“Is Santa Real” #90 on Google Hot Trends

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“Is Santa Real” #90 on Google Hot Trends

I was cruising Google Hot Trends, looking for what people are looking for on the search engine on Christmas eve, and Santa is a very popular subject. Searches for Santa trackers, like Norad’s Santa tracker, are very popular.

But ranking 90th as I write this is the search, “is Santa real?” Isn’t it heartbreaking? I’m hoping a lot of these searches are made by parents asking about how to explain Santa to their children. But Google’s related searches include “is santa real or fake” or “is santa real yes or no.”

It used to be that little kids wrote the local newspaper man so they could remind them that yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Now they Google it. I imagine the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and Clean Coal get the same treatment.

What would Holden Caulfield think of the web? What would he think of children being able to understand the true nature of the world with a few keystrokes? Sex, violence, reality, all a click away, with no catcher in the rye to keep the children from falling off the cliff. Obviously, it’s a parent’s job to be gatekeepers to what their children see, but kids are smart and computers are left lying around. And the first steps to dreary, hyper-real adulthood come flashing through the backlit screens. The benign deceptions that make childhood a safe but limitless wonderland of possibility can be torn down in mere seconds.

What does this lead to? I often wonder why adults seem so much more interested in movies, books, and tv shows about vampires, wizards, and psychics than it seems like they used to be–grown men and women who exhibit no shame in their love of children’s fare. Perhaps there is an innate thirst to for the miraculous that goes unquenched in the myth-destroying universe we live in right now.

No, this is not an argument against net-neutrality. It’s just Christmas, and it would be a shame if Yahoo Answers tarnished the luster of a surprise gift laid out in front the the fireplace in the morning.

For the record, the answer is: of course Santa is real. I was tracking him on Twitter.

Merry Christmas from USWeb!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 24th, 2008 at 11:15 pmand is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.