They have never asked me directly if Santa Claus is real, and I have never said anything about it to them one way or the other. My oldest (age 7) seems to apparently still believe in Santa, although I think he is skeptical. He got this entirely from books, TV, and other kids, because we don’t really “do” Santa here. I don’t jump in and correct him by saying, “No, that’s not true!” when he’s making up some outlandish story about his robot Legos, either. If they ever ask me if Santa is real, I’ll tell them the truth. No big deal.
I always hear: “If you don’t behave, Santa’s not going to bring you anything!”. If kids know the truth, parents lose that leverage. I always thought that was Santa’s purpose, not that he was some mystical, magical part of childhood.
My 24-year-old hairdresser said that when she was 7, her teacher asked the class who believed in Santa Claus. There were only 3 including her who raised their hands. She found out then about the fiction, and her 2 classmates and her had to survived being laughed at and taunted the rest of the school year.
One of her uncles played Santa every year, so she was sure that Santa existed since she’d actually met the old fellow more than once.
Personally, I don’t know about an age re Santa Claus. My son never believed in him, thanks to his grandmother who told him at a young age that Santa was a Coca-Cola invention and that Saint Nicolas was the one who brought gifts… on December 6th. He got the gifts but tells me that he never believed in Saint Nicolas either, he just humoured his grandmother.
I’m unsure whether I read the following anecdote on this board or another forum I frequent, but a mother told the story of her young daughter coming home from school in tears, saying that Santa didn’t love her, that other children got bigger and more gifts.
One of my sisters told me that her son Richard was very demanding, that he made letters for Santa with long lists of gifts. When he finally found out that Santa was fictional, he acted stunned and said that he was sorry, that he made huge lists for Santa so that his parents wouldn’t have to spend a lot of money to buy him things.
I think the curtains began to fall one year when, after throwing a big christmas eve party at our house, my parents were too pooped to wake up early the next morning to do the whole santa thing, so they decided to do Christmas that night. They got me out of bed, said santa decided to come early this year, and then presents were had.
I thought it was strange that Santa had altered his schedule last-minute, and that he had come while my parents would have been awake, so they had to have seen him, was all kind of suspect. Plus, that year the tree was in the downstairs family room, and it was usually in the upstairs living room, so how did Santa know to look down there?
“Wherever people are obtuse and absurd … and wherever they have, by even the most generous standards, the attention span of a small chicken in a hurricane and the investigative ability of a one-legged cockroach … and wherever people are inanely credulous, pathetically attached to the certainties of the nursery and, in general, have as much grasp of the realities of the physical universe as an oyster has on mountaineering … yes, Twyla: there is a [Santa Claus].”
OMG, that had absolutely the opposite effect on my uncle! My mom loves to tell the story of how Santa came to their house when she and her brother and sister were…well, she’s the oldest and she might have been eight…I’ll have to ask.
Anyway, Santa was a guy they knew from church, who had a thick Pennsylvania-Dutch accent. So he was leaving: “Goodbye Chonie…Goodbye Chackie…Goodbye Cheanie…” and my uncle pipes up, “G’bye, Joe!”
I just don’t get this mindset: “Dear Advice Columnist. I’ve been lying to my kid his entire life. You don’t even know the half of it. I’ve filled his little head full of mythology. His dad is trying to out me. I would like to keep lying to the kid so he won’t find out that I’ve been lying to him all along because then he won’t trust me.”
So why lie to the kid in the first friggin’ place?
And I don’t mean “let’s just take all the fun out of childhood.” No, that’s the other extreme. There is a middle way.
Kids – even pretty young ones – do understand the difference between real and pretend. They get that cartoons are not real. They get that movies are not real. They get that TV is not real. What kid thinks Kermit the Frog is a real frog? They KNOW it’s pretend. They buy into the magic of storytelling and I’m not suggesting that we ruin it for kids. What I’m suggesting is that people share these mythologies by framing them as what they are: nifty, magical little stories that are fun to think about. You can still do the whole milk and cookies thing. Kids love to pretend. They love make believe. Just be honest about what you’re doing.
“Let’s play pretend and let’s leave milk and cookies out for Santa.”
Is it really that difficult?
Furthermore, is it even necessary to have a Santa mythology? Wouldn’t it just be easier to teach gift-giving and selflessness? (Perhaps it’s less fun for the adults…)
I never got this. Why couldn’t the parents still give the kid the same amount of presents except instead of labeling the extra ones from Santa, they get labeled from Mom/Dad or whomever?
Because once the kid is grownup enough to eschew the idea that the presents are there by way of a magically jolly fat man, he’s grownup enough to start getting the message that Mommy and Daddy ain’t made of money, kiddo.
I only half kid. I don’t get this idea that Santa is a vast conspiracy to weaken our childrens’ minds and exert a month’s worth of obedience from them. Santa is about magic, and IMO, there’s nothing wrong with letting little kids have a little magic.
It’s perfectly possible to do both. My daughter figured out that Santa wasn’t real when she was six, and read about Globe Santa, and realized that if there was really a Santa, it was unlikely he’d skip the poor kids. Since then, our Christmas season officially starts every year when we go Toys for Tots shopping on the Saturday closest to December 1st. She still indulges her younger cousins about Santa though, because they’ll figure it out plenty soon enough.
Well, the kid believed till she was six and then helped others get into the Santa spirit/helping to give to poor children. Seems like they did both to me.
Really? You think that a kid who hadn’t been taught about gift-giving and selflessness would have decided that the best possible way to celebrate the season is by spending her own money to buy gifts for less fortunate kids?
It’s evidence that neither believing in Santa nor realizing that he’s not real does any actual harm. So I don’t see anything wrong with letting them believe until they figure it out on their own.
She only started helping to give to help poor children because she stopped believing. Until that happened she did not understand that in order for children to receive presents, gift-giving was necessary.
