Who is spreading the rumour that Santa isn't real? [closed]

Question

Let's assume for a moment that Santa does truly exist in some form or other, however unlikely it may be. We can safely assume that he lives at the North Pole, provides children on the nice list with free toys every year, and generally brings happiness and festive cheer and encourages selflessness and love.

For the majority of people, the belief in his existence fades at some point during childhood. As we get older we begin to understand that he isn't real, and as time goes on it seems that the age at which people stop acknowledging him is getting younger and younger.

If Santa is real, then the lie that he doesn't and never has existed must have originated from somewhere, and is still being encouraged in the wider population even today. There must be a reason to maintain such a huge conspiracy as this, particularly one that is being pushed onto the only ones who know the real truth: children.

Who is spreading this false propaganda? Who is feeding the myth that Santa is fictional?

And more importantly: why?

Answer 1

Easy answer: Santa himself is spreading disinformation.

Consider this: If you knew there was someone who handed out free gifts to people, wouldn't you want to go kowtow and make nice and otherwise try to curry favor in the hopes of getting exactly what you want, free of charge?

Additionally, it would be a nightmare for parents to have to deal with children who always wanted to go to the North Pole. There's also all the laws Santa breaks every year that law enforcement around the world would be able to charge him with. Every military would be interested in getting their hands on the technology that allows Santa to break all those laws in one night and not get caught.

Answer 2

Central Heating Manufacturers

Wait, what?

Santa comes down the chimney, everyone knows that. Back in the days of coal fires and chimneys that wasn't a problem, but now we're all on central heating and don't have chimneys, Santa can't get in.

To be able to sell central heating and ultimately leave us without chimneys, the central heating manufacturers had to convince the world that Santa wasn't real so nobody would take issue with the fact he couldn't access new homes.

This is why you now have to buy your children's presents yourself.

Answer 3

The Coca-Cola Company

The Coca-Cola company already acknowledges responsibility for its marketing department having created the modern-day image of Santa Claus, entirely as a tool to sell more Coke. It is not much of a stretch to assume that if he no longer serves their needs they would launch another campaign aimed at destroying him.

Two equally-likely scenarios include:

Scenario 1: Coca-Cola is attempting to sell "The Gift of Coke" as a Legitimate Christmas Present

Sales of sugary beverages are flat in many regions and Coke is actively searching for a new way to sell their product. Seeing that other retailers derive a majority of their income from the Christmas season, Coke decides to get in on the market. Once the trend caught on however, that Jolly Old Elf started just GIVING AWAY their carbonated sugar water to kids!

Cutting into Coke's profitability is unacceptable and, having already demonstrated that they can re-create Santa's popular image, Coke decides to take him down.

Scenario 2: Coca-Cola Diversifies into Other Areas Santa Competes with them In

As before, sugary beverage sales remain a challenge. Many states and countries are even passing laws that prohibit actively selling their diabetes-in-a-can to children, which are their next generation of consumers. But that doesn't mean that Coke can't start manufacturing action figures, right? Toys that just happen to include background items native to the storyline of the creation, like chairs, lamps... and 6-packs of Coca-Cola.

But again the Jolly Old Elf rears his ugly head and is giving away toys to kids for Christmas! If kids aren't playing with toys that prominently feature Coca-Cola, they are not pushing Coke's agenda. And so the marketing department goes to work again...

Edit / Update:

In response to the comment that this may be an attack on Coca-Cola, I thought I would present some additional links that help cement the underlying scenarios as realistic. Note that all links in this answer are to the actual Coca-Cola Company's website, though more examples could be found elsewhere. If Coke was uncomfortable with any of this information I am sure they would not have published it.

Coca-Cola's Holiday Gift Guide of Coke-Inspired Presents

Historical Coca-Cola Branded Toys (note how many have featured "Sprite", a character originally created by Coke to be Santa's elf!)

Answer 4

The evil Toy Companies of course!

If Santa isn't real, there's no reason for children to behave well. If they don't behave well, then Santa will not deliver gifts to them. This means the parents have to step in to avoid the devastating disappointment their children would face by not receiving presents (when all their friends did) on Christmas morning for the minor crimes of shouting, crying and pouting. This means they need to buy the gifts rather than getting them for free from Santa.

