“I have just had
a very difficult Christmas - my first in my second marriage. My ex-husband and
I, whatever our other difficulties were, shared a view that it was wrong to lie
to children. Our daughter (now 11) was always told the truth about Father
Christmas and appreciated the fact that it was her own father who filled her
Christmas stocking at night and that this Christmas it would be her stepfather.
This Christmas was also the first time my stepdaughter Chloe (aged 6) came to
stay with us. From the moment she arrived she was full of worried questions
about what Santa Claus was doing; would he have enough toys for everyone? How
would he get round all the children in all the countries in time? Whilst I was
struggling with how to respond, my husband fed these fantasies even further. We
had the biggest argument we have ever had and it was all I could do not to tell
my step-daughter the truth.”
Mrs W
December is a powerful month for many people.
Whilst Christianity celebrates the birth of a special baby, other religions or
cults celebrate an age-old midwinter festival. Whilst Chloe worries if Santa
has enough resources for the two combined worlds of family life she is now
experiencing, adult countries worry if they have the resources to support
different Gods and beliefs. In parts of the USA this Christmas, for example,
public nativity scenes were seen as an attack on the rights of other religions
and only non-religious Christmas songs like “Jingle bells” were allowed. It is
not just children or stepfamilies who worry about the juxtaposition of
different belief systems and which baby is best. How to be different without
being rivalrous or destructive is a universal problem.
However, a first Christmas in a new
stepfamily is a particularly difficult time. Gill Gorrell Barnes has been studying
children growing up in stepfamilies from the National Development Cohort. She
comments “The first Christmas in a new stepfamily is the most stressful. It
attacks every primary family loyalty. It is a festival that strikes at so many
levels- not just peoples’ conscious thinking about family life but their more
unconscious rootedness in each others’ belief systems and traditions which have
meshed over the years. Stepfamilies often find it hard to acknowledge how
powerful those belief systems have been.”
Mary, aged 8, was inconsolable because her
new stepmother gave her Christmas presents at lunch-time when she was used to
the whole family unwrapping them before Christmas. John, aged 10, had a
sensitive stepfather who did his best to follow his past Christmas routine.
However, John could not bear to show him he was pleased with his presents
because of a feeling of disloyalty to his father and his memories of past
family Christmases. A step-parent’s place, like a parent’s is in the wrong- but
often even more so.
Mrs W has the difficult task of being an
additional parental figure- not a replacement one. She is not the custodial
step-parent. That makes her different views on her stepdaughter’s upbringing
harder to deal with. For someone who has never perpetuated the fantasy the
issue of elaborating a Father Christmas myth is a very serious one. Passing on
a lie to children about Father Christmas is passing on a lie. Whether it is
done sadistically, or in the mistaken belief that the lies are the Christmas
magic, or whether it is simply and unthinkingly copying what ones own parents
did, it is still a lie. A lie is destructive. However, to use the truth
destructively would also hurt Chloe and her biological parents.
Powerful as the difference over “Father
Christmas” is - it represents something that Gill Gorrell Barnes regularly sees
in her work with stepfamilies. In a joint research project between the
Institute of Family Therapy and the University of Essex she has found that the
biological parent-child coalition in step-families is stronger than in all
other groups. In other words, the fact that Mrs W and her biological daughter
and Mr W and his agree with each other is as important as the item they agree
over. “This extra involvement can work well but it becomes problematic when the
stepfamily group is dysfunctional. In this situation the biological
parent-child bond may exclude the stepfather bringing out a lack of mutual
decision-making skills in the new couple”.
Since Mr W was presumably aware of both his
ex-wife’s and his new wife’s differing Christmas models why was he unable to
raise this earlier as a discussion issue? A new relationship brings hope for
the future. However, sometimes this hope includes an unreal idealisation of the
new family and corresponding devaluing of the past relationship. It may have
disturbed both Mr and Mrs W to recognise an area where their past relationship
matched their beliefs better. The argument may have been all the more loaded
because of the unreal expectancies on the new relationship. A remarried couple,
says Gill Gorrell Barnes “is one of the most widely scrutinised subsystems of
family life, being watched by the children of each partner, by the parents of
each partner and the parents of their former partners; by their ex-
spouses who are
also ongoing parents and by friends allies and enemies on each side”. For those
who work through the inevitable early difficulties there is hopeful research on
the benefits stepfamilies can bring. Others may find it is easier to progress
with skilled help.
What about Santa Clausitis? Perhaps it is no
coincidence that it was the Victorian age of religious doubt that elaborated
the Father Christmas myth so fully and powerfully. Many adults grew concerned
that their religious belief came only from their parents. By deliberately
fostering a lie with their children such adults could attempt to understand how
beliefs are transmitted. However, as the Father Christmas lie would be slowly
and gently revealed there could also co-exist the hope that religious belief
would remain strong if a more minor transitional belief could be offered to be
broken instead. However, there is the world of a difference between passing on
what an individual believes to be truth (regardless of other people’s doubts)
and the passing on of a lie.