Well, the Santa drama has already started

[conuly]

I've said this before, and I'll surely say it again: if your love for lying to your kids about Santa keeps you from having compassion and empathy for people who were actually hurt when they found out the truth then you seriously need to reconsider your priorities.

If you are unable to consider any other form of childrearing without talking about how "sad" it is that some kids are not being told that Santa really literally exists then you are not being very kind and you seriously need to reconsider your priorities. You also lack imagination - which honestly is a bit troubling given that people who promote this version of Santa at all costs always try to claim that it's the only way to promote imagination.

And, finally, if you think that there's one approach to doing a literal Santa which will guarantee that your child is not one of the unlucky ones who is extremely upset when they find out the truth... well, you might be right, but I wouldn't bet money on it. Sure, there's a lot of really toxic ways to do Santa, but that doesn't mean that doing it in a non-toxic way will assure a happy child for life, much less that you've got the secret method. I think you're just fooling yourself because you want to keep lying to your kids.

I don't get it. Obviously the fun part is playing pretend, that's why adults go to these lengths with their kids - so why not let the kids do the fun part? The pretend part? Why lie to them rather than being honest from the get-go so they can actually play pretend?

On an unrelated note, I just googled it and reindeer mostly eat hay and moss, which is about what you'd expect, and apparently sometimes bird eggs, which I didn't expect. Carrots weren't on the list. They're not physically capable of eating carrots and also carrots don't grow where reindeer live.

Comments

[larryhammer]

When Eaglet was IIRC four, or possibly three, we had The Talk about Santa. We explained that Santa was a game that some families like to play, and that playing along with this and not telling their classmates in preschool was the right thing to do.

Santa was never a game in our house, what with them being raised Jewish.

[dine]

we'd put out hay for the reindeer, but most families don't have access to that - so carrots for the imaginary beasts hauling the jolly old elf's sleigh is probably the best many can do

[james]

My mother was 12 when she found out Santa wasn't real -- from her schoolmates who, as you would expect, made great fun of her. She was so traumatised by that, that my sister and I were never taught Santa was real. Instead, we learned that Santa Presents were a separate type of present - the unwrapped ones next to the tree that appeared only Christmas morning. Unwrapped, because it meant we could get out of bed whenever we wanted and go look at them (but not touch).

Which meant we left our parents to sleep in, which was amazingly clever of whoever thought that up.

I was never taught what Santa meant to other families, though, and I got in trouble with my aunt for trying to tell my 3 or 4 year old cousin that Santa wasn't real. ;-)

[conuly]

Lettuce or cabbage or any other form of leafy green is more suitable if you're going for realism.

[calimac]

Never having had any kids, and not having spent my childhood in a home where Christmas was celebrated, I have no standing to pronounce on how the Santa question should be handled, but I will express astonishment that fooling kids into thinking Santa is real is a way to promote imagination. How can you promote imagination without the kids knowing they're imagining anything? I always found the fact that fiction was fictional to be the most amazing thing about it. Somebody made all that stuff up? What a great achievement of the human mind!

[sabotabby]

Growing up Jewish, I never got why parents lied to their kids about that. It seemed like a recipe for broken trust.

[gingicat]

I felt it important to tell our kids that Santa was a concept of a different religion, and not to debunk it to schoolmates who believed. (Not in those words, obviously.)

[troisoiseaux]

Having grown up in a Santa-Believing Household, I definitely played along for a few years after I figured it out (at maybe 9 years old?) because my parents did not seem inclined to break the news.

[siliconshaman]

Well... I went with the story that Santa was originally a shaman, and that what we were doing was channelling the spirit of Santa by acting in his stead.

[adafrog]

Bird eggs? Weird.
Also, they can't physically eat carrots? Huh.

[killing_rose]

I think I started getting the "spirit of the season" talk at like 5? I didn't really decide the spirit was not a literal being until 6 or 7, and me being a child of two separated people who loathed each other, I didn't feel the need to spoil the ability to pit their Santas against each other for better presents.*

*note: literally every mental health professional i have seen has been appalled and or traumatized by my childhood and at least two have said a little tartly, "Honestly, I think thats the bare minimum that you deserved."