This has further adverse effects: If Santa sees parents buying gifts, then he does not deliver any for those particular children, because it would be spoiling them to give them two sets of gifts. This means that even parents may end up buying into the rumours that he doesn't exist!

Answer 5

A Corporate Campaign that put Everyone on the Naughty List

Santa only gives presents to children on the "Nice" list - but rarely is it established what constitutes "nice" and "naughty". It is quite possible that Santa's standards of behavior are too high for most people to manage - and they are certainly too high for the capitalist pigs who run the corporations that produce gifts for parents to buy their children.

At one point, Santa did give out gifts to well-behaved children, but the parents who were themselves naughty didn't want their children to realize they were being taught the wrong values, so they started buying presents for their children instead and claiming it was Santa. This was the beginning of the Christmas gift industry.

The people in charge of the industry, of course, were jealous of the children who were still getting presents from the real Santa. Plus, they were greedy and wanted more money. So they started a massive campaign of corruption that trickled down into the lowest levels of society, contaminating the population with evil ideas so that there would be no one left on the "Nice" list and they could control the gift-giving.

And it worked.

Now there are no people left, not even children, who meet Santa's strict standards for behavior, so Santa spends every Christmas just sitting in the North Pole twiddling his thumbs and reminiscing on the good old days while corporations make money off of the naughty parents of naughty children who need to buy their children gifts so they can maintain the myth that they themselves no longer believe in.

Answer 6

Possibility 1:

Judging by some of the answers to How does Santa protect himself from IP lawsuits?, it's very possible that Santa does this himself, for legal reasons.

It's benificial to him to keep a low profile, and harder to have a lower profile than "doesn't exist". The greatest trick the devil -> satan -> santa ever pulled...

Possibility 2:

If Santa is a god, and his power comes from belief (as I proposed in https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/63426/30470), perhaps a rival god is spreading the rumours. A god of capitalism, shopping, parental generosity or some such thing might well have a good cause to do this.

I don't claim to know the intricacies of inter-god relations in the modern world, but I doubt Jesus is completely above suspicion here, either.

Answer 7

Not only the children but also the parents need to believe in Santa (considered but rejected)

Parents buy presents for their children, because they don't have faith in Santa bringing them. Suppose there is a Clause which says that if the parents don't believe in Santa, the children don't get any presents from him. There isn't anywhere in the stories (as far as I know) which says that children should suffer for their parents' lack of faith, but it's possible.

We can disprove this though with the help of orphaned children in warzones. They have no parents or generally any care-givers to take on the parental role, but they don't get presents.

So forget this one, and move onto another more interesting possibility.

Santa's definition of naughty and nice is not the same as ours (considered but rejected, although interesting)

Suppose Santa has a completely different moral code to us. He's a different species with advanced technology, after all - who can tell how he thinks? Human ethics have evolved with improved knowledge, longer lifespans, and rejection of corrupting mythologies and oppressive customs. This is good for society as a whole; but it may not meet Santa's requirements.

Suppose Santa is a trickster god. In that case he might choose to reward children who are comprehensively disruptive to those around them. Since society trains children to not behave this way, very few children will meet his requirements. This seems unlikely, because in the environment of general scarcity which existed before the last few decades, society didn't have enough spare capacity to deal with awkward kids.

Blood sacrifice!

More chillingly, what if his red suit reflects something else though? Midwinter sacrificial rites were a major part of many European traditions. Usually these only involved animals and not human sacrifice, but even animal sacrifice is no longer part of our culture. So perhaps children are no longer getting presents from Santa because they aren't killing animals in his name. This would tie in rather nicely with everything we know about the season, everything we know about European winter traditions, and with changes to social norms.

Interestingly, this hypothesis is also impossible to falsify. Even if a child killed an animal, a formal sacrifice requires some ceremony around it otherwise it doesn't count. Any ceremonies attached to Santa's sacrifice have long since been lost, and there is no way to recreate it because we wouldn't even know where to start. (We would also probably fall foul of animal protection organisations!)

