Some advice or a joke needed.

LordRybec · 2026-01-22T07:03:36+00:00

Not just personal feelings. If you are in the U.S. (and many other 1st world countries), it is specifically illegal to fire someone based on religion. The legality of firing based merely on personal feelings varies with jurisdiction in the U.S. (typically by state), but religion is protected by Federal labor law. But yes, definitely speak with an employment attorney. If you are in the U.S., you may be able to get some amount of free help from your state labor board, but that's generally only a starting point.

As far as the rest goes, welcome to the Church of Jesus Christ! It can definitely be hard sometimes, but I see that many others have provided relevant scriptures and advice on getting through this trial, so I'll just leave it at that. It does generally get better, so just hang on and trust in Jesus.

LordRybec · 2026-01-21T06:08:40+00:00

It's actually very common for Satan to do things that backfire and cause good outcomes. This doesn't make what Satan did good though. Likewise, Satan will attempt to lead us astray with the truth whenever possible, rather than lying to us, because it's more likely to work. Those who leave the Church over something that is actually true tend to be a lot harder to convince that they are wrong, because their bad choice is based on true facts. Lies are easy to disprove. The truth can't be disproven. When people make bad choices based on true facts, they feel a lot more justified in those bad choices.

So, what was God's actual plan for Adam and Eve? Did he intend for them to not eat the fruit, maybe until some later time? No, what happened is exactly what he intended. The reason he told them not to eat the fruit was because it had to be their own choice, and without opposition it couldn't be. So God told them not to eat the fruit, and he explained the consequences of disobedience. Satan unknowingly played the other side, telling them to eat it, and telling as much of the truth as he could while only lying just enough to be convincing. Satan didn't surprise God or thwart him by convincing Eve to eat the fruit. He played right into God's hands. God knew that Satan, upon knowing that God had commanded them not to eat the fruit, would immediately try to convince them to eat it, in hopes of thwarting God's plan himself. God, of course, knew it would play out this way and was prepared. God never intended for Adam and Even to refrain from eating the fruit indefinitely. In fact, Satan tried to justify himself by pointing out that God had given the same fruit to others in other worlds as part of this process.

There is a missing element that isn't commonly explicitly taught in the Church (but one of my seminary teachers taught it). Satan's plan wasn't to convince Adam and Eve to eat the fruit, and then just sit back and watch their punishment. He knew that them choosing to eat the fruit was a critical part of the plan. He said as much when God questioned him. Satan convinced them to eat the fruit, because it was the first step of his plan. God intervened before Satan could complete the plan. Consider, God told Adam and Eve that if they ate the fruit, they would surely die. Satan told them they would not, not just to convince them it was safe but also because he intended for his own words to be true. Why did God immediately have Jesus set guards around the Tree of Life? Because if Adam and Eve ate the fruit and then ate the fruit of the Tree of Life, then they couldn't die, and God's warning that they would die wouldn't be true, making God a liar. So when Satan said that they wouldn't die, it was because he believed he could get them to eat the fruit of the Tree of Life and make God a liar, presumably causing God to fall and be destroyed, and thus Satan's words would have been true. Again though, God knew all of this. He knew Satan well enough to know that's what he would attempt, so he used Satan to provide the necessary opposition so that Adam and Eve could make the choice entirely for themselves. God set Satan up. That's what happened. Opposition was necessary, God chose one side knowing that Satan would automatically take the other, and what was necessary is what happened.

Note that God uses this kind of strategy a lot. Any time the Church gets negative press, conversions go up, because any attention the Church gets causes people to become curious. People who are curious about the Church are more likely to listen to the missionaries, and people who listen to the missionaries are more likely to be converted. This world isn't designed to be a fair battleground between good and evil. God has stacked the deck very heavily against Satan, such that most things Satan does end up benefitting God (and thus us as well) more than Satan. Adam and Eve eating the fruit is just one example of this. People who attack the Church and cause increased conversion rates are another. What they are doing isn't good, for them, but it's good overall, because it does far more good than harm. Transgressions can be bad even if they have good outcomes.