That said, I am _still_ trying to figure out where Kirsten the American Girl came from the year I was 11 23 years later as that was the year I declared there wasn't enough money in the checking account for Christmas and canceled it.

No, that's not a typo.

And I balanced the checkbook (hence canceling christmas presents), so biobitch seems to have been telling the truth about finding the bag on our porch.

[cimorene]

When I asked my dad seriously at age 6 if Santa was real because I was noticing the logical problems, he said "Well... what do you want me to say?" I was mildly offended that this response gave the illusion of choice while making the answer logically inevitable, but I wasn't really mad about having been lied to. My parents didn't make a huge deal out of it. My aunt and uncle told my cousins that only children who believe get presents, and also that Santa imitates Mommy's handwriting to test your faith.

[conuly]

They're not the only deer I've heard of eating bird eggs - or even just baby birds! I guess it's a good source of protein and probably calcium. Those antlers must have some serious energy and mineral requirements!

[conuly]

Maybe a kind neighbor guessed that your Christmas wasn't going to be much fun that year. Or, judging from the tenor of this comment, any year?

[conuly]

Yeah, with the kids we did Santa as pretend - which if you ask me is the best of both worlds. All the fun, but no dread of them finding out the truth.

[rebeccmeister]

So, we talk about reindeer nutritional and thermal physiology in my Animal Phys course, because they are a great animal for understanding the lives of animals in cold places. The thing is that reindeer live in environments where for part of the year, there are very few food options, so they are very tolerant of relatively low-nutrient foods such as lichen.

But because lichen is so low-nutrient, they would almost certainly eat other things like eggs whenever they find them. They'd be unlikely to find eggs in the dead of winter, because birds also time their reproduction. Reindeer would TOTALLY eat carrots, though, because carrots are a comparatively calorie- and nutrient-dense food.

Leafy greens largely consist of water. Reindeer would almost certainly eat them, too.

:^)

[maju]

I don't remember when I realised that Santa wasn't real, but I had to keep quiet about that realisation for a long time because I had 5 younger siblings, the youngest being 14 years younger than me. (I don't remember being traumatised by the discovery.)

[smokingboot]

It's a story. I question anyone who cannot teach their children the difference between a story and a lie given time enough.

When they begin to suspect, bring them in with the 'we each become Santa' theme, the whole idea of a shared story, magic down through the year. Try to keep it soft, but accept we will never get it right for all families and all children. In our house, there were Santa presents and family presents, and the santa presents were never as excellent as the family presents. Also, I spent lots of Christmas times in Spain,where there was no Santa, only the three kings, and they were just as fabulous.

There comes a time when even a child can see a guy in a suit is just that. But til then, tracking Santa with NORAD is still a very cute thing to do.

The dream fades, something else takes its place.

[conuly]

No. It's a story if and only if everybody knows it's just a story.

If you ever tell your children it's literally true and expect them to believe it then it's a lie. If there's a point where they have to "suspect" because you didn't tell them the truth then it's just a lie.

Or you can skip all that and tell them the truth from the beginning, in which case it's a story and a fun pretend game that the kids can play too and not just the grown-ups.

[smokingboot]

If everyone has to know it's a story in order to make it a story, then all stories are lies because you can never be sure that everyone knows the fact/truth behind it. There are just no guarantees. This is something no-one can police.

[conuly]

We have clues that we use to indicate to people that we're telling stories. When telling stories to children we even will say explicitly things like "Wow, that's silly!" or "Dragons sure are scary! Good thing they're not real!" so as to make sure they're clued in.

Plus, if you're telling somebody a story and they somehow miss the clues and believe it's real, we don't ban other people from informing them that it's a story instead of the truth. We don't say "Oh, gosh, that horrible kid in her class let her know that Cinderella isn't true!"

[thekumquat]

I kept to the line of "some say Father Christmas fills the stockings overnight. Some say it's Santa or someone else." (all we know is he's called the Stig?)

So age 4, Quatlet asked if Santa Claus really delivered presents to children all round the world, or if it was just adults. I did the "what do you think?", seeing as nursery kids often do believe and he had no tact. "Which is more likely, a guy zooming to half the children in the world in one night, using flying reindeer and fitting all the presents on one sleigh, or that the children's families are doing it?"

