Beginning with Santa Claus as a cognitive exercise, a child is encouraged to share the same idea of reality as his peers.  Even if that reality is patently invented and ludicrous, belief is encouraged with gifts that support and promote the common cultural lies.  The Greatest consensus in modern society is our traffic system.  The Way a flood of strangers can interact, sharing a path, almost all of them traveling without incident.  It only takes one dissenting driver to create anarchy.  Perpetuating Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny breaks ground for further socialization, including conformance to traffic laws which all the maximum number of drivers to commingle on our roadways.  In addition, insisting that the journey is always a means to some greater end, and the excitement and danger of the journey should be minimized.  Perpetuating the fallacy that a journey itself is of little value.