Teacher telling 7yo that Father Christmas not real

I don't think we can make any assumptions about the religious leanings of the teacher in question. Some of the most joyless people I've ever met are atheists who just can't help pontificating about how stupid anyone with faith is. They also like to think of themselves as being the ones who know what the "truth" is which is pathetically arrogant. I am probably somewhere between agnostic and atheist but it really doesn't matter to me what anyone else believes in the privacy of their home/church. As long as you keep it away from schools and the law, I couldn't care any less.

A 7 year old is old enough to know he is not real lol

Wow, your ignorance is next level.

RE teachers for a start are not all religious and secondly they do not teach any religion as being real. They simply educate about the way that different faiths are followed while teaching ethics and philosophy too.

How very sad! I have 6 children from 24 down to 8 and have worked in primary schools most of my adult life and it's not at all the norm for 5 or 6 year olds to not believe. Mine tend to until around 10/11.

That’s a really mean thing to do. I just hope he made it clear that god isn’t real either!

You have two options, speak to the teacher about what he said. Tell your child he is real and the teacher is mistaken

I remember my daughter’s after school leader telling the kids that Father Christmas wasn’t real. They were about 6 or 7. I was furious. Her son had died earlier in the year but that was no excuse for being such a hard faced person to the children.

I think almost every primary school child knows that Father Christmas isn’t real… and that it’s really their parents but play along with them because they don’t want their parents to be disappointed!

Every primary school child? Really?

I've worked with children aged 4+ for 20 odd years and my experience is that the majority believe until ages 9/10 and some older than that.

There seems to be a small, but significant, cohort of Christians - some of whom are responsible for the wider religious education of children in primary schools - who are quite hard over in actively pushing the truth that a certain magical kind man in the sky with a red suit doesn't exist.

Although they are completely hard over on the fact that another magical kind man in the sky with a crown of thorns & holes in his hands DOES exist. So 🤷🏼‍♀️

I wonder if it's the same misery guts that felt the need to actively inform my Y5 child's class last year that santa is actually their parents and is not part of the TRUE meaning of Christmas?

I was also 😡 @Peaceandquietandacuppa, as it's not the same as being cornered & not being comfortable perpetuating a white lie/cultural myth.

It was actively looking to inform the whole class as part of a planned & structured lesson - because it doesn't jive with their personal religious beliefs.

Which IS ironic given the origins of santa are based on a Christian saint helping out the poor & needy & those deserving of a gift in the depths of winter. But there we are!

I said to DD that maybe the adult was sad because she was so miserable nobody had ever left presents to cheer her up at Christmas?!

Bad luck OP. They walk among us. Wouldn't be off to mention to the school that this RE teacher is going out of their way to enforce their own religious beliefs on a class - that's not how RE is supposed to be delivered in secular schools, but hey ho!

When it became time, we explained to our eldest that santa is part of the absolute MAGIC of Christmas, and as one of the older ones of a group of friends, their responsibility was to help keep Christmas as a MAGICAL time for younger children. Too much for some soulless adults to process tho!

Secondary school is not unreasonable. Anything below this wholly unfair because a primary school will have believers in Y6. It's brutally cruel to SEND students whose intellectual or developmental age might be years below their physical one.

my son is 11 and i still manage to make him sort of believe in the magic of santa and when some other kids said he's not real i said up to you to believe it or not ...Im sure deep down he knows but he also loves the idea ...same with my eldest ... I managed until she was 10 ish.... I would say to your child she might have said that because there are no fact to prove it but also there are no facts to prove the contraire... ;)

I’d want to know if the teacher has also made claims about God/Allah/Jehovah and other gods being fictitious, or if the “facts” are only applied to Father Christmas.

@Peaceandquietandacuppa did you end up clarifying what exactly was said by the teacher?

Mine twigged at six (now seven) but she's very much an outlier it seems. I did the Father Christmas stuff and was a bit sad she got it so early, but I wasn't going to lie to her when she asked me. I've been very clear with her that she's not to spoil it for her friends. She does still love Christmas and it has not ruined anything for her.

Yes - he brought me and my sister tin trumpets once, and when we tried them out in the early hours of Christmas morning we clearly heard my father berating my mother for buying them

I think almost every primary school child knows that Father Christmas isn’t real… and that it’s really their parents but play along with them because they don’t want their parents to be disappointed!

I would add that it’s a bit rich for an RE teacher to tell children that a character they believe in isn’t real, as essentially telling children to believe in stories is literally their job!

The whole nativity story for example is a work of fiction, celebrated at the wrong time of year, with a false location and narrative (The Romans conducted their census where people actually lived not their ancestral home, otherwise how would they know where people lived and what they owned so they could calculate how much taxes they had to pay)

Some scholars have tried to correlate the "Star of Bethlehem" with astronomical events. For example, one astronomer used the St Matthew's Gospel to pinpoint a planetary conjunction in Leo on June 17, 2BC.

Perhaps your son could throw her a curve ball back? Ask her why we celebrate Christmas as the wrong time of year, and ask why Christians are actually celebrating a pagan festival?

Not believing in FC doesn't necessarily mean someone is rushing through childhood.

Still very normal to believe at 7. 7 is still very young! Why do we have to rush through childhood so fast?!

It's not up to a teacher to tell children about FC surely it's up to the parents or did she just want to ruin it for children, l also would be annoyed.

Yes, and likely the last Christmas my son will still believe.

Both my kids believed in Father Christmas until secondary school (age 11), I had to sit them down and tell them. They were genuinely surprised. But I put a lot of effort into keeping the magic alive and my eldest kept it going for his younger brother. It’s rotten of that teacher to spoil it, I’d be fuming!

An RE teacher is telling kids that Santa isn't real? Oh the irony

Terrible - some of the answers on here are so weird.

The teacher should know that some of the kids believe, even if some don't at 7. Not their place at all to tell the kids Santa isn't real.

I'd 100% put a complaint in.

One of the deacons did this at my daughter's school. I was livid.

I can't see how any teacher is stupid enough to say such a thing to a class if 7 year olds. If they are the school will surely be getting lots of complaints. Do you have a class WhatsApp that's blowing up?

I'm the opposite to you OP I absolutely hate people telling my child something we absolutely know does not exist is real. It's completely different to faith were people believe different things but always grow out of it when they find out the truth. People get angry when a teacher says they believe in god and call it indoctrination but it's fine to lie about Santa?!

Every family feels differently on these things and I think it should ALWAYS be phrased some people believe/don't believe. My kids know Santa is not real and have been firmly told we say "we don't believe" to others not he's not real just as you would not say "he's not real" to people who believe in a different God