Controversial approach to Santa

Are we not saying the same thing? I'm sorry, I seem to have missed a nuance.

There's a balance to be struck between everyone having to be together all the time and a father of young children actively choosing to be at work instead of with his own kids on Christmas Day.

If you're a doctor in a 24/7/365 specialism then of course you should take your turn at working on days like Christmas Day. But actively volunteering for it when you have young kids at home is weird. Usually the kind of people who actively volunteer to work on Christmas Day are people who don't celebrate Christmas or have young kids, and it's a selfless gesture to enable people who do have young kids - such as the OP's husband - to celebrate with them.

As a 10 or 11 year old child I would be far more upset about my dad actively choosing to spend Christmas Day with other kids rather than with us than I would about figuring out either that my parents deprived us of the magic of Santa which normal kids got to enjoy, or that they lied to us about Santa existing when he doesn't.

If everyone raised their kids to know that people beleive different things, and to respect that, there would be no "spoiling". I don't ask my children to lie, I do ask them to respect what others beleive. I would expect the same in return.

I think parents should do as they think best for their own. But the issue for me is deciding for other families what is best for their children.

So long as your DD knows not to ruin it for the families who do want to preserve the tradition I don't see a problem with what happens or is said in your own home.

Why? They're 2 and 3. They have no concept of what Christmas 'should' look like. In any case, in many sectors someone has to work on Christmas Day and the fairest way to share it out is for everyone to take turns and people working could always have a celebration on another day.

Did you miss the part that the OPs DH is a paediatric doctor so an essential worker? You'd be the first to complain if your child couldn't access medical services if needed on any day of the year and likely if there was no-one working on Christmas Day because everyone was at home playing make believe to their children who are too young to understand anyway.

Well, sure. I didn't not do it. We did Santa every year, and then when she was 5 she asked me if it was true, I said "would you like it to be true?" and she said "yes" and that was the end of it for that year. Then she twigged the Tooth Fairy somehow and after that Santa didn't stand a chance: she just told me she knew it wasn't true, and I am afraid I draw the line at telling a six year old that a thing they've worked out for themselves isn't correct when it is. That's where I think the damage is, potentially, when they are old enough to have worked it out (which I think shows a level of ability to reason and face hard truths that's actually rather good) and their parent tries to talk them out of it because the parent is less ready than they are for them to grow up a bit.

I like your approach
Mine is 5- and although is aware of Santa- also knows that Santa isn't real. She worked it out as each Santa looks different about 2 years ago. I have a real issue with lying- and can't tell her he is real. So we have gone with it's a nice story lots of people like- however you don't tell people it's a story..... And like Minnie mouse, the gruffalo and others people dress up to be him
What will you do at school- ours does a yearly Santa visit for under year 3.....

🙄

Is it really all SUCH a terrible imposition ...?

I don't think so at all. I think he's being selfless.

Even as adults my mum gets cross when we have Christmas at theirs and my dad wants to go to church in the morning because he isn't around the whole day. I never had an issue with it and sometimes go with him. It sounds suffocating this idea that the entire day has to be about magic and every body present feeding the magic constantly.

Why is it ok for you to simply continue what your parents did but it is sad for OP to do the same? Clearly she had no issues without Santa as a child or she'd be doing things very differently with her own children.

It isn't a child's responsibility to keep the Santa story real for other children and I think that's something that has to be accepted if you tell your child that something is real when it actually isn't.

Not really. There’s a difference between ‘maintaining at all costs’ and a benign tradition that’s maintained for a few years and then fades away, like the tooth fairy or whatever. Parents lie to their children all the time - whether it’s the sub par picture they’ve drawn, how clever they are, etc etc

Personally I think it's a bit sad not to do the whole Santa thing. I never felt lied to as a child. On the contrary, I was old enough by then to realise my parents had "played along" ( and to grasp the effort of hiding gifts, putting out milk and cookies etc etc) and was quite grateful to them for the years of magic, but perhaps some children might feel differently.

I think the main thing is that if you choose not to adopt that tradition, you should really impress upon your children not to spoil it for others. It's fine to do as you judge best with your own family, but not for that to filter out to other families.

In one of my dc's classes there was a child who loudly announced to all that it was just a big pretence and most of the parents were really cross and upset about it. Fortuitously for our family, my dc was home that day - and all the others very fastidiously did not pass it on, which I was grateful for. But it does cause upset if they ruin it for others, and I'd have felt the same had my dc been present.

The fact that you have two small children and your husband volunteers to work on Christmas Day every year is far sadder than them not having the magic of Santa, IMO.

Very different complimenting a picture to creating an annual illusion that must be maintained at all costs.

This is basically what we did. We hate Xmas anyway and do the bare minimum (and never on 25th December). We just never introduced Santa as a concept. It was AMAZING how hard others, including complete strangers, tried to push it on her. She went along with it politely, but never believed in it as a real thing. (See also Easter bunny, heaven and the tooth fairy which other people felt she should be forced to believe in.)

