The other day, Olive was in the carrier as I pottered around the house. It happened that I decided to make a sandwich, and by chance I noticed that one of the sliced cheeses we had in the fridge was called Bergbauerkäse. Naturally, I talked about this to Olive¹:

Did you know that Bergbauerkäse means "Mountain Farmer Cheese" when you translate it literally? Why do you think it has that name²?

Think about it logically: if a potato farmer grows potatoes, and a corn farmer grows corn, then a mountain farmer must be one of those rare individuals who grows mountains! The world doesn't need a lot of mountain farmers, but it does need some: mountains are important for all sorts of things, like skiing, and establishing regional climates, and of course they're the natural homes of dwarves.

Mountain farming is a slow job, for patient people, but I hear it's very fulfilling. What most people really want from their jobs is a sense of accomplishing something meaningful, doing something real, and things don't get much realer than mountains. That's why the Alps are so pretty: they're the product of centuries of mountain-farming by dedicated people all along their length.

Of course, once you get them started (really, you just need to find a handy continental boarder and give one of the continents a good shove), mountains do a lot of the work of raising themselves; that gives the mountain farmers time to get on with their hobbies. Like most farmers, they're crafty, and like to make things; one of the things that they've gotten famous for making is cheese. That's why we can just go to the store and buy a pack of Bergbauerkäse; it's the kind of cheese that mountain farmers like to eat.

I wasn't really thinking much about what I was saying; it was just freeform rambling with a roughly 50/50 mix of truth and entertaining lies. I've been doing this for pretty much my entire life; when I was a child, and more prone to including specific numbers, my parents termed this kind of thing "fictistics."

So why am I ok with this, and less so with more organized lies like Santa? I'm not entirely sure myself, but I think it has to do with persistence of narrative. In general, the true parts of a story are the parts she'll find in other places, that hold together with her overall world view. The false parts are one-offs, that she'll probably never hear again. If she challenges me on a true thing, I'll be able to point her to references demonstrating that truth; if she challenges me on a false thing; I'll back down immediately and admit that I made it up.

And that's the problem with Santa: there are loads of things aimed at children which portray him as real. It's not easy, as a child, to figure it out; just about the only way to do so is to read things aimed above your age level, and notice that the older the reader is assumed to be, the more he's treated as a lie, perpetrated by more or less the entire adult world, targeting children.

Of course, Santa is a very convenient lie to tell to a child. Didn't get the real race car you wanted this year? Don't tantrum at me; it's Santa's fault. Acting out? Don't forget, Santa's watching, and unlike us as parents, he's not bound by unconditional love for you; he might just get you a lump of coal instead of a real present.

Still. I want Olive to grow up with a keen BS detector. I want her to grow up enjoying hearing stories, and willing and able to make some up herself. I want her to grow up trusting that if I tell her something twice, it's honestly true, but if I tell her something once, it's up to her to figure it out.

Integrity isn't about doing what's right when it's convenient; it's about doing what's right all the time. If I'm going to model integrity for my daughter, if I'm going to be able to lie to her at will with a clear conscience, then I have to reliably tell the truth when she actually wants to know something. Put it together and it means that Santa Claus, like so much else, has to remain mythology to her: a story that people like to tell to each other, but which isn't actually true.