One, because as parents we enjoy the ruse as much as our children do. In a world of doubt and pain and well-founded cynicism we can, for a moment, vicariously experience the rapture of believing that somewhere there is a being who cares for us so much and so selflessly that he will personally deliver sacks of gifts to our home on Christmas Eve, asking nothing in return but that we be good.
Two, because we fear our own mortality and thus do not want our children to grow up too rapidly. We want to keep them in an innocent ‘state of Santa-belief’. So obvious is this desire that sometimes our kids will only pretend to still believe, hoping not to disappoint us.
Three, because as parents we have a hard enough time getting kids to behave property and therefore employ Santa, an omniscient and personable godlike figure, as an extension of our authority.
Four, we intuitively understand what has been verified by Hippocrates magazine in a poll of 200 child psychiatrists, and also supported by academic research at the University of Texas, the University of Chicago and Cornell: It is good for young children to believe the world is filled with fantastic, benign, caring beings; that parents are not taking advantage of the child’s gullibility so long as they do not lie outright when questioned directly; that the discovery of the Santa Claus deception is actually a positive revelation for about two in three children, who can feel pride in their acquired wisdom and can unite with their parents in upholding the myth for younger siblings.
Five, because through ritual and tradition we try to transcend our temporal limits, straining to connect with past generations (in this case, all the way back to the 4th century, when a bishop named Nicholas in the town of Myra in Asia Minor purportedly saved three impoverished girls from a life of prostitution by anonymously throwing purses of gold coins through the open window of their house) and to generations future. Though our own time is short, we collectively breathe eternal life into our surrogate, Santa Claus, who will nobly represent our culture, carry on our good works, and offer comfort and the possibility of miracles to the little children who must inherit the Earth.