Controversial approach to Santa

Only on Mumsnet could Santa be weaponised! 😂

Entirely up to you OP. I think it’s definitely out of the ordinary but not controversial. It sounds like your kids still have a lovely Christmas. I genuinely wonder if they will choose to do the same thing, like you did.

Among my favourite childhood memories is the one of my and my siblings excitedly going down the stairs to see if he’d been. We have photos of this over the years. I just can’t imagine it being quite the same excitement if there were gifts but from my parents.

Having said that, DH and I are still deciding if we just want Santa to bring the stocking and some small gifts so we don’t ever need the conversation that he doesn’t bring high ticket stuff or electrical goods. 😂 So we’re looking for some middle ground.

I do agree it’s lying but I think the magic is worth it. I’m really glad my parents lied to us on this one.

I see no issue with this. Not everybody wants to teach their children about myths.

Just seems like a real shame to deny children one of the most wonderous and magical elements of the Christmas tradition to me. And for what? What does anyone gain from it?

I didn't do Santa either but made sure my children knew not to tell others who did believe.

You will be accused of destroying their imaginations and the 'magic' of childhood though ...

There’s a big difference between saying people don’t lie and being a trusted person who straight up and knowingly lies. every year people will be on here asking for ideas on how to ‘make’ their children believe. I think that’s wrong.

I want to be my child’s most trusted person and for him to know that I will never lie. That doesn’t mean giving the brutal truth all the time. Some questions he’s asked I’ve had to tell him he’s not ready to know the truth yet (he’s into history and had some hefty questions about WW2 when he was 7/8). Not all topics are age appropriate to have the whole truth but a world of difference between saying you are too young to know about everything that happened yet but I’ll tell you one day to nothing bad happened, or people weren’t hurt to preserve some sort of misguided innocence. I think it’s really important there is someone you can trust in everyone’s life. And for a child, that should be a parent or carer.

hand on heart I’ve never lied to DS but I have said I’m not ready to answer some questions or told him why I can’t say something. Most of the time I do give him the full truth. He knows well people do lie but hopefully that I, or his Dad, won’t lie to him.

That Is not to say we didn’t do make believe or pretend games when he was younger but the key difference is that he was in on the game.

We do the same. Didn’t realise anyone would take it as we’re ruining others Xmas 😂 Like you we don’t say Santa is/isn’t real we just don’t mention it and if Santa is in a book/mentioned at school then it’s not a big deal. It’s just a character like any other in books etc.

Well we kind of do the same, we have never said santa exists or doesn't exist, or that any presents are or are not from him, theres never really been any conversations about whether he exists or not. There is no all the presents are from us, or all the presens from Santa, or one from Santa and the rest of us. That all sounds a bit complicated when I';ve never felt it needed to be. We do stockings, and the same things just we've never told them anything either way. They will obviously have their own thoughts based on what their friends say, or what they see on TV or what is said at school/nursery.

Why is it weird? I always had a stocking as a child (as did my children) without making a big thing about it being from santa...what is weird is children going to secondary school still believing in him, and parents worried about them being upset when they find out that he doesn't exist!

Nuts!

Some parents tell them that "if you don't believe you won't receive."

Translation: "I am not ready to accept you are growing up in and you need to put aside your own cognitive and logical understanding of the world in order to placate me under threat of punishment."

If you're telling your kids that Santa exists and magic happens, what are you telling them when they can't go to sleep for worrying about ghosts or monsters?

I think as long as you are not going around discrediting other peoples approaches then you do whatever works for you. Everyone has different traditions at Christmas and Santa is just a tradition really.
I'd have some sort of response ready if you children ask why others are different.

We do do Santa but have a few kids at school that don't. My only issue with it is that they keep trying to ruin it for other children by saying he isn't real etc.

The 9 year old most likely is just playing along with their parents now to be fair. DS8 started questioning this year. My response is 'what do you believe' and I am leaving him to make his mind up. Most 10 years olds at his school don't believe according to a mum friend with an older child.

