Soup: Oh my gosh! Elmo’s into fisting?! Oh shoot, NOW what am I to tell my son!
I have typed and erased about a half dozen opening sentences related to this question. I have tried to be as erudite as possible. There’s only one problem.
This is Santa we’re talking about.
Santa.
Your children will be introduced to reality soon enough. Too soon, more likely.
Granted, if you live in the ghetto, don’t let them believe that Santa must hate them because he didn’t bring a pony.
But, let them believe in Santa.
When asked if there really is a Santa, a friend replied to their child " if you believe in your heart there is a Santa, then there is". I think that is what I will tell my daughter if/when she asks. It won’t be hard because in my heart I still believe.
Important Message!
Please use “Warning!! Spoiler!!” in the title the next time you decide to reveal heart-rending secrets that will undoubtably ruin the lives of at least 75% of the SDMBers, o.k.?
WHAT!? No Santa? I’m devestated!
Now I suppose I’ll have to become a psychopath, preying on innocent people because my youthful and trusting self system was cruelly damaged, which should make me also a suspicious and sarcastic adult oriented only on self promotion, money and power.
Hmmph! That sounds like most corporate heads of every car maker and oil company in the nation.
As a wee youngin’ it was great fun to get bundled up in winter clothing (yeah, way back then, it actually froze down here in the winter) and go out with an adult in the spectacularly crispy cool, starry night and look for Santa while walking along our empty dirt road! Many a falling star was deemed to be the jolly fellow in his sleigh. In the meantime, the adults back home were piling all sorts of hidden, gaily wrapped gifts under the tree, getting the old 8 mm cameras and their bar lights ready and, when all was set, someone tooted a car horn and we all hastily and excitedly hurried home. Somehow, we always managed to ‘just miss Santa,’ but that was OK.
Santa’s cool.
You mean you never read a story to your children? How sad.
Every work of fiction is a lie. They never happened.
When I read a story to my children, I don’t insist that they must believe it.
Uh, what slythe said.
It’s only a lie if I tell them the story is really true when it’s not. They don’t believe that there really were three house building pigs, or a witch that fattens little kids up to eat them.
Sheesh.
Then again, we don’t participate in christmas.
I don’t think it’s all together that bad to do so, however I think when kids start to question it it’s best to fess up. If you continue to insist there is a santa when the kid questions it, he might then see you as a big liar, and not just a loving parent who told a little fib for fun.
And now a true story that might piss some of you off:
My parents never told me or my siblings about santa, and we had a blast going to school and telling everyone the truth! You wouldn’t believe how many kids we got crying in the hallway. Then the school would call home, and my dad would scream at them “You WILL NOT punish my kids for telling the truth!”. It was hilarious! My younger sister almost got kicked out of first grade for telling the “santa secret”. The next year the teachers bribed her with a shit load of candy just to keep her mouth shut! We didn’t even celebrate christmas and it turned out to be our favorite holiday!
So, let me get this straight.
You used your superior knowledge and lack of naievete to emotionally torture your classmates. WITH THE BACKING OF YOUR PARENTS? Until you were bought off by your teachers! That’s extortion. Do you know what that makes you?
My hero!
Nope, that’s just kids being mean to other kids.
Why does it matter to you, pk, what the other kids believed in? How were they forcing it on you? Why is a belief in Santa so evil that it needs to be confronted? Why did you have “a blast” about causing kids to cry in the hallway?
You describe behavior I can imagine kids engaging in, but I cannot respect a parent encouraging it, or the child, when grown up, being proud or fond of the memory.
At least in this respect, you were a nasty little kid. Congratulations. I hope you grew out of it.
Well, my daughter will be three this Christmas, and I have every intention of telling her that Santa is real. I have no problem with this. I understand why you’d want to tell your children the truth, and I respect your right to do so, but as far as I’m concerned, my Little One’s going to learn the truth soon enough anyway. What’s the hurry?
Childhood is a time of magic, when fairies and elves and Easter Bunnies and Santa exist. It brings her happiness, and IMO it’s harmless. It’s imagination.
