Priest gets into hot water for telling kids that there is no Santa

December 22, 2012 • 1:58 pm

From the Irish Times, we have an unintentionally hilarious tale of a Roman Catholic priest who got into trouble for dispelling the myth of Santa:

Children at a north Kerry school who became upset after a visiting priest implied there was no Santa Claus have been reassured by parents and staff that the priest was mistaken, and Santa does indeed exist.

The priest who made the blunder while visiting the Scoil Mhuire gan Smal in Lixnaw last week believed he was speaking to mainly sixth class pupils.

Fr Martin Hegarty, a retired priest who was filling in for the parish priest, was visiting the school to explain the message of Christmas.

During an exchange with children in the 4th, 5th and 6th classes, Fr Hegarty implied Santa Claus did not exist. A number of children got upset and at least one 11-year-old child began crying.

A meeting of the board of management was called to discuss the matter.

Fr Hegarty, who is understood to be deeply embarrassed, told the Kerry’s Eye newspaper on Wednesday he did not realise the children were upset.

He also remarked to the newspaper that Irish children got more presents than other nationalities at Christmas time. “So they needn’t worry, the presents will come, whether Santy comes or not,” the priest said.

The stuff about Irish kids getting the most presents is, of course, made up, but priests are good at that. One wonders, though, whether a precocious kid will wonder who brings the presents if “Santy” doesn’t.

It’s a great pity for Father Hegarty that heaven doesn’t come whether Goddy exists or not.

But the funniest and most ironic quote from Hegarty is this:

“I regret any upset that I have caused to children and parents of Scoil Mhuire gan Smál. My intention was to talk about the birth of Jesus and the true meaning of Christmas. I must admit that Santa Claus is not my area of expertise.”

What?

And the article ends with a final burst of the funnies:

Some parents told their children “the priest was making it all up,” according to one parent who did not wish to be named.

It’s a pity the parents didn’t go just one myth further!

57 thoughts on “Priest gets into hot water for telling kids that there is no Santa”

      1. Atheist parlour game. Nominate a non-believer who does a pretty good impression of God.

        I’ll start with the two obvious ones: Darwin and Dennett.

        On the subject of the Ds, I can imagine Dawkins filling out over the next 20 or so years, sprouting a big fluffy grey beard of ZZTop proportions, and smiting the religiose in his evolving Methuselahositude.

        1. James Randi, George Carlin, fat woolly Dawkins, Dan Dennett = Coca Cola Santa/Caucasian Christian God.

  4. Yep, one person’s fairy tale is another person’s “truth”.

    I try to explain that to people who don’t know me well: their “Jesus” and “God” is to me what Wotan and Thor is to them.

  5. This is a strange one. They are going to find out pretty soon that the priest wasn’t in fact lying but that their parents and school were.”why did you call that priest a liar mummy/teacher?”
    So much for commandment number nine…

  7. “It’s a great pity for Father Hegarty that heaven doesn’t come whether Goddy exists or not.”
    I got a little lost there. come = autocorrect for “care”? Or “heaven comes” = “we go to heaven”? And I’d have thought that heaven coming might or might not happen (but probably not) but is very definately predicated on the existence of God(dy).

    The ironies certainly abound. The priests and the parents have to delicately balance their myths, fictions, and sincerely held beliefs in that for which there is no evidence.

    So we have:
    A. Santa, who is real as real for little kids (they meet him in department stores!), and not at all real for adults, with varying degrees of Joining the Secret in between (I’m surprised at an 11-year old crying), with the confounding fact that presents do mysteriously appear on Dec 25;
    as opposed to
    B. God and Jesus and Mary, who are pretty remote for kids, but real as real to adults, with the confounding fact that only in rare and unlikely cases does anyone come back from seeing Heaven. (And you never meet any of them in department stores.)

    And here’s the poor priest caught in the middle, whose job is to teach kids B and not A, who’s unwittingly sprung the embarrassing truth and prematurely tried to Join kids to the Secret of A who weren’t ready (but when is anyone ready?).

    You might say that we have Joined the Secret of B, and the parents and priests are angry at us for springing it on them prematurely, when in fact there is no time like the present.

    1. Presents come whether there’s a santa or not so those kids shouldn’t make such a fuss – or so says the priest. Too bad heaves doesn’t come regardless of whether there’s a god or not. For my part though, I only regret there is no hell.

  8. I suspect this statement by Kevin Flynn, an Anglican priest, is unintentional as well:

    “I doubt that believing in Santa did me any lasting harm, unless you think that believing in one non-existent person leads to belief in other non-existent persons or deities. As I’m not an atheist, I don’t make any such equivalence.”

    http://tinyurl.com/bnw3bul

  9. You know, he really should have taken the opportunity to tell them about Nicholas of Myra, who was real, interesting and very important to the history of Christianity. Father Christmas isn’t in the Bible – Father Christmas edited the Bible! Father Christmas punches out heretics, too!

    1. Because punching people whose ideas you disagree with is something we want little kids to think is great.

      That’s not the impulse that leads to holy wars or anything.

