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Naughty or nice ... Does it really matter?
By Denise Dick
BOARDMAN
No child wants to be on the dreaded Naughty List, the rundown of names maintained by the chubby guy in the red suit to determine gift allotment.
“You better be good, Santa’s watching” is an admonition parents have been using for years as the holiday season draws near.
But is it really effective?
“It has worked a little bit,” said Candy Day of Liberty, a mother of two — Cody, 7, and Sabrina, 4.
“I tell them I’m going to call Santa. My son got in trouble twice in school this week. I told him I’m going to call Santa and he won’t bring your DS [hand-held video game].”
She’s told her children that every time they’re bad, she’ll call Santa and Santa will put back one of the presents be was going to bring.
“He says, ‘No! First he’ll put back the DS,’” Day said. “They get scared.”
Mackenzie Smith, 4, and her mother, Andrea of Youngstown, took a break from shopping last week to visit Santa Claus at Southern Park Mall.
As Mackenzie sat on Santa’s ample lap, she told him of her wish for a Barbie airplane.
She says she’s been good this year, and her mom agrees though she sometimes employs the Santa warning if Mackenzie and her older siblings misbehave.
Santa, who says he’s been stopping at malls across the country for many years, comes from a long line of toymakers.
When a child crawls onto his lap, he doesn’t judge their behavior, he said. He just listens to their wishes.
Those children come in all ages.
“The oldest was 82 and the youngest was, I think, two weeks,” Claus said.
The Noerr Programs Corp. of Denver, which brings the man in red from the North Pole to the mall each year, tries to promote sharing and generosity among children through a social-media program called BeMerrySanta. Families may go to www.bemerrysanta.com or follow Claus on Facebook or Twitter at facebook.com/bemerrysanta or @bemerrysanta, respectively.
Parents can input their child’s good deed on one of the sites and print out a badge to show Santa during their mall visit. Santa will reward them, and there’s a chance to enter for a prize.
Alison Wess of Poland says for her children, reports to Santa Claus are more about being good people than presents.
The family has an Elf on the Shelf. Families adopt an elf, read an accompanying book, name and register him online.
The elf watches the family’s activities throughout each day, and after the family goes to bed, flies back to the North Pole and reports his observations to Santa. After his report, he flies back home and perches in a different location before the family awakens the next morning.
The Wess family’s elf is named Clyde.
“It really keeps them focused on trying to do good things,” Wess said. “They want to have a good report.”
It also helps her two children, Gavin, 7, and Madison, 8, stay excited about Christmas even as they get older.
The day after Thanksgiving, the family puts up the Christmas tree and they read the book, which talks about the spirit of Christmas. The next morning, Clyde is sitting somewhere in the house.
“For us, we just say, ‘Clyde is watching and he reports to Santa,’” Wess said. “It’s more about being a good person. They really want to be good people. It’s not to get a present. It’s just to follow our example to be a good kid.”
Dr. Alice Neuman, clinic director at Canfield Counseling, said the effectiveness of the Santa as a behavior guide depends on how the child feels about jolly old St. Nick.
“If they think Santa is real, and if they think the behavior they exhibit directly correlates with how many gifts they get,” it could be effective, Neuman said.
“It wouldn’t be effective if they don’t believe in Santa.”
Tammy Sabrin of Poland also uses Elf on the Shelf. The Sabrin family named their elf Dan for their children’s names: Dominic, 8, Ava, 6, and Nicholas, 12.
“We tell them, ‘Dan is going to go back and give a report. Is it going to be a good report or a bad report tonight?’” Sabrin said. “Dan is always here, and he’s watching all day long. It is extremely effective. Our 8-year-old, the first thing he does when he gets up is to find where Dan is sitting from the night before.”