How to explain Christmas "secret" to asd dd?

[xmashelp]

Trying to be cryptic in the title incase little people are reading over your shoulder.

Dd is 12 next week and about to start high school after the summer. She 100% still "believes" there isn't a tiny bit of her that seems to have any doubt.

She had Autism and can present as quite young (still loves Disney etc) but there's no way we can let her go to high school still believing.

We've had arguments between her and class mates the last few years where they've told her the truth and she's argued that she is right. In hindsight we probably should have said more at those points but she loves Christmas so much we let it go and told her to believe what she wants to believe etc thinking she would eventually click but it's never happened

Does anyone have a gentle way to approach this without crushing her, she does have a younger sibling so was hoping to do a twee "oh you can be in on the secret now" thing but not sure the best way or time to break it to her?

Oh, you just need to tell her. There's no kind way to do it because you need to be plain and unfussy in dismantling this myth clearly now. And then you'll need to play it by ear depending on how she reacts.

Perhaps you could get her a book about mysteries eg the lock ness monster, aliens etc and encourage her to explore her beliefs. What does she think is reasonable, why does she think that, and so on, so that you are not attacking her lovely belief in Santa so much as you are bringing her more into line with adult scepticism. She can privately believe in whatever she wants, she just needs to learn that her classmates will enjoy a good debate around these issues.

Can you adapt any of these explanations in a way that she'll understand?

www.diyncrafts.com/9189/lifehacks/4-heartwarming-letters-explain-santa-kids

In all those cases, the child themselves had questioned the Santa ID. You maybe need to start thinking how you can raise that.

can present as quite young
Neurodiverse kids are often emotionally around two thirds of their chronological age, so try and work with that. Never say or think she should be able to emotionally deal with things in the same way her NT age-peers do.