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  1. - Top - End - #31
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    Default Re: The Mind of A Six-Year-Old

    Quote Originally Posted by Durkoala View Post
    I also grew up* in Britan and Father Christmas's address was frequently (but not always) said to be at the North Pole. I always assumed that people had gone there and had seen his house, but there were no photos for the same reason photos of my friends' houses weren't just lying around: you didn't take pictures of other people's houses unless you knew them.

    Also, for some reason when I learned of the two poles, I was completely convinced he lived next to the stripey barber's shop true north, but I don't know why I thought that. Possibly because magnetic north moved around so nobody could build a house on it, but I'm not sure I knew about magnetic north moving then...

    *possibly later than you did, as I remember hearing about both sides of the legend when I was told Christmas stories.
    Interestingly, in Switzerland, we saw them as two distinct, but kind of similar figures, when I was a kid. There was the guy from TV (TV was almost entirely dubbed American TV), who we knew as "The Christmas Man" (Weihnachtsmann). He has a flying sleigh, comes on Christmas and brings gifts. He lives at the north pole with a race of kobolds who build his gifts (they arent' elves. Clearly. Elves are entirely different. Elves fly. (I think my only context for elves at that point was Peter Pan, where the version of the book I had read to me translated "fairy" as "elf".)
    Then there's Santa Claus (Samichlaus), who's a different, but similar figure. Dresses a lot alike, at least. He lives "nearby in the forest" (We could go visit his cottage! It was really magical!). He comes to your house on December the Sixth, reads you a list of what you did well and what you did wrong this year and then hands you a small bag of sweets. He doesn't have a flying sleigh, he walks with a donkey or horse who carries his bag of gifts. He also doesn't have elves, he has a single grim servant in a black cloak who always threatens to beat up or abduct "bad" kids, but never does.

    I remember it taking me years to really figure out that they were supposed to be the same guy.
    Last edited by Eldan; 2020-04-22 at 03:14 AM.
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  2. - Top - End - #32
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    Default Re: The Mind of A Six-Year-Old

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    Interestingly, in Switzerland, we saw them as two distinct, but kind of similar figures, when I was a kid. There was the guy from TV (TV was almost entirely dubbed American TV), who we knew as "The Christmas Man" (Weihnachtsmann). He has a flying sleigh, comes on Christmas and brings gifts. He lives at the north pole with a race of kobolds who build his gifts (they arent' elves. Clearly. Elves are entirely different. Elves fly. (I think my only context for elves at that point was Peter Pan, where the version of the book I had read to me translated "fairy" as "elf".)
    Then there's Santa Claus (Samichlaus), who's a different, but similar figure. Dresses a lot alike, at least. He lives "nearby in the forest" (We could go visit his cottage! It was really magical!). He comes to your house on December the Sixth, reads you a list of what you did well and what you did wrong this year and then hands you a small bag of sweets. He doesn't have a flying sleigh, he walks with a donkey or horse who carries his bag of gifts. He also doesn't have elves, he has a single grim servant in a black cloak who always threatens to beat up or abduct "bad" kids, but never does.

    I remember it taking me years to really figure out that they were supposed to be the same guy.
    Actually they are not. In Belgium and the Netherlands we also have two figures. We have 'sinderklaas' (Saint Nicholas) who comes on december 6th with presents and then you have Santa Claus on Christmas (who is a lot less prevalent here).

    Actually the way I've understood it is that Santa Claus is a hybridization of figures like Saint Nicholas and Grandfather Frost and some others. When immigrants moved to the US, they took their own figures with them and in the course of time a hybrid figure emerged, which is what we now know as Santa Claus.
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  3. - Top - End - #33

    Default Re: The Mind of A Six-Year-Old

    Really, what we know of as "Santa Claus" pretty much comes from a poem by Clement Moore and a book by Baum.

  4. - Top - End - #34
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    Default Re: The Mind of A Six-Year-Old

    Quote Originally Posted by farothel View Post
    Santa Claus is a hybridization of figures like Saint Nicholas .
    Isn't Santa Claus merely Saint Nicholas in Spanish?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Liquor Box View Post
    Isn't Santa Claus merely Saint Nicholas in Spanish?
    Nope. It comes from the Dutch Sinterklaas
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    Default Re: The Mind of A Six-Year-Old

    Quote Originally Posted by Liquor Box View Post
    Isn't Santa Claus merely Saint Nicholas in Spanish?
    No, that would be San Nicolas.

