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Untruths may be apparently harmless, such as Santa mentioned previously, though opinion manifests: some may see Santa as harmless good fun, while others may point out negatives of the associated consumerist consumptive craze. Or maybe all the Santa spending is as necessary to this civilization as all those temples were to the Pagan Kingdom?
Some untruths can be problematic, something that may not be apparent at the time. Or, apparent but not politically prudent to surface. One example would be the Formosa Air Battle or 台湾沖航空戦 wherein the Japanese aviators reported a great victory, newspapers seized on these claims, etc., while the actuality was not exactly a win for the Empire of Japan.
Other untruths—say, that a demon shakes the world-tree—are not so problematic, as the lesson of one such story is that an unusually low tide (on account of the shaken, not stirred world-tree) means a tsunami is likely and therefore one should get to high ground. This is a memorable, actionable untruth.