Study: children’s belief in Santa Claus is more nuanced than you think

Enlarge / Writing letters to Santa Claus and leaving out milk and cookies are two actions that reinforce children's belief. (credit: Carol Yepes/Getty Images)

There's rarely time to write about every cool science-y story that comes our way. So this year, we're once again running a special Twelve Days of Christmas series of posts, highlighting one science story that fell through the cracks in 2020, each day from December 25 through January 5. Today: how children's belief in Santa Claus is part of a hierarchical pantheon of real and non-real figures.

Do you believe in Santa Claus? If you're over the age of eight, you probably don't. We tend to think young children are simply more gullible due to their tender years. But their belief in Santa, the Tooth Fairy, or similar cultural figures isn't quite as simple as that, according to a June paper published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Rather, such figures fall into an ambiguous category between "real" and "nonreal" for many children, indicating that their belief structures are much more nuanced than previously believed. Rituals like writing letters to Santa, or leaving out milk and cookies on Christmas eve, reinforce their belief in these ambiguous figures. The fact that the milk and cookies are gone on Christmas morning serves as a form of indirect evidence, and when children interact with a Santa figure at the mall, it further reinforces that belief.