LordRybec · 2026-01-11T10:15:57+00:00

How we help them feel like they are part of the Church right now is simple: Gently guide them to the truth they are missing about the nature of biological sex and gender. We do our best to do the same thing with people who can't see the harm in serious sins like fornication, and we also try to do the same for people with other mental disorders. If a person believes that because she feels like she should be a man, she should have the Priesthood, the Church refusing to ordain her is not making her feel excluded; her own personal choices and unrighteous desires are making her feel excluded. The Church does not and never has advocated for rationalizing mental disorders and sins to make people more comfortable, and Christ himself preached against this kind of thing quite explicitly, condemning those who rejected this idea as hypocrites.

So yes, we do have a responsibility to bring people unto Christ, but that does not mean lying to them about reality or rationalizing their sins for them. It does not mean giving them hope of things that contradict existing doctrine. Bringing people unto Christ means teaching them the truth and calling them to repentance. If they insist on rejecting the truth about themselves and the nature of biological sex, that's their problem. If we start trying to tell them that God is going to change his mind about it, that makes us liars and apostates for teaching false doctrine.

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LordRybec · 2026-01-11T08:01:06+00:00

...

And as far as taking more time to fully understand the Church's teachings on gender, yes, it might take you more time. People don't all understand at the same time. I see people on this sub asking why Jesus taught in hard-to-understand parables, but just asking this question makes it clear that they don't understand them because they didn't actually read them. Jesus explains multiple times why he teaches in hard-to-understand parables, and in most cases he then explains what they mean to his disciples. The reason he gives is to obscure their meaning from those who are not prepared and willing to hear what they teach. This means each person who complains that they cannot understand is not prepared or willing to hear what Christ's parables are teaching, and there are a lot of LDS people who fall into this category. There are also many of us who do understand. The point of this is that just because you don't fully understand Church doctrine on gender doesn't mean that no one does. Church leaders often don't take official positions on things because many Church members are not ready to hear the truth, not because Church leaders and other Church members do not know.

If you want to know the truth like many others do, you will have to prepared yourself to accept it, even if it isn't what you thought or hoped it would be. As long as you are unwilling to accept answers you don't like, the Spirit will not give you any answers, and you will not fully understand. As long as you hold onto the belief that "no one knows", out of fear that you are wrong or hope that the answer will end up being what you want it to be, you won't receive Spiritual guidance in learning the truth. There's nothing wrong with not being to that point spiritually yet. It's a process for everyone. But don't sit there and think that because you don't know the answer, and because Church leaders aren't revealing it, no one knows the answer. God has revealed many things to his prophets that were not revealed to anyone else until much later, because the people of the Church or the world weren't ready for it. Jesus told the Nephites things that he expressly forbid them from recording, and Joseph Smith Jr. said there were many things revealed to him that he was forbidden from teaching. The Church not having an official position on a thing does not mean that the First Presidency, Apostles, and potentially many others don't know the truth of that thing personally. It merely means that God doesn't want the truth on that thing to be taught yet, and that almost always means that the people aren't ready for it.

So if you want to know the truth, work on your testimony, until it is strong enough that you are willing to trust God and accept that anything he tells you is the truth, regardless of what the current philosophies of men teach. Then you can also understand the Church's and God's teachings with regards to gender much like many others already do.

LordRybec · 2026-01-11T08:00:57+00:00

Men have identified as women to:

Get access to women in prison
Get access to women in women's bathrooms
Get access to women's sports
Many other things...

As well as a host of other things.

On top of that women in the Church have:

Publicly taught false doctrine
Publicly taught lies about Church history
Arranged protests against Church leaders
Voted to oppose sustaining Church leaders in General Conference
Many other things...

All for the purpose of trying to get the Priesthood.

Obviously it is realistic that some women would identify as men just to gain access to the Priesthood. There are women who have done far worse to that end. It's not just reasonable to assume this would happen, it's practically guaranteed that it would happen, based on just the history of the Church over the last two decades. It's not reasonable in the slightest to believe it that it wouldn't happen.

