I prefer the idea of "santa claus" as a personification, similar to "mother nature" or "old man winter." We humans seem given to celebration around the winter solstice, gathering together somewhere warm, sharing a meal, exchanging gifts, making merriment. Illustrating this phenomenon as a jolly old man that travels the world spreading good cheer works for me. I'm fine with "holiday spirit" wearing a goofy bright red suit and having a distinctive laugh.

I'm also pretty okay with addressing presents "from Santa" for the gift giver to remain anonymous; the legend of the histoical Saint Nicholas heavily involves anonymous gift giving, so I'm okay with carrying out that reference in the modern day.

I'm not sure how useful it is to lead children to believe that there's literally a man that commits hundreds of millions of reverse burglaries every December, especially when a lot of the specific details and trappings of this were made up by retail marketing in the 20th century.

Yeahhhh, I did not care for the "Santa toys" as much as I did the ones from my parents. I still regret that to this day. If it stopped working or I lost it I'd think it was okay because it was free.

Though, in grade ~2 i told everyone i could go work in Santa's work shop if I tried more new foods....

Completely agree with you. I'm definitely underqualified to speak of this, as I have no children, but I have a masters degree in pedagogy, started a PhD in pedagogy years ago that I never finished and briefly worked as a teacher, but I've never once in my life saw as little as a proper article with any proof that belief in Santa is in any way beneficial to a child's developement.

Moreover I honestly believe it's detrimental. Such belief often leaves children in poor families disappointed and resentful when they see their friends get much more impressive gifts. On top of that such belief leads to ungrateful and entitled behavior in children as they believe they are owed a present, without understanding the sacrifices their parents have to make to buy this present.

Tldr: Please don't make your kids worship capitalist mascots, if you want them to have a magical childhood just read them a book or spend quality time with them.