  7. - Top - End - #37
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    Mind, all the Santa Claus, Saint Nicholaus, Sinterklaas (in name if not always as a character) are all variations of the original saint, St Nicholas who probably did not spell his name any way like that either.

    THe resulting character combines probably a dozen aspects of folktraditions from various parts of (mostly I assume) Europe.

    It is kinda curious to watch how some places recombine Santa into existing traditions that he in part originated from. I think the Dutch now have both a St Nicholas and Sinterklaas visiting in december just at different times?

    In Finnish he is known as the "Christmas Ram" which makes no sense at all until you figure out that the modern Santa has effectively entirely replaced an older figure that IIRC is more akin to the Krampus except for retaining the old name.


    I'm sure there are entire humanities departments devoted to the study of how culture travelled and changed this way.

    And because I'm already randomly off track I'm gonna mention my favourite weird one, St Lucia's Day celebrated in the Swedish speaking world (it's not a big world) which really owes itself as a thing today more to early 1900s beauty pageants than anything else despite most today think it has ancient tradtions.

  8. - Top - End - #38
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    Quote Originally Posted by snowblizz View Post
    It is kinda curious to watch how some places recombine Santa into existing traditions that he in part originated from. I think the Dutch now have both a St Nicholas and Sinterklaas visiting in december just at different times?
    Pretty much, though it differs per family, of course. We get Sinterklaas the 5th of december (as well as the three weeks running up to it) and the 'Kerstman' (literally: Christmas Man) the 25th of december. The Kerstman is pretty much the American Santa Claus as far as I know.
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    Default Re: The Mind of A Six-Year-Old

    I think we are missing a couple things.

    First thing though is yes it is entirely reasonable. Most kids mature at different rates. SO yeah at 6 depending on a lot of things a kid think that. Who know this could be one of those things that causes the kid to develop further along.

    But, what you neglect to tell us is what happen in said manuscript that causes the child to think this. I mean what would you say, if I asked, "'Is it reasonable to a child could think he could see dead people.... after watching a movie?"

    I mean, within the context of the movie it is entirely possible given what goes on in that setting. So we need to know what's going on in the setting.

  10. - Top - End - #40
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    Quote Originally Posted by Aedilred View Post
    I don't know - I think this may come back to what JeenLeen said. In my experience - albeit I am not a parent so that experience is limited - children are capable of being simultaneously quite gullible but also quite sceptical and perceptive. The classic "kids say the funniest things" routines are often founded in the ability of children to see things and make logical connections that adults have got into the habit of ignoring or overlooking. (The rest are usually just "child hasn't yet learned what it's not polite to say").

    Maybe not at the age of three and a half but I think by age six the majority of children who believe in Santa do so by choice, albeit maybe not a conscious one. On some level they know it doesn't make sense, but they're willing to go along with it because they don't want to confront the alternative explanations. My parents went to absurd lengths to maintain the illusion, but they did so partly because they knew I was on some level looking for evidence of the lie.


    Something I've found curious is the way that the American Santa, at least as portrayed in TV Christmas episodes and the like, differs from the Father Christmas of my youth. Both have similar characteristics but the way "Santa" is approached is somehow slightly less believable.

    For instance, our Father Christmas lived in Lapland, as opposed to Santa living at the North Pole. To an alert child, "the North Pole" raises a lot of questions. Which pole, true north or magnetic north? Haven't people been to the north pole? Why didn't they see his house? Why doesn't it show up in photos of explorers there, or on Google Maps? There isn't even any land at the North Pole, just ice, etc. Lapland, by contrast, is big and vague and real enough that you can say "somewhere in Lapland, nobody knows where".

    And then there's the diet. Santa - as I understand it - has milk and cookies left out for him, which is what a child would want. In our house at least, Father Christmas got a mince pie and a glass of sherry: what an adult would want. Part of that was probably for the benefit of my dad, but it also helped contribute to the image of an actual person with a mindset different to that of a child.