    2. “Hey Kids, Santa Claus is based on Saint Nicholos of Myra. So Santa is REAL…and very much dead. Happy Christmas!”

  11. What IS the approved Jesus/Santa story anyway? I can’t believe someone hasn’t linked them together yet in a holiday special.

      1. The answer, I find, is in the remake of Miracle on 34th Street. In this version Santa get acquitted when the judge is reminded that the words “In God We Trust” are on the money. Judge says, if we can ‘endorse’ a superior being like god without proof, then surely we can endorse a superior being like Santa. And I am not making this up.

        2. I watched the original version last night (far superior). So, to prove god exists, we have to find out where the US Postal Service delivers all his mail, right?

  12. I, like Shuggy, am surprised at the age of the girl who got upset. At 11 you ought to have grown up to the point at which Father Christmas (I refuse to call him S.C.) is seen to be the myth that he is. When I was a child I think the age of enlightenment was 7 or 8. Maybe Irish children are more credulous. Maybe children of today are more credulous (a depressing thought).

    I think I might have been 5 when my sister (2 years older) reassured me that no, don’t worry, no such person as Father Christmas, it’s just your parents pretending. But I was warned: you must pretend to believe, because it’s important to adults that they *think* you believe.

    1. If Santa doesn’t exist, then who ate the cookies and drank the milk my brother and I left for him?

    2. Yep, I was told about the mythicalness of the Dutch Santa (Sinterklaas, 5 december) when I was 7. It must have been around that time I started to realise that the stories told by the Chaplain also were mythical.

  13. “My intention was to talk about the birth of Jesus and the true meaning of Christmas.”

    Two very unrelated stories. Those children need not to worry, Santa does exist. Before the Christians conquered their way through Europe we called him Odin.

    1. Odin doesn’t actually exist either and I don’t think he ever brought gifts to small children in the myths. Also I think the people who worshipped him mostly converted yo Christianity peacefully.

      1. Yes, they did convert peacefully under threat of death thanks to Saint Olaf. It’s amazing how peacefully people convert if they’re convinced they and their families will be slaughtered if they don’t believe.

  15. Father Hagerty gets a taste of what it is like to be an atheist: getting grief for telling the truth about silly fairy tales.

  17. Once the kids get old enough to understand the contract, they’ll know there is no Sanity Clause.

  21. The worst Santa does is put coal in your stocking if you’ve been bad. Jesus and his dad throw you into a lake of fire and torture you for eternity if all you’ve done is not believe the stupidest story ever told. I’ll take Santa any day.

  22. I find the cult of Santa kind of annoying. Isn’t being given lots of presents by your parents and relatives enough to make Christmas fun for children?

    But if you suggest not telling kids the Santa myth people will consider you a scrooge, a grinch.

    I like Christmas but I’m not sure, if I have my own children, that I’ll tell them about Santa, or the Easter bunny, or the toothfairy. It just seems like, if they know where things really come from, they’ll be better off. I want them to know that I’ll always tell them the truth.

    1. I tried hinting to mine that Father Christmas was just a story. She insisted he was real. “So why do you think that?” I asked – the key question of rationality. “My friend told me she saw him!” Well, at least she had a reason.

      1. If each child has two parents, it only takes one to be willing to actively pretend there’s a Santa or Tooth Fairy, as long as the other is unwilling to dissolve the familial unit over minor truth-issues.

        My eldest was convinced she actually saw the TF one time, and told the younger ones. Not sure about the current states of Santa-belief, will see shortly…

    2. I feel the same. I have a small toddler, two years old, and he is at about the age when he starts getting excited about Christmas presents. For a while now we have been very explicit in pointing out the difference between real animals and “fantasy” ones such as unicorns and dragons, not least because he initially was scared of a fire-breathing dragon in one of his books. I am not sure I want to start to lie to him and pretend that Santa or the Easter bunny are real, I’d rather tell him that they are imaginary characters like unicorns and dragons, that they make for a nice story but that’s all there is to them. It helps that where I live conflicting myths about Christmas abound and contradict each other: on my German family’s side, it should be the Christkind (aka baby Jesus) who brings presents on the 24th, on my wife’s US side Santa on the 25th, but then we also have the original Santa (San Nicolao) bringing presents (or coal) on December 6th, and on my Italian side it is a witch on a broom (the Befana) who brings present but only on January 6th, while for our Spanish friends it is of course the Reyes Magos who bring presents also on the 6th… Better just stick to the truth.

    1. Of course not, they were created later through microevolution and cross-breeding between chickens and reindeer.

  27. If kids get upset and even cry when they’re told there is no santa, then it’s very cruel to have told them the santa lie to begin with. I’m one of the grinches who don’t buy into the “santa story is a nice lie so I tell my kids there’s a santa”.

  28. I have come to enjoy telling kids that there is not Santa.
    “Santa is a myth. He isn’t real. Neither is Jesus.”

    Later when the parents admit that Santa isn’t real, that whole thing about Jesus seems a little more suspect.

    That’s what the assholes get for lying to children.

  29. An 11 year old crying because he has just found out Santa doesn’t exist?
    The Irish must love lying to their kids.

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