If you’re teaching your kids about Santa, you’re afraid that your children will meet one of those kids in school or on the playground. You know the kind: the ones who purposefully burst the holiday bubble by telling everyone Santa is a myth or a conspiracy theory.
On the flip side, if you’re not raising kids who believe in the big fat man with the red suit, you fear your kids will be the one to ruin it for the rest of the class.
How should parents deal with this delicate issue? Here are three parental responses. What are yours?
I'm one of those parents that never understood what joy comes from deceiving a child. It seems to me that they would trust you less later, when it is more important to have a relationship of trust.
I'm also one of those parents who has a daughter who really, really wants to believe in fairies.
My solution: I tell my children the truth, and leave it to them in how they will interact with other children.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI went to read this article expecting some lighthearted stories about bratty kids and clever responses for dealing with them. Instead I got the friggin' town council from Footloose telling me that they basically don't do a real Christmas because apparently Santa is just an anagram for Satan and if you have a Christmas tree you're a wiccan or something.
This is frankly just creepy and wrong. It's stuff like this that reminds me why I believe in God but can't really get down with the Jesus. Memo to Christians: the reason the Church syncretized all those nasty pagan beliefs into Christian traditions was to make Christianity more attractive and fun. That's the idea. Show up for the egg nog and the figgy pudding, get some Jesus along with it. I think it worked out pretty well considering the religion swept across the friggn' continent. I guess that was all a part of Satan's plan.
I blame the Internet for baloney like this. It lets you pretend you're in your own culture and society where everyone believes what you do instead of the world you actually live in. It makes you a crazy who thinks things like watching IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE will make you forget that Jesus is the reason for the season.
Remember when Santa shows up in THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE? (Of course he was "Father Christmas" there) How awesome was that? He gives the kids weapons to fight evil. Was CS Lewis a dirty pagan? I guess so. He probably had three wives, and sacrificed goats at Stonehenge on the Winter Solstice, too.
If you want to be a religious ascetic, fine. This is America and you can do that. But all this stuff, hint, hint, was part of what made Christmas a mainstream tradition. I'm listening to Frank Sinatra singing "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" right now. Should he not do that before putting his prayer shawl on?
Last thing: you think Christmas is overcommercialized and all that stuff now? Let's see a bunch of you get on the no-Santa bandwagon and then you'll see a real pagan holiday. There'll be the one the world gets and then there'll be the weird Christian Christmas celebration that they have to do a special with Mike Rowe investigating it for the Discovery Channel because no one will have ever heard about it.
"Hey, I watched this interesting thing on The Discovery Channel last night, about this religion called Christianity. It was really interesting, I had no idea those people had all these traditions and rituals and stuff..."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBoth my husband and I grew up in Santa families, but we weren't comfortable with the deception for our own children. We alluded to Santa at Christmastime but agreed that when we were asked directly about him, we wouldn't lie. That happened when our son was about 4 years old.
When we answered his question and both kids knew the truth (no use keeping up the pretense for the 3-year-old), we also told them that many families enjoy the Santa story and that it was not up to them to wreck the fantasy for others. As far as I can tell, my kids have never broken the news to anyone.
Our decision not to lie to our kids disappointed some of our extended family but everyone seems to have gotten over it. We celebrate the birth of Christ as we share in the cultural festivities with our Christian and non-Christian friends, hoping to spread a little light as we give gifts, extend hospitality, and generally delight in the season.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI second Nebuchadnezzar: you people need to get off your "I refuse to LIE to my children" high horses and lighten up. Sheesh.
My son informed me that a classmate was planning on hiding in the kitchen cupboard to snap a picture of Santa. "Well, that won't work," I told him. "Santa is a supernatural being, and so he does not have a reflection, and will not show up on film. Kind of like a vampire."
"Except he's not evil, " said my son. So the horrid Santa Claus myth is preserved in my house, at least for one more year.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHigh horses? Really?
We can enjoy myths, legends, and fairy tales without believing in them. Cinderella's fairy godmother, the Greek and Roman gods, Peter the High King of Narnia, the Wizard of Oz... and Santa. They're fun. They are indeed a part of our cultural heritage and as such their stories are not forgotten. They are told and laughed over and enjoyed, as the stories they are.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI am sad to think that so many parents think of the legend of Santa Claus as a lie, rather than as a part of the heritage of our culture. The stories about Santa Claus arose at a time when our culture was far more Christian than it is now. Deception isn't the issue here.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI always knew my kids would come home from school one day and say "So and so told me Santa isn't real." My response was, "He may not be real to some folks, but I'm (insert age) years old, and he still lives in my heart, as real as he was when I was five." I"m now tellling my grandkids the same thing.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe TRUTH?
As Jack says, YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!
You couldn't capture Santa on film, but with digital technology I was able to set up a motion=activiated camcorder in our living room one Christmas Eve, and on Christmas morning my wife and I went over to the grandcchldrens' and showed them video of Santa visiting at our house the night before
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