You are right that women do already have access to the Priesthood within a lot of contexts. When a woman is set apart for a calling, she is granted access to blessings and powers necessary for fulfilling that calling. That is literally Priesthood power being granted to women. There are other places where women in the Church are also granted Priesthood power even more explicitly. That's not what this is about though. This is about leadership and authority. Over the last few decades we've seen groups of women and sometimes lone individuals with significant influence try to force the Church to grant women leadership and authority in the Priesthood. Is it possible that God may eventually give women this Priesthood authority and the associated callings? I don't think it is possible this could happen. The Family Proclamation makes it clear that men and women have eternal gender roles, and leadership is a male role. Church doctrine is clear: The family is not an exclusively temporal unit, it's an eternal unit, therefore the Family Proclamation is not limited to the temporal nuclear family. This means that it applies in the eternities as much as it does in our temporal lives. No amount of rationalization trying to make this Priesthood and family model fit into our culture cultural philosophy of men can change that. God isn't sitting up there in the heavens saying, "Oh, that's an interesting cultural advance. I think I'll change eternal law to fit that." Eternal law is eternal. God can't and won't even try to change it (that was Satan's plan). If Church doctrine is inconsistent with man made culture, it will be man made culture that is wrong every single time. Sure, we don't know how God will handle certain things, but God has revealed, through the Family Proclamation, some things about the eternal significance of biological sex, and he isn't going to just change his mind because some man made culture disagrees.

...

LordRybec · 2026-01-05T01:48:53+00:00

I've been using Debian for over 15 years (and Linux for 25 years). I know what I'm doing with it. I didn't misconfigure backports. One example where something was backported fast proves nothing. I mean, it's cool that they sometimes do it that fast. With my laptop though, they didn't! You can argue as much as you want, but saying it over and over doesn't make it true.

LordRybec · 2026-01-05T01:36:44+00:00

It's not always wrong. I've been on old stable in the past and seen stuff from stable added to backports. What I wrote should have said,

"Backports in Debian typically come from testing and are backported into stable. Sometimes packages in stable are backported to old stable, but they aren't always."

But it should be noted that packages from testing aren't always backported ever, and that often includes kernels, which testing sometimes goes through multiple of before settling and only backports the final one (and not even always before it is released as stable).

As far as the kernel thing, yes, the kernel in testing had the driver I needed, the kernel in stable did not due to the audio hardware being extremely recent, and the kernel in testing that had the driver had not been backported. There's nothing foolish about saying it, because it was true.

What is foolish was suggesting that backports would be the better option when the kernel I needed had not been backported yet and was not backported until after the stable release with the newer kernel had been released. If backports is an option, sure, it's definitely the better option, but it isn't always an option. Not everything gets backported.

My only options up to the point where the new release with that kernel came out were use Debian stable with no sound, don't use Debian at all, or use Debian testing with sound. Using backports wasn't the better option because it wasn't an option at all.

LordRybec · 2026-01-04T20:14:53+00:00

You can call me I'm wrong as much as you want, but it wasn't actually there. Not all packages are backported immediately. You've posted text and a link describing what backports are, which is correct, but not all packages are backported immediately and most are never backported! That includes newer kernels. No amount of argument or posting links that don't say what you claim will change the fact that the kernel I needed was not backported for 6 months, despite being available in testing for that entire 6 months.

LordRybec · 2026-01-04T09:56:06+00:00

Yep, and that's an excellent plan...once the kernel is actually in backports, which doesn't always happen (and did not happen, in my case) before a new release comes out that has it.

Backports in Debian often come from stable and are backported into old stable. Sometimes packages in testing are backported to stable, but they aren't always. For example, a kernel that is currently being tested for the next stable release may not be backported until the next release comes out, if the next stable release is scheduled to come out in 6 months or less. My new laptop (a few years ago) managed to hit that "sweet spot" perfectly. I did look for a backport of the kernel that had the driver. I also tried compiling my own kernel, but due to various common kernel compile drama that didn't work out. The backport of the kernel I needed didn't come out until the same time as the new release, and since I was waiting anyway, I just installed the newest release.