"Hm. It must be Father Christmas, because no way would you be that generous!" I think this was his first attempt at sarcasm.

Two years later, Santa was banned from our house by the boys, after turning up at school, handing over what was blatantly a book, but saying "That one's an Xbox." I asked if that meant there was no point in hanging the stockings.

"Oh, that's fine, the Christmas Kitty is coming." No flies on those kids!

The Christmas Kitty has acquired her own mythology and helpers over the years. She's fond of good whisky...

Oddly, the kids in very diverse schools coped OK with different families believing (or not) in different gods, in Reception (age 4-5), but the following year, the arguments over who brings presents (La Befana, St Lucia, Babouska, St Nick...) led to fisticuffs in the playground for weeks!

[smokingboot]

Do we? I am not sure we do. I know my parents never did. But in any case, people can't stop other people saying stuff they don't like. We can't stop parents telling their children about Santa Claus, and we can't stop children's friends from telling them it's not true. I've known people whose parents told them it was all nonsense from the start, and some were grateful, but just as many were wistful, and wished they'd had those years of believing, some felt enraged at not being allowed to be part of it all, some felt isolated because Santa wasn't part of their childhood, others felt enraged at their parents 'lying' to them. Impossible to be sure of getting this right, all options can lead to unhappiness. All people can ever try to do is read their kids, and work out what they are going to do accordingly. And expect to get it wrong, because everyone gets it at least partially wrong.

[silveradept]

We had Santa, sure, but as a religious family, the emphasis was always supposed to be on the religious aspects and not on the gifts themselves. Nowadays, we all know that Santa knows what a particular relative knows, and she's very prompt about telling us when intelligence is needed.

[adafrog]

Good point.

[conuly]

Reindeer would TOTALLY eat carrots, though, because carrots are a comparatively calorie- and nutrient-dense food.

Yes, except the website I found on the care and keeping of reindeer said that whether or not they'd like to eat carrots, they actually are not capable of eating carrots, and as it's a zoo I think they likely know.

[conuly]

AITA this week had a post from a woman who wanted to exclude her 5 year old grandson from the house from now until Christmas, I guess, because he knew about Santa and his 9 year old uncle didn't.

I'm actually dying to know why her oldest child decided to raise the grandson without Santa if, apparently, the OP thinks it's an essential part of childhood, but I didn't think asking the question would help the discussion much.

[conuly]

What it's a recipe for is yearly posts all over the socialwebs about how to keep the kids from finding out, how to handle things now that the kid found out and is sobbing, how to keep the kids from blabbing if they found out and *didn't* sob - like, geez, the holidays aren't stressful enough?

[conuly]

Do we? I am not sure we do. I know my parents never did.

Your parents didn't tell stories that started with words like "A long, long time ago in a land far, far away" or "Once upon a time..."?

[smokingboot]

They did now and then - if they were reading a story that had those words at the beginning - but by no means as a rule, not least because many of their stories were not read but told, parts of folklore. My father would tell me stories of the terrifying each-uisge with no hint of fairy tale. He just told a good tale to the best of his ability; I don't think it ever occurred to him to do otherwise.

'Once upon a time' and 'A long long time ago in a land far far away' are traditions rather than disclaimers. It does not follow that they place the story outside reality, and even if they did, no guarantee that the child would comprehend this. Learning the difference between a story told to entertain/teach us and a lie created to deceive us is part of growing up.

[rebeccmeister]

Ah, I see, anatomically, they'd have a hard/impossible time with intact carrots. I wonder if they'd eat shredded carrot salad, but I can imagine someone who keeps reindeer wouldn't bother with this experiment as they have lots of other things on their hands.

I think maybe I'm in support of people who leave out some beer for Santa or whatever. :^)

[vvalkyri]

Somewhere I have a picture of a deer eating a bird.

[cellio]

I don't understand parents who do the "two lies and a truth" thing, telling kids that Santa, the Easter bunny, and God are all real, and then getting mad when kids apply what they learned from the first two to the third and bail on the religion the parents are probably trying to raise them in.

[dorchadas]

That's a good idea--my daughter is two and a half and I've been thinking about how to explain Santa to her in a way where she won't reveal the truth to the other kids. A game is a great framing.