DS is 9. He asked me at 5 if he was real and I answered him honestly. Wasn't a particularly big deal and I'd kind of forgotten the last couple of years some might still believe. But only last month 3 other mums from his year were adamant their children still do.

I'm bemused that anyone thinks in the internet age that a child who attends school will genuinely believe in Santa at 9 years old.

.

Oh and when my youngest questions it, I just ask him 'well do you believe he's real, if you do that's fine, if you don't that's also fine'

Sensible! My DH remembers thinking he hadn't been as good as other children many a year.

We do do Santa although we were on the fence when DD was younger, and the backlash you get from others if you suggest being truthful about Santa from the start is crazy.

Nothing screams Christmas spirit like threatening violence on any child who admits to believing in something different to yours. 😂

I would gently remind your sister that the "Christmas magic" is supposed to be about love and family, not a fat man in a red suit.

I think my mother said, when talking about Santa one day, "You know he's not real, right?"

I can't remember what I said to my children. I don't think they ever had to be told. They just always knew Santa was fictional. And not to spoil it for other children. You can still decorate Santas and enjoy it with them without them having to believe in it.

Santa just delivers the presents in our house.

My kids know mom & dad buy them, wrap them and send them to the North Pole, then Santa delivers at Christmas.

We've always done this as it stops the 'well santa brought little Jonny a PS5, why did I only get PJ's' etc...

You do you in your house and let your sister do her thing.

The kids will talk about Santa and ask questions whether it's from your sisters kids or others at school so I just wouldn't worry about it!

OP, I wonder if your SIL finds your opinion on the big man problematic because she realises the game is up. At 8 and 9, this is likely the last year (or penultimate year at a pinch) that her children still believe in Father Christmas. And she knows it.
I'm definitely in your camp of not really going to any great effort on Father Christmas. Partly for cultural reasons: one of my parents came from a culture which didn't really have Father Christmas. My kids are teens and young adults now but when they were little, we did stockings but didn't really hide that they were from Mum and Dad. So in the stocking, I'd pop in an orange, a choc, and a little present using the same wrapping paper as the main presents. One of my kids had a school friend whose parents went through huge convoluted hoops to make all presents, including a massive playhouse slide thing, come from Father Christmas. It was so ostentatious that my kids twigged straightaway that there was no such thing as Father Christmas - it just didn't make any sense.

For Christmas 2026, it'll likely be different anyway - your kids probably won't remember much about Christmas 2025, and it won't matter if you do things differently. So I'd play along with your SIL this year (and maybe next year). Don't go along with unreasonable demands, but let her have her fun - don't take her too seriously.

There's this new thing where parents don't want to "lie to their children". But Santa memories are some of my absolute favourite and I remember the magic and the excitement so well. My friend never had that, was never told about Santa, and she absolutely hates Christmas because she used to watch movies and see the Santa stuff and feel like she was missing out. Anecdotal, I know. But it stuck with me.

I'm not so sure. At 12 it's vanishingly unlikely that he's not known for years. So for years he's probably been learning how to lie effectively to stop a woman being unhappy with him/get what he wants. How he uses that skill in his life to come remains to be seen.

Up to you what you tell your children, but the problem is that they are fast approaching the age when they will hear about Santa elsewhere - at nursery, playgroup, school, on TV, in books, from other children, from well-meaning adults. It’s become part of our culture, like it or not.

What will you say when they ask you? Other parents will not be pleased if your DC tell their young DC Santa doesn’t exist.

Each to their own. You get to set your own traditions and if Santa isn’t one of them then so be it. I will say though that I have so enjoyed bringing Santa “back to life” once I had my own DC and discovering the magic of Christmas again (it’s easy to get a bit pessimistic about it all as an adult!). We get such a short time in our lives to truly believe in magic, I would never see it as lying to my children to help bring magic to life.

This is a reason my DH supported not doing Santa. He was devastated when he found out it wasn't real. Especially when Santa was tied to 'being good' and friends got bigger presents. He thought he wasn't as good as them. Sad.