Psychologist Barbara Held On Santa Skepticism And What To Tell Children About St. Nick

Press release from Bowdoin College:

Published December 15, 2020 by Doug Cook

Skeptical child turned clinical and philosophical psychologist Barbara Held, Bowdoin’s Barry N. Wish Professor of Psychology and Social Studies Emerita, shares her unique perspective on Santa from early childhood—with insight into the topical issue of truth—in an op-ed published by the New York Daily News.

Barbara Held with Macy's Santa in 1953.

In it, Held writes of her preschool Santa reckoning in the Bronx in the 1950s—when her first-generation Jewish-American parents were eager to integrate her into mainstream American culture—and the antics that ensue amid various confrontations.

Read “The Santa Question (COVID Edition)” in the New York Daily News.

This press release was produced by Bowdoin College.The views expressed here are the author’s own.