I think this gives us the answer. Not only does it fit all the available facts and all the history, but it also gives us a reason why we cannot ever get back to Santa bringing presents for children.

And like all good Christmas stories, it is completely unprovable...

Answer 8

It started out as a lawsuit.

When several children failed to receive the presents they asked for from Santa, an outrage broke and a class action was proposed against the national post office. Said post office, with it's army of lawyers went to the trial with a simple defense: We did deliver every single letter (as we always do), but who knows if Santa even exists to answer them?

Soon after winning the case, an army of lobbyists was created that somehow made the government announce that Santa's existence is under question, thus the myth was born.

Answer 9

It is OPEC.

OPEC are "well known" for suppressing any and all technology that does not rely on pulling long dead trees out of the ground and setting fire to them.

Santa is literally sitting on a transport revolution; a passenger vehicle with an engine that not only runs on sustainable biofuel, but reproduces itself and in the main repairs itself. And ON TOP of all that, it is extremely cute too.

This vehicle - featuring an all wood and therefore again potentially sustainably constructed passenger and cargo compartment - is faster than any hydrocarbon powered vehicle in existence, and can carry far higher loads.

If people knew Santa was real, OPEC would be instantly blown apart. Many very, VERY rich and powerful people depend on the human race not knowing the truth.

WAKE UP SHEEPLE.

Answer 10

The answer is quite simple really:

Every other magical creature out in the world trying to protect itself (and also Santa cause he's a nice guy).

Think about it. If Santa and his elves exist, then elves exist. One answer I saw showed that if Santa's elves worked legitimately it would take hundreds of thousands of elves to make the presents. However, that would imply that a large Elven populous exists in the world as not all Evles work for Santa (obviously).

So we now have an Elven race in the world.So why not Goblins (who in some stories are Elven cousins), Trolls, Ogres, Leprechauns, Dragons, etc.

In such a world, these creatures will want to stay hidden in the modern world. Why, you ask? Because the government will use them for things. For instance, we have bullet proof armor that looks like scales. It was on a tv show once like Mythbusters or something. Where did that come from, you ask? Weapons tests on Dragons. Tanks? They were designed to take out European dragons enraged by all the poison gasses during WW I. In this world dragons are intelligent (if not sentient, enough to recognize that the puny humans are poisoning its nest and that all of them need to be removed for its safety).

Weapons of mass destruction? Hydra/Kraken killers. It's easy to kill a 10-story tall monster that doubles when you cut its head off (or shoot it off with a gun) when its atoms virtually disintegrate.

Grenades? Developed to make trolls and ogres on the battlefield go boom

The list goes on and on and on. Simply put, humans can be the real monsters from nature's perspective, and in a world where humans know superpowered monster species exist you can bet your money that the pentagon and every weapons department will be doing whatever it takes to replicate their powers and exploit their vary DNA. Monsters/magical creatures will want to hide if only to avoid becoming the thing that the government tests vaccines on. After all, Elves have no human rights and Elven DNA is going to far closer than monkey DNA.

Santa Clause is a nice guy. If he hears that his fellow humans who aren't living thousands of years from use of magic are experimenting on monsters and need to be convinced they've all died out/never existed he'll help them out. Heck, his elves might have threatened going underground and ditching his operation completely if he didn't try to take some precautions.

Answer 11

Nobody is responsible, Santa was sick at a time and is now literally locked out for most of the population.

Santa has magical powers as evidenced by the flying sled and his ability to retain at one of the most inhospitable spots (The north pole is at the sea).

Santa did provide children with toys and visited them together with their parents. To come up with the growing population, he had to include stricter and stricter conditions for his visits. Parents where the children were not visited had to pretend that Santa came or even using impostors. But the families who were visited were incredibly happy.

But finally even Santa overexerted himself and was unable to visit anyone for decades (You know, getting sick is very serious if you are supernatural). In this time people wondered where Santa was and his believers dwindled down...as there was no proof to Santa due to his magical nature, adults were more and more convinced that they duped themselves. Their children were absolutely devastated, so adults needed to play Santa.

