What Do You Tell Your Kids about Santa Claus?

[Pdyx]

I always figured I'd do my best to not feed into the Santa stuff if/when I become a parent, and not raise my kids to believe in Santa Claus. I was talking to a friend this past weekend about his 3 year old, and this issue. It made me frame it a little differently. He explained that it kind of came without warning, and you're up against a huge cultural force. He said he initially felt like I do but that ultimately it's easier to just let the kid believe. Now he's not one of those kind of people who's going to go outside and ring sleigh bells and leave ashy foot prints in his house or anything, but neither is he telling his kid that Santa isn't real.

For those of you that have kids, how have you managed this? Anyone out there straight up told their toddlers that he's not real? Feel free to answer if you don't have kids too about your thoughts and your experiences regarding this.

[Serious Paul]

My children long ago figured out there was no Santa as tradition has always held-however my wife supported the lie for as long as she could. I however, out of respect for her, stayed out of it all. if my kids had asked me I'd have done what I always do-tell them the truth.

[3278]

My daughter's mother did the Santa Claus thing as a matter of course, but I have a policy of truth with my daughter, so I didn't participate. She's pretty clever, so she learned early on that silence from me means some disconnect between the truth and what I'm allowed to say: she used this opportunistically to eliminate any doubt she might still have had about Santa Claus.

Any remaining children I have, I absolutely refuse to go through this same kind of bullshit. I'll tell my kids the truth about things, and that'll be that: I don't think their youths will be scarred by getting gifts from me, instead of from a fiction. I'll explain - I have to do this a lot - that yes, other people have this fiction, and it's considered polite to let them continue it, but reality is something else entirely.

[Serious Paul]

My kids handle it pretty well-they are polite when other people bring up the subject, but privately they confide in me that they're happy they're no longer participating in the charade. On occasion they mention in passing that they sometimes feel like they feel a little disconnected with their peers. So we discuss it and usually it's resolved pretty maturely.

For instance Drama C my middle daughter has decided that even though she doesn't believe in the christian god she currently feels that there is a possibility of a spiritual world, and has decided that she'll have a christmas tree because she likes the pomp and circumstance that goes with it.

[Nicephorus]

[quote="Serious PaulFor instance Drama C my middle daughter has decided that even though she doesn't believe in the christian god she currently feels that there is a possibility of a spiritual world, and has decided that she'll have a christmas tree because she likes the pomp and circumstance that goes with it.[/quote]

That's a good attitude. For much of the U.S., Christmas has sort of morphed into the secular humanist holiday and I'm fine with that. It's often kind of "Hey, wouldn't it be great if people were nice to each other and still connected to their family?" I don't see a ton of manger scenes or crosses and when I do, it doesn't bother me as that's is that person's thing as long as they're not pushy about it.

I'm reminded of reading how things morphed in Egyptian and Roman mythology when I see that Santa is now a more central figure in Christmas than Jesus. He's like religion-lite, no claims of divinity, just something that we all agree is fake but woudn't it be cool if it was true?

We do Santa with the kids, almost entirely at my wife's urging. My daughter was a bit miffed when she figured it out, that she had been deceived. In a year or two though, it will make a great lesson. At least we didn't tell her that god exists and have her figure ithat one out in college.

Though I'm an atheist, we love Christmas decorating but don't go overboard. We have a fake snowman and penguin we put outside along with a few lights. We decorate the tree. Many of the ornaments have pics in them or were my wife's when she was a kid so it's like an annual trotting out of keepsakes. Each year, the kids pick out a new ornament to get so the collection slowly grows.

Even for the adults, we do stockings and they're always stuffed to overflowing with candy and oddments. I like buying little things I see throughout the year, that are cute but not big enough to be a proper present, silly action figures, ccg booster packs, fancy chocolate, cheap electronics, cool office supplies, etc. If a person doesn't like one of them, there are still a dozen other things that they'll probably like.

[AtemHutlrt]

I don't have children, so I feel not entirely qualified to comment on these issues, but I don't imagine myself playing the Santa card. I was a bit of a precocious non-believer, like I suspect most of us here were, but my family definitely did the Santa thing, though I honestly don't feel like it enriched my childhood in any way. The main argument in favor of the whole thing seems to be that it's curmudgeonly not to play this weird little game, and that, since it's probably not harmful, why not have a little fun with it? From my experience, though, children don't actually need to believe something's real to have fun with it. And I tend to believe that, in general, when you're dealing with something that has nebulous advantages and disadvantages, it's probably best to err on the side of not lying to your kids. I also think there are some real advantages to /not/ doing it - it's a good early opportunity to say, "this is what many people believe; this is why they believe it, and this is my understanding of reality." And that's maybe the most important conversation you can have with your children.