Santa

In the United States, children between ages of 3 and 6 mostly think Santa is real, and they are sometimes confused by the fact that the same Santa can be in two different cities (or malls) in a short notice, or worse, at the same time. So, how do you answer your child when s/he asks, "Is Santa real?", "Why do I sometimes see multiple Santas?", "Is there only one Santa?", etc.

Hopefully, I will be able to help young parents tackle this problem. First of all, tell your child that his/her confusion is well justified. Gently direct the conversation towards the fact that Santa is a Platonic Idea, and the Santas we see in this world are merely instances of that idea. Also, kindly remind your child that Plato's ideas exist beyond empirical instances of those ideas. Whereas there is only one Platonic idea of "Santa", there can be many instances of that same Platonic idea.

To make matters clearer, tell your child that Schopenhauer found parallels between Kant's concept of "ding-an-sich" and Plato's ideas, because basically the world as representation will only give us approximations of the ideas that exist beyond empirical instances, which can collectively, if arguably, be named as "ding-an-sich" by Kant's terminology. After hearing this, your child will be able to easily deduce that Santa is real in the sense of a Platonic Idea, but that we can only see its instances in our world, referred to as "Vorstellung" by Arthur Schopenhauer.

These points will hopefully take away all of your child's confusion regarding Santa's existence.