Santa recovered finally and unfortunately found out that he cannot visit people anymore. You see, magical beings cannot cross the boundaries of a home if uninvited (It is not only vampires). Only very few people (the last believers) are visited now, sometimes it was tried to convince other people, but the results were disappointing at least (You know, those visits from gentlemen with white uniform and some cloth they want you to test out).

That is the starting point.

Answer 12

Church

"Brothers, fellow supreme representatives of the revealed religions of the world, thank you for convening at this secret meeting.

We — the church — concede that our supernatural fatherly figure with a Nice List and a Naughty List, does have His quirks and... well... slightly ethically questionable notions. Such as...

• That you actually start on the Naughty List, not for something you did but that your supposed forbears did
• The occasional temper tantrum
• The requirement not just to behave nice to your fellows but to love Him, and love the people that wronged you, at all times, and never stop doing it, lest you incur His wrath
• The promise to punish you after you are dead, forever, unless you have gotten off the Naughty List by then
• The very odd notion that you can get off the Naughty List by supposing that someone else got on it for you, 2000 years ago, and got not just a coal in their stocking for it but a red hot burning one
• He does not reward you by this — or any — midwinter feast... or even in this life. Only when you get to the next one.

...and we also concede that "Santa" does not behave in any such way, and that Santa does reward you in a very tangible and regular manner.

So — clearly — we have a bit of an image issue in face of the competition. What do we do?"

"Hm... how about if we start a secretly funded campaign — not traceable to us, of course — that says Santa does not exist?"

Answer 13

The Police.

Santa is clearly a criminal, breaking into millions of homes, stealing their hard earned milk and cookies, and leaving. That kind of reckless lawbreaking MUST BE STOPPED!

Everybody knows that the number one way to stop Santa Claus's magic is to not believe in him, so the Police spread a smear campaign to try to weaken him, so that they can finally have the advantage!

The police chief was clearly not a good boy.

Answer 14

The Disenchanted

Of which I am a member.

For years, I would watch Natalie Wood get a house from Santa, and a father, and a sane by the fireplace. Each year, I wanted those things. Each year, I got a toy. Then, the year he gave me a jar of grape jelly...from then on, I swore a vendetta...a jihad...I put a price on every elf, flying reindeer, and jolly old fat man in a flying sled.

And, I am not alone. Millions are with me. We sit, each Christmas Eve, in a duck blind attached to the house...waiting.

He refuses to show himself.

By using social media, we spread false rumors of his non-existence. We hope this will entice him to come out from under the rock he is hiding to make a press conference to put an end to the rumors.

And, at that press conference, we'll be waiting...no, not all of us. But, he'll never know if the cameraman is hiding a gun, or maybe the podium mic has C4 in it. Was it a flashbulb pop or gunfire?

At first, no one will know, because his red suit hides the blood well. Until the loss of blood causes him to collapse, and then it is too late.

--Just to make sure no one thinks I have lost my rocker, it's just a coalescence of several movies starring Wesley Snipes, Marky Mark, Clint Eastwood, and Gerard Butler.

Answer 15

Vatican and the Pope

The name Santa Claus suggests that he is a Saint. For sure the Vatican should know whether such a Saint exists or not. The Vatican always pronounces you a Saint after death. Such as Mother Theresa. Such as Saint Nicholas.

Santa however is still alive. One popular saying is that Santa Claus is Saint Nicholas. Eastern Roman bishop Saint Nicholas, unlike Santa, is dead (* 15 March 270, Patara, Eastern Roman Empire, + 6 December 343). He originated not from the North Pole and never visited the Pole.

If Santa was a Saint he would be dead according to Roman orthodoxy. So it is very easy to argue that Santa was "not real".

My assumption goes like this: The Vatican spread the misinformation that "Santa" was Saint Nicholas(Sactus Nicolaus), which then became Dutch 'Sinterklaas', English 'Santa Claus'. In reality he is a Germanic nordic god who administers the wild hunt. In the 20th century he teamed up with the Coca Cola Company and other players in industry, to jointly pursues his mission to undermine Christian values and promote consumerism.

Together with Coca Cola he came up with the idea to mock the Camauro dress of the pope, to make the Pope a laughing stock. Just like left wing pacifists who wear army clothes, it was an act of subversive cultural approbation.