    This is probably partly anti-American snobbery on my part, and probably also a slightt sadness at seeing my childhood traditions gradually eroded and homogenised by the flood of American media to the extent. But I do think that the modern/American Santa is a slightly more fantastic, less believable figure, less relatable and somehow less rooted in the real world. Or maybe that's just nostalgia on my part.
    I don't think I knew magnetic north and true north were different until I was like 10, long after I'd accepted Santa as fiction.

    As for the milk and cookie diet, it depends on the degree to which you think Santa is even human. I know that the "jolly old elf" line in The Night Before Christmas is meant pretty literally. I don't know if I really understood the distinction as a little kid, but you can get away with a lot of the Santa mythos by just saying "MAGIC!"

  11. - Top - End - #41
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    Quote Originally Posted by Grey Watcher View Post
    I don't think I knew magnetic north and true north were different until I was like 10, long after I'd accepted Santa as fiction.

    As for the milk and cookie diet, it depends on the degree to which you think Santa is even human. I know that the "jolly old elf" line in The Night Before Christmas is meant pretty literally. I don't know if I really understood the distinction as a little kid, but you can get away with a lot of the Santa mythos by just saying "MAGIC!"
    He doesn't eat the cookies and milk, he feeds them into the back of the sleigh where they power a mr fusion style magic generator.
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    Rockphed said it well.
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  12. - Top - End - #42
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    Speaking as someone who found Santa deeply implausible as early as preschool - the logistics of the traveling were what seemed really dubious, along with the north pole thing. Milk and cookies? Apart from the sheer amount of milk and cookies consumed (a problem that is not ameliorated by going to meat pies) that made sense then and it makes sense now. I certainly didn't give up cookies on my 18th birthday, and I'm not sure I know anyone who did.
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  13. - Top - End - #43
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    Default Re: The Mind of A Six-Year-Old

    Context definitely is everything.

    To add to the Santa discussion, a little. As someone who grew up in the Netherlands I strongly believed in Sinterklaas, because of all the effort that was put in to making him real. Stuff like it being big TV news when his boat arrived in the Netherlands for the first time that year all added to the illusion. Sinterklaas was definitely real until the sad day someone told me he was not.

    At the same that I was believing in red-and-white bearded man that brought presents to all the Dutch children in one night I would watch american children shows that would have Santa Claus episodes and I would think: "how can anyone belief in this red-and-white bearded man that brings gifts to everyone in one night? How stupid are these children."

    As a child, I never thought about just how similar the two figures were I just knew that one was clearly real and the other one stupid make belief. Part of me wants to argue that more effort gets put into making Sinterklaas feel real so it makes more sense to belief in that version, but really I think it comes down to just two factors:
    1) I was told by everyone that he was real
    2) He gave me presents and as someone from a poor household who knew not to expect anything extra there where really only 2 days a year I got presents: my birthday and Sinterklaas. So I probably chose to believe in him because if he stopped being real the presents might stop.

    So when it comes to a 6 year old giving a statue a bandage, if the child was told it would work I could totally see them believing it, but I doubt that one would try that themselves. But then if someone asked me to come up with a scenario in which that specific instance was plausible I could come up with 1 or 2 so it really does depend on the context of the action.
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  14. - Top - End - #44
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    Default Re: The Mind of A Six-Year-Old

    Quote Originally Posted by Knaight View Post
    Speaking as someone who found Santa deeply implausible as early as preschool - the logistics of the traveling were what seemed really dubious, along with the north pole thing. Milk and cookies? Apart from the sheer amount of milk and cookies consumed (a problem that is not ameliorated by going to meat pies) that made sense then and it makes sense now. I certainly didn't give up cookies on my 18th birthday, and I'm not sure I know anyone who did.
    If anything, being financially independent has only exacerbated my cookie-obtaining.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Peelee View Post
    If anything, being financially independent has only exacerbated my cookie-obtaining.
    I know I certainly exercise my abilities as a nominal adult to engage in bad life choices like buying bags of candy or treats just because I have that power now.
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    Default Re: The Mind of A Six-Year-Old

    On a sidenote.... I'd lost sight of just how many fellow Dutch people there are on this forum
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    Quote Originally Posted by dehro View Post
    On a sidenote.... I'd lost sight of just how many fellow Dutch people there are on this forum
    Here, borrow my kitchenstep, you should be able to see them all easily that way.