What’s next - telling her that she can’t draw a picture of her Mum flying in the sky because that can’t be real? “People don’t fly, Honey. Draw her on the ground.” Nope - not for my kid. Some things are just magic, and that’s all there is to it.
Well yeah, but like I said the first time, make-believe, like elves and faries and Santa are true to little kids in all the important ways even when they simltaneously “know” they’re pretend.
And I think, when the kid is older, old enough to ASK is this true-true or pretend-true, you should tell them the truth.
Kids want to believe want to believe stuff like that (which is why going out of your way to disabuse them before they ask about it is not a good idea) but they are not stupid and a kid who is old enough to ask is old enough to know he’s being lied to.
betenoir: Yes, I agree that when she’s old enough, I’ll spring the truth on her. I’m just in no hurry to do it.
As a side note, I don’t actually remember ever believing in Santa myself, although I suspect that I must have. I certainly don’t remember feeling disappointed or betrayed when I learned the truth. In fact, my mother had us putting out milk and cookies for Santa well into my teenage years (my mother is a little odd - well, she’s English, so…)
The real question is, do I tell the Little One the truth about Hanukkah Harry?
I don’t think that telling children about Santa (even telling them that he’s real) will have a permanent negative affect on them.
However, I don’t see any reason other than tradition to tell them that Santa exists. I’m not a traditional sort of person, so I doubt that I’ll tell any of my (hypothetical) future children that Santa exists. It doesn’t bother me if other people tell their children that Santa exists, so long as they don’t come bitchin’ to me when my kid tells theirs that Santa isn’t real. 
PK-that was mean! If I had a child who did that, he’d be in trouble…I mean, that’s like telling kids that their religion is phony-which is wrong, since it’s THEIR RELIGION!
I cried when my mom first admitted it to me-for about five minutes. Then my mom made me french fries for dinner. I was fine.
Besides, it was fun to believe!
Hey, don’t worry, folks; I’m not even close to marriage, let alone kids. I’m sure that if I go soft to the point that I’m willing to be domesticated I’ll also be willing to perpetuate this benign (but, in my view, pointless) myth.
Just curious, why do you call it “pointless”? Goofing with the kids about Santa is a lot of fun. And that’s point enough for me.
Someone else referred to a belief in Santa as “unneccessary.” Right you are.
In reality, there are only a couple of years when it is most fun - probably from ages 3-6 or so, when the kid is old enough to appreciate the whole story, but young enough to retain their wonder and innocence. If you go out of your way to avoid the fun that can be had those couple of years, that is certainly your perogative.
Yeah, if your kid really wants to know, you probably shouldn’t lie to him. But when kids are very young, it is usually enough to simply say, “What do you think?” If the kid thinks Santa is real, and gets some enjoyment out of that, more power to him.
But don’t your children believe you? You’re lying by omission then. If you tell the story of the three bears at an early age, they’re likely to think that there really were three bears. That sort of lying has to be nipped in the bud!
Santa is a story, no different from any other. It’s no more lying to tell kids about Santa than it is lying to tell them about Goldilocks. Kids love stories, and to deprive them of the story of Santa Claus because it’s not the “truth” is the sign of a very limited mind.
Everyone – kids especially – need make-believe.
I’m para-phrasing this from a book I read several years ago, I believe it was “The Power of Myth” by Joseph Campbell. At one point in this book he made a very thoughtful analysis of the Santa Claus myth. He said that like all gods, Santa Claus is actually a metaphor. In this case for the relationship between a parent and child. The child recieves presents while young, realiozes Santa isn’t real as an adolescent, and then “becomes” Santa to their children as an adult. He is not “real” in the most physical sense, but then neither are any of the other myths we live by. Justice, Compassion, Mercy, none of the concepts that make us human are truly real, yet we choose to live by them. The person who, as a child, learns to accept the small myths like Santa Claus will eventually accept the big myths like Justice.
So tell your child that Santa exists. He’ll find the truth on his own eventually.