How did you feel when you found out that they didn’t really have your nose either?
I was 8 years old in 2nd grade when there was quite a debate at school about whether Santa was real or not. I did not weigh in until I asked my mom for the straight story. She told me what’s up and it all made so much sense.
I was 8 years old when I found my parent’s stash of “Santa” presents. I had been suspicious and then my beliefs were confirmed.
My daughter was very disappointed when I broke it to her around that same age. Her friends had all been telling her there was no Santa, but she didn’t want to believe them. So Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy all ceased to exist at the same time.
My belief in Santa Claus was shattered one bright Christmas morn when, unlike all the years before, I didn’t have any “From Santa” gifts under the tree. I innocently asked if there were any Santa presents for me, and my dad unleashed a tirade at me for being selfish and immature. I was 10.
I’m okay now, though. 
I was 10. I’d heard rumors for a couple of years that everyone “stopped believing” at some point, and I knew most of my classmates didn’t believe in Santa by then, but I wasn’t ready to give him up. I’d stopped believing in the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy a few years before, but I thought that they were kids’ myths based on the “real” Santa Claus.
I finally gave up my belief when my CCD (religious education) teacher, Mrs. Conners, said something about us knowing “Santa was really just our parents.” Of course, all the kids went “AWWW! You ruined our Christmas!” but in my head I was thinking “Well, if they’re teaching us this in CCD, it must be true.” I wondered how old I’d be when they revealed that God wasn’t real either. (Figured that one out all by myself!)
If you enjoyed the physics-of-Santa piece (penned by Richard Waller, to give credit where credit is due), here’s a pun-laden rebuttal (by two actual physicists):
I don’t remember when I stopped believing. Our daughter is almost 8 and kids at school are talking about it but she is hanging on. She saw the “real” Santa last week. She knows that most of them are fake, but she saw Santa climbing onto a fire truck near our house (the town’s official Santa lives two houses away from us) so that put the kibosh on any notion that he might not be real. Here’s the conversation that ensued with one of her friends:
Friend: Do you think Santa is real?
Daughter: I saw him getting on the fire truck. He’s real.
Friend: Yeah, he’s totally real.
EDIT (but too slow to amend in my previous post): Two weaknesses I observed in the original Waller article are his failure to account for the millions of lumps of coal Santa must also carry (in lieu of presents for the many “naughty” children), and for the considerable challenges, of a volumetric-displacement, timed-consumption, and gastrointestinal nature – of Santa’s prolific snacking on cookies and milk, and of how that would not only add to the burden his reindeer must carry, but more to the point, how it would tax the elastic qualities of his costume and body, and the ability of Christendom’s chimneys to accomodate his ever-expanding frame.
Perhaps some enterprising gastroenterologist or internist out there would care to examine the latter issue further…?
My parents were Pentecostal Christians. (Well, my father still is; my mother is dead.) Their church taught then, and may still teach, that believing in Santa Claus is being “deceived by the enemy” (a common phrase in their denomination) and even if they had been inclined to tell me that Santa existed, I’d have been disabused of that notion in Sunday School.
I was the only kid in my kindergarten who disbelieved in St. Nick, and I made a point of telling my classmates that no such person was real. I regret that.
I was actually quite relieved when I found out that there is really no South Carolina.
When I was seven I wrote my one and only letter to Santa. I was pretty sure that he’d give me what I wanted, and he did. In early January we moved to a different house in a different state. The following summer I was looking for something, probably a toy. I was looking in my mother’s underwear drawer, because, hey, it just might be there, right?
What I found was my letter to Santa. It didn’t make sense to me, so I sat for a while and figured it out. Things became so much clearer.
It didn’t really upset me, because it was summer and Christmas was a million years away so it didn’t matter much.
I was in third grade, so eight years old. A couple of classmates and I were arguing in art class, and the teacher asked what the problem was. In an appeal to authority, I asked her if she believed in Santa Claus. She replied that she did, and I felt vindicated. Still, one classmate immediately told me something like “She has to say that, but it’s a lie – Santa Claus is your mother and father.”
Confused, I asked Mom when I got home, and she revealed the truth to me. I had three younger siblings, though, so I kept up the pretense with them, even to the point of “agreeing” with the youngest when he insisted he went to the North Pole at night and attended “house school” taught by Santa and Hermey (the elf from the Rudolph Christmas special), among others.
Incidentally, a coffee shop here in the Lafayette (IN) area hosts a regular series of programs called Science Cafe. Tomorrow’s speaker will be a Purdue professor, and she’ll discuss “The Science of Santa”. The event announcement in the local paper contains the following advisory:
I was 4, I think. Santa and my mom having the exact same handwriting gave it away.
I was 6, 7 oldest when I found all the gifts Santa would bring in the closet in the garage. Sure enough, they showed up under the tree that next day.
My sister and I didn’t tell my mom we knew until we were 9 or 10, though. Instead, we’d take an exacto knife to the closet, quietly slit open the wrapping on each gift, admire them for a while, then tape the paper back together so it looked exactly as it had before we opened it. Mom didn’t know about it until she caught us red-handed one day.
My mother, who is quite the typical fundamentalist, made certain that we knew that SC did not exist. Her stated rationale was that she wanted us to be able to properly thank whoever it was that had given us gifts. Looking back, I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t some of Skald’s “deceived by the enemy” thinking in there as well.
My nephew believed until he was 12. He was sorely POed when my sister told him too. My oldest niece, now 13 (his sister), just got disabused a few weeks ago, but took it more in stride (tho when she got her now-inseperable dog 2 Xmases ago, she was convinced that Santa gave him to her).
In my case my dad, former Merchant Marine, would often delineate his convoy routes on our globe. When I was 6, I was idly looking at the thing around Christmastime, when I suddenly noticed that the total lack of land at the North Pole would preclude the presence of any sort of heavy castle or other such edifice, and came downstairs and proudly announced this to my parents. But the dreaming side of me understood the value of the myth for other little kids, so I wasn’t mad at all (and thus didn’t spoil it for my baby sister-mother of the above teens-who was 2 at the time).
First got the inkling while I was in second grade, the day before the holiday break, while we were doing a just-for-fun art project.
My classmate told me that Santa Claus had been a few years ago when his sleigh crashed into a news helicopter… and since that tragic Christmas Eve, everybody’s parents had to take up the slack.
I protested. I refused to believe.
But I thought about it over the course of the next year, and I had to admit that it made sense.
I was 6, and on board completely. Just before Christmas my bff’s 13yo brother blurts out “you know there’s no such thing as SC…”
I didn’t cry, but I was pretty upset.
Fast-forward 35 years. My sweet, innocent boy is going into the 6th grade, and believes everything we tell him.
[del]Cruella DeVille[/del] My wife tells me I have to tell him to spare him ridicule from the other kids.
A couple of weeks before Christmas I go sit on his bed at bedtime and lay it out as gently as I can. He’s sitting up, and says nothing, but tears are streaming down his little face.
I think I cried later too…
Around 2nd grade I think, so about 8 years old.
I never believed; I found the whole concept really creepy for some reason, and my parents never pushed it on me.