The hunt is on. For years, a mysterious man has broken into homes and stolen food right off of the plate, leaving behind nothing more than colorful wrapped boxes covered with bright bows. Many households are home to those who hunt the fugitive, dreaming of catching even a glimpse of this fat red mystery. That’s right, I’m talking about Santa Claus. Children from families around the world dedicate many of their Decembers to coming up with tricks to catch Santa, or simply struggling to stay awake long enough to hear reindeer hooves click on the rooftop. What once was large white footsteps left in flour sprinkled on the floor, has evolved into a sea of generated AI and photoshopped media. I remember heated debates all throughout the lunchroom on cold December days while I was still in third grade. Everything changed when a friend came into school one day, claiming to have video evidence of Santa putting presents under her tree. Since then, I have seen a lot more clever ideas to catch definitive evidence of Santa, some unusual and many unlikely to be true. Are these new advances hurting or helping parents lie to their children? Let’s find out.
Back in time, before video editing and recording technologies existed, parents came up with other clever ways to “prove” Santa had been to their house. Taking bites out of cookies and drinking the milk has remained a popular, and in my opinion, necessary, tradition. I have also heard of parents sprinkling flour on the ground and putting “Santa” footprints all over the area around the tree. One of my favorite traditions was to make reindeer food. A questionable mixture of oats, “magic”, and glitter, reindeer food was always a popular craft at school. You would sprinkle it on your front yard for Santa’s reindeer to eat while he was busy placing presents under the tree, which would give them enough energy to fly to the next house. These small traditions were what kept the spark of belief alive in the minds of children for many years.
As familiar and warm as old traditions may be, culture and technology has evolved a lot since then. In the modern age, homes are peppered with security cameras and videos are altered with heavy editing for media in its many forms. Thankfully, Santa Claus traditions have evolved right along with these new technologies. With only a shallow dive into my research, I had already found websites that will use AI to edit Santa and his elves into a shot or recording of your room, and discovered DIY parents with clever excuses for hidden cameras “mysteriously disappearing”. Tips and tricks were around every corner.
As much content as the media has put out about Santa Claus and “catching” him, I have yet to find any video or article claiming that someone’s kid found out that he wasn’t real due to technology. As a teenager, I find most of the photoshopped pictures easy to spot and hard to believe, but if you look at something like that as a very young child, then any tradition you have is more likely to convince the kid that Santa is real.
One anonymous mother remembers her childhood Christmases. It turns out that the whole world seemed more enthusiastic about participating in this trick.
“Everything was set up to support the concept of Santa,” she explains, “The news would track him and report his travels. If it was on the news, it had to be true.”
Since technology had yet to catch up to clever minds, the trick was more simple. In some minds, that is all it takes. A mother of four, she still has one child who believes. This, she believes, is all due to one moment.
“A couple years ago, we were driving around and saw someone dressed up as Santa sneaking around a house. I’m sure, they were trying to surprise kids at a Christmas party. But my son saw that and said, ‘Oh, Santa is real!’ Guess he will believe a few extra years because of that”.
According to this mom, she never had to try very hard to get her children to believe. Small details, such as eating cookies or making reindeer food look eaten, would be enough to spark a child’s imagination enough so that they make themselves believe. She also knows parents who have taken Christmas really seriously.
“It’s gotten easier with technology, if that’s your thing” she remarks.
After all these fond memories and priceless moments with her family, she did not have any negative comments about the effect of technology on her children’s beliefs over the years.
According to CNN Health, around 85% of 5-year-olds believe in Santa, and that the more exposure the child has with Santa “sightings” and seeing him at malls or events, the more likely the child is to believe. Many other factors can be ignored if this trend continues. The more in-person Santas a child visits, the more likely the child is to believe, so why not apply the same idea to video recordings? Being able to see Santa put the presents under the tree would definitely boost children’s beliefs.
In the end, much of the young population of the world, from 2 to 8, still believe in Santa Claus. No instrumental piece of technology has ruined the holiday yet. As far as can be seen, video recordings and Santa tracking websites have only brought support to the traditions parents teach their children every Christmas. What I once feared was a magical tradition dying, is now hope for the ever-evolving world of Santa trickery and a wish for very Merry Christmases for years to come!
