A WINCHESTER academic is claiming that fake Santas do not ruin the magic of Christmas for children.

Senior lecturer Dr Louise Bunce teamed up with Prof Paul Harris from Harvard University for the project.

They found that young children believe in fantasy characters, such as Santa, but also know when someone is pretending to be one.

It comes just days after hundreds of people dressed as Father Christmas and ran through the centre of the city to raise money for children’s hospice Naomi House and Jackplace.

The pair interviewed 60 three to five-year-old children and 20 adults.

Dr Bunce said: “Parents may worry that if their child sees lots of different people dressing up as Santa then this will erode their child's belief in him.

“However, my research suggests that young children are good at spotting when people are just dressed up as fictional characters, and this does not affect their belief that those characters are ‘real’.”

It showed that 75 per cent could identify an impersonator, but two-thirds of three to four-year-olds continued to think their fantasy heroes were real and a third of five-year-olds believed fictional characters lived in the real world.

Dr Bunce and Professor Harris’ research paper, entitled Is it real? The development of judgments about authenticity and ontological status, has been published in the journal Cognitive Development.