a Happy New Year.
00:07:29.780 Farini out.
00:07:35.600 The
00:07:52.520 For
00:07:57.820 You