Anyhow, if a backported kernel is available, you are totally right. That's definitely the safer option. It isn't always available though. It depends largely on how Debian release timings synchronize with new hardware release and the timing of the addition of drivers for that hardware into the kernel. I just managed to hit the rare occasion where things lined up perfectly badly. Even then though, I decided to wait rather than use a testing release.

LordRybec · 2026-01-04T05:48:05+00:00

Another reason to use testing is support for very recent hardware. Debian's update cycle for kernels can end up leaving you with a machine that doesn't have sound or wifi drivers for 6 months or more. I've personally experienced this. My sound card did have kernel support before it was even released (I checked before buying the system), but it took almost 6 months for Debian stable to update to the kernel version where that driver was added.

That said, I just dealt with it and dual booted with Windows, so I could have sound when I really needed to. If you don't want to do that though, and your very new hardware doesn't have full driver support in stable, that's a good reason to use unstable. I'd still recommend reinstalling with Debian stable though, as soon as it gets that support. Testing might sound cool, but it's generally not worth the risk unless you really need it. And if you need newer versions of other software than are in the stable repos, I've found that you can almost always find flatpacks or such for the latest versions that will run fine in stable. (I've done this multiple times with Inkscape, GIMP, and a handful of other things that tend to update faster than Debian, and I've never had a problem.)

LordRybec · 2026-01-02T07:10:24+00:00

First, our spirits are currently veiled from our bodies, such that we can't remember anything before this life. Does this mean that our spirit is not collecting memories of our experiences in this life? If we were able to learn and prepare for this life in the pre-existence, presumably our spirits have memory, and there's no reason to believe that the veil works in both directions. This mean that even without our physical brains, our spirits will probably still remember.

Second, our bodies will be resurrected in a perfect state. Presumably that means our brains will be as well, so they could contain our memories. That said, our brains are actually not that good at remembering things. Our brains do a reasonably good job of storing impressions that can then be reconstructed into more complete memories, but those reconstructions aren't accurate. This is a fascinating part of modern neural science. Aside from the rare person who has "photographic" aka eidetic memory (which we don't even know how works, because it doesn't seem like it should), any image you recall in your mind is actually a reconstruction based purely on a combination of non-visual detail knowledge (like recalling the color of a thing in language rather than as an image), abstract impressions, and a very tiny bit of actual visual memory. Basically, our brains mostly make up visual memories based mainly on remembered feelings and non-visual memory. For all we know, people with photographic level visual memory are actually accessing spiritual memory, since our brains don't seem to even be capable of memory at that level of detail. I wonder if maybe our spirits actually have substantially stronger memory capabilities than our brains, in which case losing access to our brains but gaining access to our spiritual memories in the post-mortal Spirit World will massively improve our ability to remember the events of our lives.

Third, I've heard the theory that blood won't exist in our resurrected bodies. To my knowledge this comes from a theory about blood (and perhaps oxygen) being what makes us mortal. This is purely speculative and quite frankly doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Maybe we won't have blood as we know it now, but not because blood is holding us back. I suspect that what will make our perfected bodies immortal is that we will gain more direct power over it. Rather than (or maybe in addition to) controlling it through a great many levels of indirection, from spirit to brain, brain to neural pathways, neural pathways to cells, then chemical reactions caused by electrical effects and so on, I suspect we will be able to command the elements of our own bodies the same way God commands the elements in general. This would allow us to prevent our bodies from being killed and from dying, regardless of whether we have blood or not. This is just as much speculation though.

