Is it okay to lie about Santa Claus?

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It is wrong most of all because it teaches children to behave themselves for the wrong reason, to submit to being controlled by external rewards and not by conscience. The song, "You'd better watch out, Santa Clause is coming to town," threatens children with lower social rank and caste that will be defined and measured by your peers getting more expensive and higher status toys than you if you don't figure out how to please those who have more power than you. It is part of why so many children grow up to run businesses that lie, cheat, destroy public health, and do whatever it takes to be able to afford a bigger house and higher status car than those around them. We can have Christmas with all the beauty and happiness without the traditional Santa Clause controlling children with carrot sticks.
By the way, I doubt that the 4th century Bishop Nicholas of Myra, after his death having been canonized Saint Nicholas, and eventually called Santa Clause by the Dutch, would approve of the commercial Santa Clause we have today. His life story has far more to offer children as a far greater hero that the man who will get them a Nitendo video game if they clean their plate at the dinner table. Bishop Nicholas invented orphanages to replace the practice of slaughtering orphans for food. He organized cities to transport grain to cities that otherwise would have faced massive starvation in time of famine. Let him be a role model instead of the condescending Pavlov B F Skinner bell ringer he has been made to be for the convenience of parents. Do this and I'll bet we will all find the colored lights that celebrate the season far more beautiful.

About the only two ways to make me behave as a youngster were the Santa Clause threat or to smack the shi+ out of me. Just being good for the sake of being good was never enough.

i do not know how i would treat children if i had them.
i would never tell them any lies, but there is a bit of a dilemma when it comes to the fairy tales that most children believe.
if i said santa was not real, then they may be disappointed or they may develop a cynical attitude toward others who propound the idea, and they may be seen as sullen or distant by their classmates.

if i said he was real, then at some point they would rationalize that he wasn't and maybe consider me to be either a liar or stupid, and that may compromise their belief in further advice i may have to dispense as they grow older.

i think i would pretend that i am not sure if he exists or doesn't. i would place myself at their level of curiosity and wonder with respect to santa.

that would seem to me to be a good compromise between lying and shattering their belief in simple things that would help them fit in with their classmates and contemporaries.

How many kids young enough to believe in Santa think long term enough to respond to a threat that is supposed to last all year?