Answer 16

The Naughty

There are a lot of naughty people out there who think themselves nice — or want others to believe them nice.

When they don't receive presents on Christmas, that causes a problem.

Those who believe themselves to be nice find it much easier to believe that Santa doesn't exist than to come to terms with the fact they aren't actually nice people.

Those who are invested in keeping up the appearance of being nice will insist on making others doubt the existence of Santa.

Either way, the spread of disbelief in Santa is an inevitable consequence of how he operates.

Answer 17

The People who insist that P does not equal NP

Santa is flying his sleigh to visit every house in the world. He clearly has to visit all of them, but the traveling salesman problem, which this pretty much is, does not have a better known solution than O(n^2*2^n) time, so Santa has obviously figured out a much more efficient solution, since there are a huge number of houses in the world.

If Santa had found an efficient algorithm, it logically follows that P=NP. And, given the large number of consequences of such a proof, it is completely believable that many people would be trying hard to prevent this fact from becoming well-known.

Answer 18

People who haven't done any research:

The first reason they say Santa is not real is BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T GO UP TO THE NORTH ******* POLE AND GO BLOODY LOOK FOR HIM! OH... BUT THAT DOESN'T STOP THEM FROM ASSUMING (keyword: "assuming") HE'S FAKE!

You see, the reason most kids believe in Santa is because they have actually seen him, but unfortunately, we live in a (messed up) society where, when kids tell an adult something, the adult assumes the child is imagining it.

This is why Santa only visits the kids because adults wouldn't believe it is actually him, I'm guessing it hurts his feelings when people say he's not real, so he puts that person on the naughty list, and that's why 99% of adults don't find Christmas presents under the tree on Christmas morning.

This gets even worse when those very kids (who may be educationally / emotionally / generally benefiting from those very presents that Santa is bringing them) are also led too believe that Santa (or anything else they've told the adult) is just a figment of their imagination.

In my honest opinion, when you take presents away from a child (by leading them to believe that Santa is not real) they loose the one thing that keeps them happy (toys).
Meaning that they might go and look for other things to make them happy and these "things" might not always be "good things" (E.G: drugs, crime, etc...).

And it doesn't stop there.... The parents don't even have to buy or pay for these presents and for some weird reason "they don't want them"...?

What a sad world we live in... But, it doesn't need to be that way.
We need to protest this "un-holy" social behaviour and start letting kids know that its absolutely OK to believe that Santa is real.
Heck we need to start telling them that Santa is real, then (and only then) will the world become a better place.

Answer 19

Just like in

Stranger Things

The conspiracy is run by the Department of Energy.

Santa travels at 1800 miles per second, carrying lets say 1 million kg of presents.

This is 10^15 Wh of energy.

The world uses 10^13 Wh of electricity in a year.

So Santa uses more energy in one night than humanity has used electricity in its existence.

The Department of Energy is keeping this vast energy source from us. But why?

Answer 20

Corporate marketing flacks trying to sell things to teens.

Teenagers are a valuable market segment, but a teen's spending is proportional to their independence from their parents. Teens are idealistic. If Santa is a lie, what else are Mom and Dad lying about?

Better go to the mall and hang out with the other rebels to figure it out.

Answer 21

Crackpots

Just like with the moon landing, 9/11, the Holocaust, flat Earth, or time travel, there's going to be people who dispute the existence of Santa.

Consider that, in such a world where Santa exists and performs the tasks we commonly associate with him, he is scientifically provable. Maybe not as a jolly fat dude with superior technology, an army of GMO pygmies, and a herd of autotelekinetic reindeer, but at least as something that leaves unsourceable, gift-wrapped goods in people's living rooms throughout the world. At minimum, something is causing presents to appear and most parents are denying it was themselves. Children grow up later and, instead of deciding he doesn't exist, see evidence that he does indeed exist.

(It might even be a case where a religion grows up around Santa. While such a thing in our world would be relegated to cult status or associated with an otherwise non-Santa-centric religion, in a world with a provable but difficult-to-pin-down Santa, there may be a better chance for a Santa-centric religion to gain legitimacy.)

