Would you ever threaten to take Christmas (birthday, Easter, whatever)away from your kids if they didn’t behave?

Of course not.
Threats like that are what the Christmas characters are for:
Santa brings you coals instead of presents, Knecht Ruprecht beats the shit out of you with a stick, Krampus abducts and then eats you.
And if that does not work, you throw the kids out into the snow, until their fingers have to be amputated due to frostbite.

No – but lately I have considered changing my will! :-)

Isn’t that scenario the entire premise of Santa Claus? Don’t fault the kid or the mom for simply retelling the story as written.

You can buy animal poop from your municipal zoo (elephant, etc) and fill the house with it and tell the children it was what Santa brought because they weren’t good that year. And spend Christmas morning shoveling it out into the yard as punishment.

So you’d deny Christmas and presents to your kids over your inability to control your kids @Darth? That’s horrible.

I don’t need an outside source to get my kids to behave. I don’t need bribes. I don’t need God and the threat of hell. It’s all on me.

Yes, @Dutchess_III, that is exactly what I said.

The only reason I condemn it as a tactic is that the kids are too young to judge a credible threat. When I was around 10, my 8 year old sister found a hoard of our Christmas presents buried in the back of the huge closet of our “playroom”. We hauled em out and the 4 of us had a good old time. We put em all back and went over the scene of the crime to assure mom not catching on when she got home from work, and it looked like we had gotten away with it.. But here’s the lesson concerning crime and greed. The next day, as soon as mom was out the door (this was early in Christmas vacation from school), true to form, I leaned over the breakfast table to consult with my siblings on yesterday’s discovery of treasures, and speculated on the possibilities awaiting us in the attic. My sisters (born criminals) were on their feet so fast, that it shocked me. My baby brother, however, sat there panicked and erupted in tears over visions around our future and the wrath of Santa. Anyway, I calmed him down as we fetched the stepladder and clambered up, flipped open the trap door and JACKPOT! Much of that day we spent playing noisily, with the girls fighting over which doll or other silly “girl” thing was going to be the property of whom. Gotta go.

Poor baby!

I found a guitar under my folk’s bed one Christmas. I knew it was mine. I was so excited! Stairway to Heaven here I come.
So Christmas morning comes and I unwrapped my present. I loved it! I did! Guess I’m a crappy actor becauseMom almost instanyly said “You weren’t surprised!”

I don’t have kids, but I have thought about this before and my thought has always been absolutely not. I don’t even like the naught and nice thing to begin with.

Nah. I’d ground them from the phone and activities, or in today’s world, send them to their room with no internet gadgets. Cell ph, I Pad etc. I used to get threatened with the bag of coal from Santa bit, didn’t work. Now as I got older the threat of military school worked wonders on me..oh hell to the no!

No, rude and somewhat cruel.

“Sadistic” comes to mind, @KNOWITALL,especially if they were to actually make good on the threat.

The idea that Santa brought lumps of coal to bad little boys and girls goes back a long way. But establishing boundaries for behavior is something I think we should work at, especially with younger children. And sometimes I think you have to use what will make the biggest impact on them.
When I was a single parent, I got home from work and had to go to the grocery store to get something for dinner as well as other things for the next few days. The kids, who were usually very well behaved, were on a tear and refused to behave in the store, I told them that if they didn’t straighten out right away we were leaving. They kept it up so I pushed the shopping cart to the end of an aisle and took them all out of the store and to the car. When we got in the car, one of them asked what we were going to have for dinner. I told them “Nothing. It was in the shopping cart. We will do without tonight.”. And we did. And I never had another problem with them in the store again.
But one key on this whole viewpoint: you have to follow through. If you make an ultimatum with them and then don’t follow through, they will not have any respect for your “ultimatums” going forward. They know you will cave. So make sure you are willing to follow through on your threats.

Exactly. You have to be ready to follow through. And the majority of people would not follow through on such a threat, which undermines their authority.
If they do follow through they’re assholes.
That’s why I shut the kid down.

Let me finish the story. Christmas morning came around, and we woke up to find the tree—and nothing else. My sisters, like me were staring at the empty living room and you could nearly hear the gears going round in our heads “BUSTED”, and we knew it. My little brother burst into tears, and without prompting poured out an immediate and plaintive sobbing confession. Our parents pumped the poor kid for what seemed like an eternity for every detail of the crime. My little sister slid me a look as I attempted to back out of the room, then fell right into formation just as my other sister caught on to the retreat. “Just a minute” boomed my dad. Anyway, that was the Christmas we still talk about, because none of that loot appeared for the entirety of that Christmas vacation. But the first day of school, with the tree down and the unused stockings put away, we woke up to find that ultimate insult to every kid, there was an unceremonious pile of new pajamas, socks and other clothes for each us. Bummer!