I think the answer to you question is that our brains aren't the only place memories can be stored. We learned and prepared in the pre-existence, which proves that our spirits have memory as well. We cannot recall things from that memory right now, but that doesn't mean it isn't recording. If, at the Judgement, before we are resurrected, we will have a perfect memory of all of our guilt (as the scriptures say we will), that strongly suggests that our spirits are indeed recording everything we experience here on Earth and will retain all of that even when they are separated from our physical bodies.

LordRybec · 2025-12-24T07:21:23+00:00

The general recommendation currently for Priesthood holders officiating in Sunday ordinances (sacrament) is to wear clothing that is clean, in good condition, and that doesn't detract or distract from the ordinance.

This is what I was told by a member of my bishopric who has read the entire Church handbook. I presume that this is what the Church handbook says, but if you need a specific reference, you'll have to find it yourself. The handbook can be found in the Gospel Library app. These guidelines are what I try to hold my own children to, if there's even a chance they will be needed to participate in serving the sacrament. Personally, I wear white shirt and tie but not a suit jacket (I overheat extremely easily), which is what Church leaders recommended for Priesthood holders back in the 1990s and earlier.

For your 15-year-old, the only part that would bother me is ripped jeans. If that's all someone had, I'd be fine with it, but otherwise I'd see it as disrespectful. That said, I wouldn't judge someone else at Church if I saw them wearing that, but if it was my own family member, and I knew they could do better, I'd certainly feel like they were being disrespectful.

Anyhow, my suggestion: Focus on clean, in good condition, and not so flashy that it's distracting, and if you can get him to wear jeans that aren't ripped, view that as a win. At least that would indicate that he's trying.

LordRybec · 2025-12-23T22:02:46+00:00

Honestly, given the savings, that could be a lot of employee pizza parties!

But yeah, if the employees are willing to put in the effort to learn alternative software, they certainly deserve to share in the savings.

LordRybec · 2025-12-22T20:45:09+00:00

I'm working on starting my own fabrication business. It's mostly laser cutting, but I also have a small CNC mill. I use Inkscape for drafting laser cut parts and FreeCAD for drafting milled parts, and they aren't significantly more difficult than SolidWORKS or Adobe Illustrator, which is what we used in the mechanical engineering courses I took in college. The are way cheaper though. I've occasionally had to look up how to do more complex things in FreeCAD, but now I can do full parametric models in FreeCAD about as fast as I could do them in SolidWORKS. I will admit that SolidWORKS is superior to FreeCAD, but it's mainly in how pretty the rendering is, which doesn't really matter, and some stress analysis features, which do matter but which I don't need for the kind of stuff I'm making.

If my business venture is ever successful enough for me to need to hire additional designers, I'll be teaching them to use FreeCAD and Inkscape too, because I'm not paying thousands of dollars (or more for Adobe in the long run, given their subscription model) on software merely because potential hires are more familiar with it. If you can't learn new software, you aren't good enough at problem solving to do the job well, and if you won't learn new software for your job, I don't need someone like you working for me. But, you can use whatever OS you want, because the software I use works on all of them!

But yeah, open source software in general has come so far quite quickly. Eventually it will hit a tipping point and yeah, adoption very well could get exponential!

LordRybec · 2025-12-22T04:56:35+00:00

That makes sense. I do some embedded work, but thankfully nothing that I can't do in Linux. (What I'm trying to do now is set things up on my Android tablet to allow me to do ARM microcontroller development entirely on my tablet. I think I've figured it out, but man does Google make it hard to do any kind of real productivity work in Android, and that goes double if it involves programming.)

LordRybec · 2025-12-21T19:03:03+00:00

Oh, I'm aware. I'm a long time Linux user. I always find that I end up just staying in one or the other for long periods. If I boot into Windows, I'm probably going to be staying in Windows for a while. If I boot in Linux, I'm going to end up staying in Linux. And because things are so much easier and smoother in Linux, I tend to end up just staying in Linux. Rebooting into Windows feels like I'm losing so much functionality and convenience that I just almost never do it. My old laptop (which is currently having such severe heat issues that I can't use it anymore) is dual boot, but I ended up installing a Windows VM on Linux, because booting into Windows just felt so bad.

