My Turn

Grandpop Dreads the Santa Claus Question

Grandpa plans to leave the room when kids ask if Santa is real

I am hoping to survive another Christmas without being confronted with questions about the existence of Santa Claus. With nine grandchildren, I have lived in mortal fear that one of them would ask with wide-eyed innocence, "Grandpop, my friend told me there is no Santa Claus; is that true?” The simple way around this is to vehemently deny the friend’s hard-hearted revelation, but I have made a promise: Never lie to my grandchildren. "You’re not really lying,” says my wife, Marie, but I disagree. "But it’s a lie for a good cause,” she counters. Teaching a course in Communication Ethics, I am constantly prodding my students to think about lying as a form of unethical behavior. We have frequently discussed whether the so-called "little white…

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