No, my parents always told us there is no Santa or Easter Bunny. This was probably because they wanted to emphasize the true Catholic belief behind Christmas and Easter. They did pretend there was a tooth fairy.
That was sort of my experience. I don’t really remember Christmases before I was 4, except little flashes, but December of 1973 was magic: I had a new baby sister, there was a decent amount of snow on the ground (in southeast Georgia - maybe 3 or 4 inches. Not an event for most of the US, but amazing and rare on the northern edge of the Okefenokee Swamp.) And Santa* came to my house on Christmas Eve. One horse open sleigh. I sat in his lap and told him what I wanted, and there it was under the tree a few hours later. And then I played with my new baby doll and her cradle**, and with my new Barbie, who later spent the day off-roading with my brother’s GI Joe in theTonka dump truck, and we ate too much at Grandmother’s, and then, in the true spirit of Christmas miracles, Grandmother’s hated, mean, incontinent Pekingese rat-dog, Mitzi, was lost in the snow, never to be seen again. (I don’t think anyone looked too diligently. I love dogs, always have, but I hated that little bastard. She was mean, and Grandmother always made me clean up after her when she shat under the living room sofa.)
By the time I was seven, I had figured out that Santa was really my parents, but my brother and I played along for the sake of our baby sister. That was the last year before his death that Daddy could play along with the charade, and he walked around on the roof a bit to foster the illusion. It is a bittersweet memory.
I don’t remember a single moment when I figured out that Santa wasn’t a real being, but I don’t remember feeling betrayed or robbed of a cherished illusion. And I still get a stocking at my mother’s house. From Santa.
When my middlest kids were 7 and 4, I arranged a visit from an old friend’s husband, who looks like Santa. I don’t care whether my kids believe in the being of a bearded man who lives at the North Pole, but I believe quite strongly in the spirit of giving, and that a little magic can make the world a better place.
*Okay, I know now that it was Uncle Ralph, using a tobacco sledge and Og knows whose horse. The horse donor may or may not have known s/he contributed to the cause, but my uncle visited every kid in the neighborhood that night - not a large number, but many miles in our rural corner.
**I must have really really wanted to believe, because my doll cradle looked an awful lot like the one Daddy built for my little sister.
My parents never told me he was a real, actual person in so many words, no. They just treated him as a fact of life, and I accepted him as such. I accepted him so firmly that when my older brother told me Santa wasn’t real, I ratted on him to Mom and Dad for lying. I don’t know that it necessarily enriched my life–my childhood was pretty thoroughly saturated in magic and make-believe anyway just due to my personality. But it certainly didn’t do me any harm.
Of course, I’m 37 now and if my parents buy me something really awkward to wrap, they’re liable to leave it under the tree unwrapped with a tag reading “From the fat man in the red suit.”
Slight tangent: I’m teaching a third-grade reading unit on nonfiction, and I had a student bring a picture book to me today and ask me if it was nonfiction. I try not to answer the question outright, even when the answer is obvious.
So I flipped through the picture book with her, looking at the story about a terrier waiting with his family for Christmas and staring out the window at the snow and so on, and said, “So what about this makes you think it might be nonfiction?”
“Well,” she said, and flipped ahead, “It’s got Santa in it, and I know Santa’s real, so it must be nonfiction.”
Sometimes teaching runs into a brick wall.
Yes, they did. I didn’t feel betrayed when I figured out he wasn’t; I felt smart. So much so that I felt the need to share my newly found truth with my two-year-younger sister, who immediately started bawling and ran off to tell my parents what I’d said and seek comfort.
I think that, in part, this is why I no longer feel the need to confront others about their religious beliefs. Sorry, Sis.
My mother took me to visit Santa Claus at the store, but didn’t say anything about him being real. I figured out that Santa was the real thing about a few years before I figured out that Nixon was a big phoney.
Yes, they did (and we left sherry and mince pies too- definitely a British thing).
I don’t remember actually believing in Santa (I think either my brother or someone at school told me), though I do remember being firmly convinced, at age about 5, that if I ever let on that I knew he wasn’t real, Christmas would basically be cancelled for our family- there’d be no point in pretending any more, as I was the little one of the extended family.
Apparently I was a very good actor, as my parents are still both convinced that I believed until I was about 10.
I don’t recall ever believing in Santa Claus. But one year my father wore a Santa costume and handed out our presents. We knew who it was, and he looked rather ridiculous, so we laughed at him. This made him furious, so he spent the next few hours cursing and throwing things and slamming doors. This was very typical of him. Anyway, if I had believed in Santa Claus, that belief would have died that day.
(We were one of a handful of Jewish families in our mostly-Christian suburb, but even by then, my parents knew that Christmas had become a secular holiday. So we had a tree with gifts, as well as celebrating Hanukkah.)
I believed in Santa when I was a kid. In third grade my 3 years my senior brother thought I was old enough and so sat me down and delicately explained Santa’s non-existance including a sort of if you hold santa in your heart he’s real type thing. When I found out, I wasn’t the least bit upset, my reaction was more along the lines of “Well that makes a whole lot more sense. Thanks for sorting that out for me.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell my parents I knew though, and so we continued to go through the charade. I assume that at some point they must have realized I knew (I’m 42 for goodness sake) but it has never been openly discussed.
As a child, Santa brought gifts after I’d gone to bed on Christmas Eve, and we left cookies out, etc…
I don’t think they ever actually specifically told me he was real- I’d remember that. What I do remember was them going along with my belief in Santa because it was cute, fun and I really enjoyed it.
When I did ask, they were straight up about it- I actually had a sort of fictional character epiphany- Santa, Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy all at the same time. I was kind of upset, not at my parents, but because these characters who did these things for me were just my regular old parents, not some wonderful mystical good characters who did stuff like that. More of a let down than betrayal really.
I did have a moment in kindergarten, where I beat the crap out of another kid who was going around upsetting other kids by telling them Santa wasn’t real, and I not only knew he was real, but decided to beat the crap out of this other kid because he was hurting my friends’ feelings telling them “lies”.
I sorta just knew it at a very early age, it seemed like complete bullshit. Ditto god.
They never said he was real, but they acted like it, one time saying that a gift I saw upon entering our house (after being away for Christmas) wasn’t there when we left.
I don’t recall it enriching my life as much as it seemed to enrich my parents’ and grandparents’ lives. My grandma definitely got a kick out of it, hanging money on the tree for us. My sister and I were mostly just happy because she was happy.