# When did you stop believing in Santa?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-stop-believing-in-santa/328010
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [October 26, 2005, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-stop-believing-in-santa/328010 "2005-10-26T15:56:43Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2005, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-stop-believing-in-santa/328010/1 "2005-10-26T15:56:43Z")
My kids and I were hanging out last night and my oldest (9, daughter) told me she wanted The Sims video game for Xmas. She said she was going to write Santa asking for it. I said it was a good idea and let it go at that.
Later in the evening I got to thinking… at 9 1/2 she still believes in Santa… How old was I when I figured it out? My best recollection was much younger. Maybe 7. I know she hasn’t much time left before she figures it out but I’m enjoying her innocence.
How old were you when the Santa myth was blown for you?
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### Author:  [@Winston\_Smith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Winston_Smith)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2005, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-stop-believing-in-santa/328010/2 "2005-10-26T16:03:54Z")
Stop believing in **Santa**?!?
What do you mean by that?!?
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### Author:  [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2005, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-stop-believing-in-santa/328010/3 "2005-10-26T16:05:34Z")
…Ummmm nothing. Nothing at all… You didn’t hear aaaanything… 🙂
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### Author:  [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2005, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-stop-believing-in-santa/328010/4 "2005-10-26T16:08:50Z")
I was about 7 or 8, too. I hate kids sometimes. I mean, I only came to this country at 4, so I didn’t learn about Santa really until the following year, so I only had two or three years before someone felt it necessary to tell me. :mad:
But it was fun while it lasted!
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### Author:  [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2005, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-stop-believing-in-santa/328010/5 "2005-10-26T16:15:25Z")
I was also about 7 and then found out that you start get less presents when you no longer believe in Santa. I was doubly Heart Broken. So far my daughter is 8 [sup]1[/sup]/[sub]2[/sub] and still believes. I hope this keeps up one more year. I am afraid that when she figures it out, my son will immediately know also and he is 3 years younger.
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### Author:  [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2005, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-stop-believing-in-santa/328010/6 "2005-10-26T16:21:05Z")
Couple years ago my oldest daughter was 7 and having some doubts. We took her to see Santa with her sibs and the first thing Santa did was greet her with, “Hello B\_\_\_\_\_! Did you enjoy the (whatnot) I brought you last year?” Blew her mind. She still has trouble reconciling the doubt her logical brain creates with that inexplicable greeting. Baffled me, too, because even I had forgotten what she’d received last year, and I have no idea how he remembered her name. I suspect my wife may have slipped him the info. I think she’s hooked now until Sanata gets caught in the act.
Me? I was maybe 8 or 9 when I couldn’t make myself believe anymore.
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### Author:  [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2005, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-stop-believing-in-santa/328010/7 "2005-10-26T16:31:22Z")
> [@Campion](#):
>
> **Quicksilver** , I think you have your answer: your daughter may not believe in Santa anymore, but doesn’t want to tell you.
Yeah, I had a sneaking suspicion.
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### Author:  [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2005, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-stop-believing-in-santa/328010/8 "2005-10-26T16:31:37Z")
> [@Campion](#):
>
> …snip…
> **jrfranchi** , you are right to be concerned about your son. My older sister brutally shattered all my illusions (“Don’t you wonder why the Easter eggs the Easter bunny left look _just like the stupid ones you made yesterday_???”)
>
> She did hold on to the myth of Santa for some time, though. She told me later that she confronted dad about Santa’s existence; dad then paid her a quarter to keep the lid on it for the rest of the kids. He says it was worth it; when she told us she had heard reindeer hoofs on the rooftop Christmas Eve, we believed.
We are using the fiction that we leave the Colored Eggs out for the Easter Bunny to hide. This one is of less imporatance anyway.
I love the “reindeer hoofs on the rooftop” part. That went beyond the call of duty for a quarter payment. Nice job by your sister. 🙂
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### Author:  [@FlyingRamenMonster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlyingRamenMonster)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2005, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-stop-believing-in-santa/328010/9 "2005-10-26T16:32:01Z")
I don’t think I ever believed in Santa. We moved to Australia when I was 4 from China, where there was no Santa, and I’m pretty sure my parents said something along the lines of “He’s an story made up by those funny white people” when explaining him to me. And the only thing he ever gave me was a bag of caramel popcorn. Eh.
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### Author:  [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2005, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-stop-believing-in-santa/328010/10 "2005-10-26T16:32:16Z")
I never really believed in Santa. It was just fun for Christmas. I can recall being about 4 and knowing it wasn’t _really_ real.