A small stocking arrived on her bed but it was never attributed to Santa.

By 7 she had worked out that to do what people said he did, he would have to break the speed of light. Had always ensured that she understood that people believe different things and she never told anyone that their beliefs weren’t real.

There is plenty of magic in winter without needing to lie to kids in the way some people do by bending over backwards to make Santa “real”.

I think the two issues could be as follows:

1. tbe children stand out from their contemporaries and don’t fit in around Christmas. Reminds me a bit of children at school whose parents refused to have tvs in their house on principle (decades and decades and decades ago!) and they couldn’t join in the usual chitchat about tv. And other children might think them a bit odd
2. they become known as those precocious know it alls announcing to all and sundry that Mum says Santa doesn’t exist and becoming ‘that’ child.

As for posters saying they don’t lie to their children, of course they do. ‘Oh what a lovely picture you’ve drawn’, leather than ‘this is a distinctly average/below average picture you’ve drawn’ etc etc

It's funny, actually, the more I read posters saying "your children will spoil the magic for others" the more irritated I find myself getting. It's a total fiction. It's not even like religious beliefs which some people for whatever reason genuinely believe are true. It's a complete fib. It's a fun fib, not a malicious fib, but every single parent knows for a fact that there is no Father Christmas and the presents are bought by them. And yet some of those parents are asking for a level of respect that they would never expect for their genuinely held religious or philosophical beliefs that they actually factually believe in. I think this thread has really made me realise how ridiculous that is. Do I want my kid to try to ruin it for other kids? Of course not, but if she's asked she'll give her genuine belief. She's not responsible for your feelings or your kid's feelings. If you're that invested in keeping Santa going, you should warn your kids that some people don't believe in Father Christmas so that it's not a shock when another kid says he doesn't exist 🤷

No one is asking you to spoil your holiday by playing along - the OP's SIL is simply protecting her own holiday by keeping her family separate, which is completely fine and works for both families.

So glad my parents went out their way to create some christmas magic for us, I am doing the same for my own children, I love it as much as they do and a part of me wishes he was real. I always remember running into my parent's bedroom with my brother and sister, jumping on their bed so excited and my dad would ask "has he been?", makes me smile thinking about it. My parents still put their carrot, mince pie etc out christmas eve and send their grandkids a photo, they still want to believe even now we are all married with children of our own!

I find it sad when parents don't do santa, I don't understand why you wouldn't want your children to join in something magical, they will just end up ruining it for other children.

Nobody, at an age when children are in the midst of their own experiments with lying and make believe, was devastated when they found out their parents lied to them. I honestly absolutely hate this 'heard it on social media and will parrot it til the death' trend. Give it the fuck up.

Yes, totally agree. I was juar curious what the OP would say that's all.

This is the exactly why lots of us on this thread don’t really ‘do’ Santa.

Youre putting yourself in a position where you can’t even see your own family due to a fantasy you’ve created. If your kids want to believe then someone else saying they don’t believe won’t change that.

Parents who are precious about Santa are so quick to say ‘don’t spoil it for others’ with no recognition that the rest of us would quite like to celebrate without constantly wondering whether this kid believes in just the stockings, the whole lot, is Santa just a postie, does this one think he actually makes the gifts, does that one think their elf doll is alive?! I’m not going to tell your kid it’s not real but I’m not spoiling my holiday for the sake of nonsense.

Yes, American imports such as.Scotland, Ireland, and Northumberland/North East England where it's always been Santa Claus and where the use of Santa Claus pre-dates American Christmas traditions.

We managed to make Christmas magical without my now very much adult DC being told Santa/FC was real, or us giving any indication that he may be real. It was never really mentioned. Gifts were from people who gave them. Like others, it was never mentioned who stockings were from. My DC is still the biggest fan of Christmas and now with their own DC wants to emulate the Christmases of their childhood as they were so magical.

My SIL was like you and didn't tell her children about santa 'on principle' (apparently she "refuses to lie to her children", though she frequently lies to them about other things so who knows!)

It was a nightmare as her and her kids would frequently tell other kids that santa wasn't real etc, which is just plain mean imho. My kids were babies/very young at the time to understand so I just shrugged and let them get on with it, but now her kids are in their early twenties and really resent the fact they never had a 'magical christmas' with santa coming down the chimney etc. They also never got to appreciate chistmas films either, and once they're at school there's lots of santa visiting for events, or christmas parties where he makes an appearance etc.
I loathe christmas for lots of reasons, but there is nothing quite like seeing your children's face of awe when they see 'santa' walk into the room at a friend's party!

I think you're being a bit mean, and purposefully excluding your children from something (I can't comment on why you'd want to do that), but you do you.