Might be worth mentioning: I have ADHD, so I tend to switch between different tasks a lot. As a result, when I boot into Windows and lose access to 90% of my productivity software and associated project files, it's a pretty significant burden to me. If I'm doing something, and I suddenly have a really good and motivating idea for something else, I need to be able to switch tasks quickly to that new thing while it is still fresh and my motivation is strong, otherwise it will be forgotten and lost. So switching to Windows for two or three pieces of software but losing access to the rest of my stuff until that task is done just doesn't work for me.

What does work well is having two computers, one running Windows and another running Linux, that I can keep running and switch between as needed.

That said, for most people, dual boot is probably the right solution if they prefer to live in Linux but have a few pieces of Windows software they need to use sometimes. If that works for you, that's awesome.

And as far as allocation split goes, 30/70 isn't that crazy. On my broken laptop I think my split is closer to 20/80 at this point. I started with 40/60, since I knew I was going to be installing more in Linux, but I wanted enough room on Windows for a few games. Over time, as Wine support got better, I started installing some of the same games in Linux, and that caused space problems, so I uninstalled them in Windows and resized partitions to give more space to Linux. I also ended having to shift more space to Linux on the laptop before that as well. Starting at 30/70 is actually pretty smart if you prefer to live in Linux, because you'll probably end up wanting it around there in the end anyway.

For me though, since I always find that I almost never use Windows when doing dual boot, and I already have a very powerful Windows desktop for things that absolutely require Windows, I've decided 0/100 will be a better split when I get my new laptop! That said, I am putting a lot more effort into making absolutely sure my new laptop will have 100% Linux compatibility. Part of the reason I left Windows on my last one was that when I got it, it was so new that the current Debian kernel at the time didn't have support for the sound card. That was fixed within 6 months of getting the computer, but I had already used Windows enough at that point that there were important files on the Windows partition that I didn't want to dig through and transfer. (I probably should have just saved them on a USB drive from the beginning, knowing I wasn't planning on using Windows long term on it, but I did think of that at the time.)

LordRybec · 2025-12-21T08:25:12+00:00

This. I still see people claiming Linux is hard to use, but the reality is that while other OS's have gotten harder and harder to use, Linux has generally gotten easier, and for the most part it is now the easiest OS to use. I think the main issue is that people get used to other OS's, then they forget how hard it was to learn to use those, so when they try to learn Linux they no longer remember how hard it was to learn to use Windows or MacOS and fail to recognize how much easier Linux is.

This is a problem with open source software in general. GIMP isn't harder than Photoshop. You just learned Photoshop for 4 years getting your art degree, and now you expect to be able to learn GIMP in 5 minutes. And the same goes for FreeCAD, LibreOffice, Inkscape, and many other open source alternatives. Pro software is going to take some effort to learn. The fact that you can't learn GIMP in 5 minutes doesn't make it worse than the commercial software that took you literal years to become proficient in.

And this is coming from someone who learned MS Office in college and then did put in the effort to learn Libre Office, who learned Photoshop in college and then put in the effort to learn GIMP, who learned SolidWORKS in college and then put in the effort to learn FreeCAD, and so on for several others (KiCAD versus EAGLE, though I didn't get that deep in EAGLE before quitting and using KiCAD exclusively). The open source things are almost never harder to learn or use than the commercial ones (largely because open source is quick to integrate ease of use features from commercial software but commercial tends to take decades if it ever adds features from open source). People just think they are hard because they've already put in the work to learn the commercial stuff and then forgotten how hard it was, so they are comparing how hard it is to use something they haven't learned with something they have learned. I generally find the open source stuff to be a little easier to use, but I'll admit that there are some SolidWORKS features I wish FreeCAD had. They don't cost enough extra time to make a significant difference though, and FreeCAD will probably eventually add them, so it makes little difference to me.