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### Author:  [@Scott\_Plaid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scott_Plaid)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2005, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-stop-believing-in-santa/328010/11 "2005-10-26T16:36:38Z")
Being as how I was raised Jewish, I suppose the answer would involve negative numbers. 😛
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### Author:  [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2005, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-stop-believing-in-santa/328010/12 "2005-10-26T16:39:23Z")
If you want to keep the secret, steer clear of Judy Blume’s Fudge books. One of them (I forget which) lays it right out. We were listening to it as an audiobook when I found that out. I shut it off real quick. Then I fast-forwarded past the dangerous part before the next time we listened to it. Apparently I wasn’t fast enough, because a few days later, my daughter asked me and I had to tell her the truth.
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### Author:  [@RunSilent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RunSilent)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2005, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-stop-believing-in-santa/328010/13 "2005-10-26T17:09:34Z")
My first Christmas in the Army… Santa didn’t come to the barracks… then some of the guys filled me in… ever since then, I have had heart trouble… I…
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### Author:  [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2005, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-stop-believing-in-santa/328010/14 "2005-10-26T17:17:36Z")
My parents never taught me to believe in Santa. We were celebrating the birth of Christ and we knew my parents and grandparents supplied the gifts.
They did give us change for our teeth under the pillow, but we also knew it was they that laid out the Easter candy hunt, since they handed out the maps. 🙂 good times
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### Author:  [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2005, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-stop-believing-in-santa/328010/15 "2005-10-26T17:36:13Z")
> [@Winston Smith](#):
>
> Stop believing in **Santa**?!?
>
> What do you mean by that?!?
I popped in to convey those exact same sentiments!
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### Author:  [@Mr.Goob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Goob)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2005, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-stop-believing-in-santa/328010/16 "2005-10-26T17:45:48Z")
Santa = Cecil ?
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### Author:  [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2005, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-stop-believing-in-santa/328010/17 "2005-10-26T18:18:43Z")
> [@Dung Beetle](#):
>
> If you want to keep the secret, steer clear of Judy Blume’s Fudge books. One of them (I forget which) lays it right out. We were listening to it as an audiobook when I found that out.
There’s Judy Blume, again corrupting the children. Ban her! 😉
I don’t know that I ever believed in Santa. I do recall waking up to shouting on a Christmas Eve when I was four or five and seeing the parents arguing with a half-assembled racetrack scattered about the living room floor, but even before then I don’t think I really bought into the story. There were just to many equivocations and rationalizations to pressing questions, like how Santa was going to enter the house without a chimney and how he transported all those presents in a single sleigh. (I wasn’t buying to the religion thing, either, although it was a few more years before I could resolve why that didn’t sit with me.) I know that I’d lost any semblence of faith in The Big Red Nick by kindergarten because I was punished for arguing with the teacher over his alleged existance; that is to say, she wasn’t debating me but just trying to get me to shut up lest I ruin things for everyone else. :rolleyes:
I can’t say that I really hold with this whole deceptive mythology of Santa Claus; I don’t have kids, so perhaps I’d feel differently, but I know it disturbed me to find that adults were outright lying to me, and like certain political figures continued to attempt to do so by twisting the language long after it was clear that I knew better. I daresay it manifestly contributed to my early cynicism about the world. Santa as an icon is one thing, but this pernecious mistruth and deception is…disturbing.
Or maybe I’ve just read too much Orwell.
Now I have to go; I’m waiting for the Great Pumpkin to come to my patch.
Stranger
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### Author:  [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2005, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-stop-believing-in-santa/328010/18 "2005-10-26T18:20:25Z")
I was 7. That Christmas, I wrote a letter to Santa, requesting a train set. I was very specific about the guage. And I got my set, but it was the wrong guage. I began to suspect that Santa needed a lesson in reading. The following Summer, I had lost something – a toy, probably. I searched through the entire house for it, including my mom’s dresser. Hey, it _might_ be in there, right? You never know. Going through her underwear drawer, I found the letter I had written 7 months before. I applied a bit of logic to the situation, and came to the conclusion that the whole Santa thing was a sham.
It didn’t really upset me. Being that it was July, and that I had doubts already, I could handle the truth.
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### Author:  [@Winston\_Smith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Winston_Smith)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2005, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-stop-believing-in-santa/328010/19 "2005-10-26T18:22:30Z")
> [@Khadaji](#):
>
> I popped in to convey those exact same sentiments!
Yes. _When did you stop believing in Santa?_ The individual words: I understand them. But the sentence? Uh. I just don’t understand.
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### Author:  [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2005, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-stop-believing-in-santa/328010/20 "2005-10-26T18:27:37Z")
> [@Winston Smith](#):
>
> Yes. _When did you stop believing in Santa?_ The individual words: I understand them. But the sentence? Uh. I just don’t understand.
Dear Winston:
" Your little friends at SDMB are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age.
"They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Winston, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little.
"In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of gasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
"Yes, Winston, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus.
Your Truly,
Jim Franchi
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