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    Quote Originally Posted by snowblizz View Post
    Here, borrow my kitchenstep, you should be able to see them all easily that way.
    how did you know I'm a shortarse?
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  19. - Top - End - #49
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    Quote Originally Posted by dehro View Post
    how did you know I'm a shortarse?
    I was more aiming for a "the Netherlands is really flat" joke, but in these times one can't be picky.

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    Default Re: The Mind of A Six-Year-Old

    Oh, I thought you were aiming for "the Dutch are really tall".
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    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    Oh, I thought you were aiming for "the Dutch are really tall".
    That is also where my mind went. My thesis advisor is about 6 foot 6. He spent some time in the Netherlands and reported that he felt about average height, if not a little short.
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  22. - Top - End - #52
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    Default Re: The Mind of A Six-Year-Old

    Average dutch height is just above six feet, and is the highest in the world, yes.
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  23. - Top - End - #53
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    Default Re: The Mind of A Six-Year-Old

    I have lot of tall friends. I'm not impressed.

    And I never heard of Dutch being tall.

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    The Dutch are the tallest people in the world. On average.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    The Dutch are the tallest people in the world. On average.
    So much for keeping out secrets up high.
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    Default Re: The Mind of A Six-Year-Old

    Eh, you're a dragon. A couple extra centimeters on the peasants polishing your claws really don't matter, do they?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    The Dutch are the tallest people in the world. On average.

    I never knew! I guess it comes from years of stretching to plug the leaks up high in the dikes.

    "Alas, Hans was too short to reach the leak, the dike burst, and all the people of Smallberg were drowned. The End"
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  28. - Top - End - #58
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    Default Re: The Mind of A Six-Year-Old

    I heard a similar variant of that one before, where it was implied the Dutch had to be tall to keep their head above the water until the dikes were built.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Palanan View Post
    I’m dealing with a manuscript which has a six-year-old confusing a statue with a real person, and trying to use band-aids to heal the statue.

    My question is, would this be reasonable for a six-year-old?
    Absolutely not. You're talking about a kid in 1st grade. A kid that old who couldn't tell a statue was a statue and not a person would be referred to the school counselor to be evaluated mentally. They might stick bandaids on a statue to play (because stickers are fun!), but not because they genuinely believe the statue is a person. They know dolls aren't real babies but they are happy to pretend to feed them and hold them. If the statue isn't lifelike enough to fool an adult, then a normal 6 year old isn't going to think it's real either. A kid might be more sensitive to the uncanny valley effect from a creepy statue, but that's not the same thing.

    Quote Originally Posted by JeenLeen View Post
    From my own vague memories of childhood, and from watching my kids (not quite 6, but close), I feel like a child might think they think a band-aid would heal a person or statue, but know inwardly that it won't really. Sort of a half-conscious knowledge that they are pretending, but yet thinking it real.
    I could see a 6 year old thinking a bandaid would be a good way to tape together a broken statue because you can tape broken things together and bandaids are tape made for sticking on arms and legs. I don't think any normal 6 year old would expect the statue to heal, but they might be overly optimistic about how well the bandaids would hold it together.

    Quote Originally Posted by Peelee View Post
    Does your 3.5-year-old also believe that raindeer fly a man to every child in the world in a single night? It's definitely possible for a kid 30 months older to believe a band-aid can fix a statue. Knowing languages is a completely separate thing and is not relevant here.
    Kids have experience with "statues" and other artificial people in the form of dolls and other toys. They do arts and crafts projects with tape and glue and get bandaids put on their own little injuries. Very few kids have any direct reindeer experience, they are never allowed to do a close inspection of Santa's sleigh, and adults that they trust tell them very earnestly that it's true, so they accept the Santa story.
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  30. - Top - End - #60
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cazero View Post
    Not every six years old know enough about biology to understand that band-aid is not magical duct-tape that repairs minor cracks in what you put it on.
    Even many adults have a very poor grasp on biology and think modern medicine is basically DnD magic. (DnD magic, because they also think there is no price to pay apart from the financial one. Which is not the case in many other fantasy universes. And happens to not be the case with many things in modern medicine, either.)

    That said, if those adults were not all too real and everywhere on the internet, I would not believe they exist.

    Since six year olds are not often on the internet and therefore the extent of their foolishness is unknown, I would err on the side of intelligence when describing them.

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