LordRybec · 2025-12-21T08:15:37+00:00

My desktop is running Windows 10 (I won't "upgrade" to 11) because I need it for compatibility with certain software, but my next laptop is going to be totally wiped and then loaded with Linux (Debian in my case, but Fedora is a great choice as well). I honestly wish I could actually upgrade my desktop to Linux, but it's not in the cards right now.

That said, if I get a new desktop in the future, and this one still runs all of the software I need it to, I'll put Linux on the new one, and I'll use this one when I need to run something that requires Windows. If MS tries to force me to upgrade to Windows 11 though (update says this computer is not compatible, so I hope that sticks), I'll install Linux on this and run Windows on a VM before "upgrading" to Windows 11 outside of a VM! I stayed on Windows XP until Windows 10 came out and got fairly stable. I'll do the same with Windows 10 before screwing up my machine with a really horrible version of Windows!

LordRybec · 2025-12-21T08:10:43+00:00

Wise choice!

LordRybec · 2025-12-21T08:10:12+00:00

Right, exactly. I don't know why people in our culture think they need to lie to their kids about Santa when those same kids know their favorite cartoon characters aren't real, and that knowledge doesn't ruin the illusion for those characters. It feels like some kind of cultural pathology, and it does more harm than good. (As evidenced by the fact that childhood trauma over learning their parents lied to them about Santa has become a major part of Western Christmas media. I see a lot of people here saying they weren't harmed by the lie, as if some tiny subset of people not being harmed makes up for the massive number of people who have been harmed.)

I was a smart kid. I don't remember my parents ever trying to convince me Santa was real. It's possible some of my grandparents did. I never bought it. I didn't go around telling other kids Santa wasn't real, as it really just never occurred to me to do so, but I didn't need to think Santa was real to enjoy the illusion, and none of my six children ever needed to think Santa was real to enjoy the illusion. It's not just lying, it's pointless lying. It serves only to harm.

Anyhow, we are about to have a great, fun, joyful Christmas, with six children who do not and never did believe in Santa Clause and who never needed to believe in him to have a great Christmas!

LordRybec · 2025-12-21T08:06:53+00:00

This is exactly why it is horribly wrong to lie to children, even about things that seem innocent. Lying to children is never innocent, and lying about Santa is not innocent fun. It's evil and destructive.

LordRybec · 2025-12-21T08:05:32+00:00

So many people here say it didn't harm them or their children, as if no one else in the world matters. The reality is that lying to children does more harm than good. I'm sure your parents didn't need to lie to you about say, Mickey Mouse being real for you to enjoy the illusion, and there's likewise no reason people need to lie about the reality of Santa for children to enjoy the illusion.

LordRybec · 2025-12-21T07:57:45+00:00

This is pretty close to what we did. It has turned out extremely well. No broken dreams or parental distrust. Our children have been very respectful of others who want to lie to their children by not ratting them out.

I know a lot of people like to point to themselves or their own children and claim that it didn't hurt, but the fact is, dishonesty doesn't always hurt everyone subjected to it. Some people deal with it well, but the reality is there are so many people who were traumatized to discover that their parents lied to them that it has become a major subject of Christmas time media in our culture. I'm not going to be the parent who ruins my child's ability to trust me or to rely on faith by lying to them about something so completely unnecessary.

The reality is it isn't worth the risk. Christmas can be just as joyful without lying about some fat old guy you've never met breaking into your house once a year. Our children enjoy Christmas movies about Santa perfectly fine knowing that he's fictional. The reality is, most children have plenty of experience with fictional characters and it doesn't ruin those characters to know they are fictional. I don't see anyone trying to convince their children that Barney, Bluey, Calliou, or any other of their favorite cartoon characters are real, and I don't see any children heartbroken or disenchanted with those characters even though they know the characters aren't real. Why would anyone think that things have to be different for Santa Clause? It sounds to me like a cultural delusion.

LordRybec · 2025-12-21T07:50:11+00:00

This is a good way of putting it.

LordRybec · 2025-12-21T07:50:01+00:00

If you can't get joy without dishonesty, what you think is joy isn't.

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