To Santa, or Not To Santa?
When I was in about second grade, something happened on a Christmas morning that I will never forget.
I went downstairs, looking for signs that Santa had been to my house. I peeked into our living room and confirmed that indeed, the White-Bearded Jollyman had come. I ran upstairs to tell my parents and drag them down with my brother so that we could all revel in the magic and joy of Christmas morning together. When we went back downstairs though, I could swear that something had changed.
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Despite having no kids, I think about this a lot myself.
When I think back to my childhood, I remember having a very hard time distinguishing between reality and fantasy. I can’t help but feel like that issue may have been somewhat lessened if I wasn’t being explicitly told by trusted authorities that, well, yeah, sometimes fantasy is real.
I guess the idea was that magic only exists on Christmas or something, but I walked away from the whole Santa thing thinking “hey, if magic is real, then magic is real” which made it very hard for Mom and Dad to convince me that, the other 364 days in the year it does not.
I remember being extremely concerned about the chimney. Sure, on Christmas Eve the chimney is being used for good (Santa), but couldn’t a robber or a murderer come down the chimney any other time of the year?
It seems weird to me to be fighting against a child’s overactive imagination when they are frightened of stuff under their bed or in their closet, but then indulging it a few times a year. How can you go around saying monsters are imaginary but Santa is not?
At the same time, the Santa myth seems to be a part of universal pop culture, and denying a kid the same experiences his or her peers have would seem to alienate them from common culture as they grow up.
Like I said, I think about this issue with disturbing frequency, especially for someone without kids. I can’t decide what to do about it myself.
Hey Beth—
I just posted this comment over on Philadelphia Moms, but will put it here too!
When our rather precocious she-twin asked “Is Santa for real?” last year, my ever-thinking husband responded, “All I know is, when you stop believing in him, he stops coming.” True that!
We’ve kind of skirted the issue with “Santa has many, many helpers,” and when it comes down to the big reveal (let down?) I truly plan on telling my children what I truly do believe: the SPIRIT of giving and generosity and “goodness often begets goodness” that Santa personifies ARE very real.
The Jesus comparison is far from lost on me, and I’ve found myself often explaining the reality of an “invisible” spirit/Son of God with seemingly Santa-esque description. In truth, it’s not that offensive to me…we often have to personify and call upon our more imaginative inner beings to explain the seemingly inexplicable.
I’m okay with it. I do believe in Jesus…and Santa. (And you know, if you paraphrase my husband’s explanation to my daughter to sub in Jesus in place of Santa? Equally poignant.)
Great post, Beth!
REALLY interesting post over there, Beth… I enjoyed it quite a lot.
I have two strong opposing memories about Santa.
The good one I guess is actually several memories. A really good friend of our family used to call me long distance every year at bedtime on Christmas Eve to tell me Santa was just at her house and was heading my way. She did this since before I can remember and continued until one year after I was married. (Obviously, it was a joke for the last several years.) I was always very excited to get this call. I did discover that it was a tactic my mom used to get me to bed but now that I am a mother myself I know that sometimes desperate times call for desperate measures.
The bad one was the day I found out that Santa wasn’t real. I was at figure skating lessons and I believe that I was talking about Santa to some of my classmates. One particularly nasty girl informed me in the snottiest of ways that Santa wasn’t real and I must be a baby and a moron to still believe in him. My other classmates backed her up. I went home, devastated but fully expecting my mother to inform me that those girls were in fact, wrong. Santa was real, he hadn’t been a lie that I’d been tricked in to believing. But that’s not what she told me. She admitted that Santa wouldn’t really be delivering presents that year. That it would be her and my dad. That it had been them all along.
I was bitterly disappointed and spent many hours reevaluating many Christmas’s past as the reality sunk in. It was an awful ending to a wonderful story. I have rarely been so humiliated as I was trying to stand up to those girls and insist that Santa was real. That my parents wouldn’t lie to me, only to find that they had.
Honestly, I wouldn’t want my kids to experience that. I would easily trade my years of believing in Santa to that great extent to not have it ruined for me in such a horrific, public way.
That is why I’m not really going to talk a lot about Santa to my kids. For now when Miss A sees him in the mall and stuff I’ll acknowledge ‘that’s Santa’ but we won’t do the milk and cookies (as much as that is a happy memory for me) stuff. I should be safe with this for a few years I think. This way she won’t ruin it for any believers out there because she at least knows who he is and what he represents.
Great post, Beth. I too remember many miraculous and magical santa moments…
We made the decision not to tell our daughter about Santa for one reason, and one reason alone: trust.
When she came to us at 4 years old, she’d been abused and broken. We needed to build up trust with her. We needed her to know that everything we told her was born in truth and love… How could we tell her about Santa then?
And honestly, it’s never dampered her Christmas. She loves Christmas. In fact, she gets more excited to give than to open gifts…
I loved your post - very well-written.
I’m with you. Lie or not, Santa is a part of childhood. I’ll perpetuate the myth for as long as I can get away with it. And, hopefully, my younger two will forgive my “lie” just as my older two did when they found out there wasn’t really a jolly man in a red suit.
Love your post, Beth!
Steph