Answer 22

International Panel on Climate Change

Whelkaholism's anwer is close but critically misses the point¹.

Yes, Santa's sledge has everything a vehicle needs: flies, is silent, is fast, is secure (0 recorded accidents in over 2,000 trips around the world).

But it has a fatal flaw:

Reindeer.

It is not just that there are not enough reindeer to power everyone's magic sledge; with time they would be breed in captivity or cloned to provide every family with their own sledge.

This is when things would go really bad.

Because, while these animals would want us to believe that they are just lovely and inoffensive, the reality is that as many other grass-eating mammals, these are deadly machines designed to produce...

Methane.

Methane gas (CH₄) is way worse² for the greenhouse effect that CO₂. And the IPCC is bound on fighting the greenhouse effect.

Clearly this is something that the men in black of the IPCC are trying to prevent.

In fact I am almost sure that the IPCC has already kidnapped Santa Claus (or worse). I base that affirmation in the fact that, for the last years³ Christmas presents have been missing.

I have been trying to warn the public from my twitter account, but for some reason it seems that lately some ridiculous conspiracy theories have been getting all the attention while this well reasoned, honest, urgent warning has been unnoticed by the media.

THESE ARE THE FACTS, MAN, THESE ARE THE FACTS!

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¹In fact I would guess that Whelkaholism is actually an IPCC operative in charge of missinformation.

²This is for real.

³Curiously, since the same year I moved away from my parents'house.

Answer 23

Criminals

(i.e., Criminal Organizations, and their Recruiters)

I’m thinking of people like Fagin, from Charles Dickens’s novel Oliver Twist.  The belief in Santa Claus provides material motivation for being good/moral (“nice”).  Disbelief in Santa diminishes and dilutes the notion that bad behavior has punitive consequences, and allows immorality to flourish.  This makes it easier for gangs to find people who are predisposed to crime.

---

Also,

Toy Merchants (Manufacturers/Sellers)

(I realize that this idea was suggested in another answer, but I believe that my rationale is slightly different.)

If adults believe in Santa Claus, they won’t feel the need to buy toys for children.  Nice children will get free toys from Santa, and naughty kids will get … what they deserve.  (Exceptions: parents who are “enablers” will buy gifts for their brats so they don’t have to suffer the consequences of their actions.  Some will give presents to buy their children’s love.  Those who are themselves immoral (or just excessively non-judgmental) will buy toys for naughty youngsters because of (or despite) their moral orientation.)

Toy merchants need to discredit and delegitimize Santa Claus in order to create a market for new, human-made toys.

Answer 24

Misinformation creates itself

Just as with many other scientific facts a significant portion of the population disbelieves, it is a matter of anecdotal evidence convincing individuals of a falsehood, and their internal biases working their nasty magic.

In other words, as people grow older, they begin to assume Santa is not real given that most of the evidence they are exposed to during their daily lives seems to point at that conclusion. Since Santa is such a relatively small phenomenon, and by definition (of him being magic) it can't be reliably proven to a wide audience, people end up believing whatever they feel more comfortable with, and for an adult it is easier to rationalize Santa as a made-up fantasy to make kids happy, than to accept the existence of a physics defying magical being of pure goodness (or evil, depending on the mythology).

Answer 25

The Society for Polar Elvish Welfare has been spreading these rumors for centuries; the more people they convince that Santa isn't real, the less burdens are placed on his elvish toymaking slaves, and the closer they get to their goal of Elves educating themselves in their spare time and, dare I say, even rebel to throw off the yoke of their oppressor!

Answer 26

The chimera is spreading rumors that Santa is not real.She's jealous that kids get presents while all that she gets is a chunk of meat! So her business 39 makes dubious dealings with Santa and spread rumors that Santa is not real. She needs everyone to stop believing in Santa and prevent him from delivering presents to make things go her way.

Answer 27

Parents

They dont like the idea that some fat dude brings moar fun to their children than they. Also they do not want to cover him with back-up gift, in case their children suddenly become too bad for free present. So parents try to raise reasonable and educated people to stop worshipping the Red Santan

PS. No kidding. This is serious discussion of "alternate-reality" and "santa-claus".