Help. The truth about santa

[Anothernamethesamegame]

My 7 year old son has come home from football club saying an older kid was telling them all the tooth fairy, Santa and Elves aren’t real, but parents give the presents. He told me out of the blue and asked me if that was true. On the spot I said no that’s no true. Where else would the presents come from?!

Annoyingly I had always said I would tell the truth if they asked, and I don’t like the feeling of having lied. However on the spot the lie just came out of my mouth. He seemed happy with the response and has gone off now.

Where do I go from here? Just wait for him to ask again but tell the truth?

I managed to negotiate it well with my older son as did the whole “Santa is the magic of Xmas” thing while agreeing that there isn’t a person called Santa. So I am capable…..I just folded in the moment today!! 🤦🏻‍♀️

Ask your child if he wants Santa to be real and go from there.

Ignore it. He’ll have gone onto something else by tomorrow. I’ve found kids figure out the truth for themselves and are happy to go along with the story for younger siblings.

Please don’t fret about it, OP.

At coming up to 9 my dd1 told me in very matter of fact tones that she knew Father Christmas was me and daddy, so I might as well admit it.
So I did.
When she was maybe early 20s she told me she’d been dying for me to deny it, so she could go on believing a little longer.

I so wished I had!

The prosaic truth dawns soon enough - let them go on believing if they want to, it won’t be for long anyway - and if other people like to call that ‘lying’ I honestly couldn’t give a flying fuck.

Thanks for the replies.
@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER you make a good point with your experience. Maybe it went smoother with my older son because I was expecting it and I think he already knew and couldn’t be convinced otherwise even if I wanted to. Where as my 7 year old has never questioned and I don’t think is ‘ready’ or wanting to know Santa isn’t real.

thanks for the reassurance all!

Ach it’s not lying, it’s Santa! It’s keeping the magic alive for as long as possible, kids grow up too quickly these days, the world is too harsh, we’re all so conscious about everything with a complete loss of common sense about it, it’s incredibly good for children to have a healthy imagination and I would keep it going as long as possible, how could an adult complain about a parent doing this in their childhood?

My mum's answer to this question was always "what do you think?". I'm planning to take the same approach when the time comes!

Tell him the story of St Nicholas (an actual real person) and how that developed into Santa Claus and the traditions that we now have.

My 7 year old recently said the same and I told him they weren't real and it is us doing it. Mainly because he absolutely hates lying and I know he would see it as such. However he seems to have forgotten and has started talking about the list he's going to give Father Christmas etc so who knows?!