Parental Confession Thread

[Legendary Sidekick]

So, it's midnight on Christmas. You moms and dads with little ones know what that means. It's time to fulfill your parental obligation to perpetuate a centuries-old lie.

And so I'll get this feeling of guilt off my chest. I am the Santa at my house. No, not the Santa who picks out the gifts. That's Mrs. Clause. I just eat the cookie (okay, I share the cookie with my wife) and write the reply to my daughter's letter.

Here it is.

***

Dear Amelia, Sabina & Hannah,


Thank you for the wonderful cookies. Your mother is an excellent baker. I would know because I eat a lot of cookies. Also, Blitzen thanks you for the carrot. (It was his turn to eat the veggie when I got to your house. Rudolph got a Brussels sprout from one of your neighbors.)


I am sorry to hear about Ginger. Losing a pet is not easy, but she did live long for a little fish. I believe you took good care of her and gave her the happiest life you could.


Now do the same for each other. You are all lucky to have two sisters around your age. Cherish one another. When you are happy, you make those around you happy. Smiles are contagious.


Speaking of smiles, I better get to the next house or there will be a lot of frowning kids tomorrow morning! Perhaps I will give the next child a generic form letter to make up for lost time.


Merry Christmas, kids (and grown-ups, too)!


Love,
Santa


P.S.- I move quickly because there are so many houses. That is why children do not see me. I was afraid your uncle would wake up, but he did not succeed in seeing me either.

***

Well, I don't know about you, but I sure feel better.

Merry Christmas!

 

[Heliotrope]

Love this it's 9:48 and my little ones just fell asleep. We perpetuate the lie as well... I'm Mrs. Clause. Santa is in the bedroom attempting to wrap a gift he bought today. It will take the entire roll of tape, I'm sure. He has still not mastered the art, or clued in to the invention of gift bags.

Merry Christmas, LS

 

[Androxine Vortex]

My dad told me at his house when he was a boy, there wasn't even a christmas tree up on christmas eve. His father would put up the tree and decorate it plus put out the gifts all in one night! That's crazy

 

[Chessie]

Yeah...we don't lie to our kid. My husband was raised without Santa; I was raised believing in him. Let me tell you, one of the saddest days of my childhood was when I found out there was no Santa. So we decided not to have our kids believe in him. It doesn't feel right lying.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

That was a a path I had considered. Our kids' ballet school and preschool are in a small town—home of the real Mary from Mary Had a Little Lamb... yes, there is a Mary, and Johnny Appleseed (from my hometown) is real too. One delivers sweaters once a year; the other hides apples.

Anyway, I once heard parents (at the ballet school) complaining that other parents (whose kids went to preschool with theirs) told their own kids there is no Tooth Fairy, and those parents deserved to be beaten up. The complainers were blowhards and the parents they were complaining about were not in the same building, so it's not like anyone was actually attacked. But when I heard that I thought, "just as well I caved on this" and I also thought, "how backwards is this? If you are completely honest with your kids, other parents question your parenting?"

For the record, I don't. Good for you for not setting your kids up for the there-is-no-Santa.

 

[Mythopoet]

My oldest asked me directly when she was 4 years old if Santa was real or not. I don't lie to her so I told her the truth. She took it pretty well. Of course we had never gone out of our way to perpetuate the lie before she asked (though some of her grandparents did) and neither did we prevent her from believing it. But it wasn't a big loss to her. Since that day we've taken the point of view that the children should know that "Santa Claus", the person who is mostly a pop culture icon, is a figure from a story. But that it's ok to "believe" in the story. Stories, we believe in our house, are no less "real" just because they didn't happen. (We're still not going to pretend to be Santa though.) We also tell our children about the real St. Nicholas who was the foundation for the modern icon.

 

[Caged Maiden]

We sort of do what Mythopoet does. My kids asked me point blank several years ago whether Santa was real...and I couldn't lie. When I was eight, I found presents stuffed in a closet in the basement, and my mom made a huge deal out of it, unwrapping a microwave and saying, "These are presents for Mommy and Daddy," and I didn't really care, but years later she told me what a headache I caused because she'd had to rewrap them all in new paper so I didn't know Santa presents were from her. OMG. Really? i so wouldn't have recognized the paper! I was just excited to find presents!

Anyways, I hide stocking stuffers in the top of my closets (IN PLASTIC SHOPPING BAGS, so they look like normal stuff), and then I wrap all our family presents in color-coordinated paper with beautiful trimmings and bows on them, to match our holiday decor that year. Then, we buy one special present, a toy that is really cool, and no one knows what it is until Christmas morning, and I wrap those up in Santa red paper, and stuff the stockings. I mean...my kids came shopping with me this year and picked out their own stocking stuffers! I don't want to dash their little hopes or anything, but I tell them Santa is the St. Nick who used to bring toys to poor children, things he'd made, and that we still believe giving joy and surprises is important, so we'll probably always do the "Santa presents", but it means something else to us, rather than a belief that someone dressed in red flies reindeer around the world. We enjoy Christmas movies, but I've found that the way Santa is portrayed on TV can be even more confusing, making too much of a deal of the "belief" aspect, which I think is more harmful than just saying, "yeah, we say these come from Santa because he is a symbol of joy and giving."

Hope that doesn't make me a horrible mom. On a side note, we've lost too many teeth to the accursed tooth fairy, when she "loses" them, like down the drain and somewhere in the bed (still haven't found them, so don't know where two little teeth in a plastic bag could have disappeared...my best guess is my daughter was disappointed we forgot to leave money, and threw them away or something...)

I just hate lying. I'm kinda too honest to make up elaborate stories. So I keep it simple. They ask, and I explain. Saves them from disappointment when they're old enough to perform experiments on the sly and learn the truth. I'm not playing a game with my kids. They're too smart for that. I just want to have a stress-free holiday and have joy and love. It's better without trying to keep them in the dark.

 

[Devor]

My wife likes to do Santa, but I'm not really into it. The result is that we kind of play along at Christmas, with the cookie and the "from Santa" labels on some of the gifts, but six months later it's "Do you still like this toy we got you?"

That is, we lie, but we're not very good at it, and we don't really try to be.

I saw a video going around of a child who left out a camera to catch Santa, and the parents did some digital magic to put santa in the video with reindeer music and presents that appear when he snaps his fingers. The child had a super-fun reaction, but it all felt so very wrong.

I'm fine with it if my children believe in Santa. But when the kids at school tell them that he's not real, I don't want them to be the kids who put up a big fight trying to deny it. I just don't think that's healthy for them.

 

[Svrtnsse]

I've got no kids, but I figured I'd share what happened at home when I was little. I'm the oldest and I remember having someone come in dressed as Santa when I was very little, but even then I knew it wasn't the real thing.

Then a few years later, as we got older, us kids got to be Santa instead. I think I only did it once, but I know my brother and sister both did it several years. They got to dress up and they got a little lantern and a burlap sack with some presents in it. Then they walked out down the street and came back through the forest. It was dark and we could see the flame of the lantern through the trees. They came in and handed out the presents in the sack and then they went and changed and we opened all of the rest of the presents together.

Maybe this - or something like it - could be an idea for those of you with kids?