to not 'do' santa?

[jmt2211]

I don't believe in Santa and refuse to lie to my child about it. The first year he could ask about it was when he was 3 and I just said that lots of people liked to believe in Santa but really he was just pretend.
I have yet to find a single person who has done the same, even if I can get them to agree in principle, no one will agree in practice. I'd love to hear what others think (other than that I am a Scrooge) and see if anyone agrees with me....

Exactly Scarlett-they make up their own minds! Parents are not as important as they think-DCs will accept or reject depending on personality-which may not match the personality of the parent.

I hope your 3 YO doesn't go around telling his friends that Santa doesn't exist.

Thank you ScarlettCrossbones, I tried to do the passive avoidance thing but when asked too many times I told him the truth. This is the first post I've ever started...and i guess i kind of knew that my parenting ideas were in the minority but as mumsnet seems to have such a place in other mum's lives I thought i'd give it a try. Honestly, I think some of these parents will be crying for my child on xmas morning...but what is so wrong in finding joy and wonder in real things like you say. Hopefully my child won't be depressed as an adult by the fact that life isn't magic! In life there is good and bad and I don't see the virtue in pretending that everything is fairy tales and magic...until you become an adult.

You have your whole life for reality-it seems a shame to not have a bit of magic when you are little.

childhood is part of your whole life, i don't get what you mean...surely childhood is about learning how the world works. This is what I mean about patronising children, don't they deserve to have their questions answered truthfully

You are depriving your children of the gift of imagination and wonder and sheer pleasure and loveliness.

What utter rot - my 3-year-old DD has an imaginary friend she loves to play with. The DC have had "sheer pleasure" today in the snow. They experience wonder and loveliness every day in nature, making things, reading books, hearing music etc etc.

All these s are really irritating me as well, as if my children go round with long faces all day ...!!

We do stockings!
We do leaving carrots out for the reindeer!
We do advent calendars and nativity plays (though I'm a total atheist)!
We read stories about Santa, and they're happy to accept them as just that - nice, fun stories, which engage their imagination.

I was never actively lied to as a child either, but I chose to half-believe it and I still experienced the excitement of the possibility that there were reindeer on the roof or whatever. I'm quite happy to do just the same with my own children.

But I'm not bloody deluding them.

Jesus OP - lighten up will ya?! You over serious old misery.

I was never told about Santa, I've never had a present or a stocking and I don't remember not knowing he wasn't real...

I always felt like I was missing out on something - not presents, we got those from my parents, but, I don't know, the excitement?

I'm not going to say it ruined Christmas or anything as dramatic as that, lol, but I remember being massively envious of friends who got visits from santa - they seemed to be having a more christmassy experience (doesn't know if that even makes sense)

my kids are 10 and 14 and I'm fairly sure they know he's not real now, but I'm not confirming it - I go down the well if you believe in him he's real route, lol

Jmt, did your parents "do" Father Christmas for you as a child, or were you told right from the beginning he was make-believe?
Wondering if that has anything to do with your rather insistence that this childhood tradition is "lying".

As a child I believed very strongly in the whole FC myth and have some fantastic memories because of it. When I realised it was just pretend and that my parents did the stockings I certainly wasn't annoyed at them for lying to me.

Much of childhood is about make-believe, why do you think nurseries and schools encourage imaginative play and toy shops sell fairy castles and monster games etc? Because that is how children learn about the world and develop the skills they need for life.

I really hope your ds is allowed to let his imagination run wild with other subjects,
god forbid if he ever gets an imaginary friend!

*agressive insistence

lots of people don't 'do' FC - most Muslims, Jews, and people from countries where its not part of the tradition etc...Which is fair enough. And when their kids hear about FC on tv, at school etc.. And ask about him the answer is of course 'he's not real' since the other answer would be 'he's real but he doesn't bring you presents'....which isn't nice.

So I think that people are bring unreasonable to expect everyone to embargo the news that FC isn't real to prolongue the magic (plus any kid with older siblings finds out and tells others anyway....)

that said I do think it is wierd to do the FC traditions and not play along with the myth in some way. Why hang a stocking? Do something else instead like the Xmas pyjamas, then at least you have a coherantly story to tell your kid 'we don't do Santa, it's not our family tradition, we get pyjamas and a new book on Xmas eve'...then the whole question of whether he is real or not is not so fraught.

ScarlettCrossbones - I'm not sure I understand you! You are encouraging imagination in just the same way! What's the problem?

taulahrasa - I think that's a really sad post and illustrates just what I'm trying to say

did you believe in santa as a child? i did and i want my children to aswel, it was such a magical time for me growing up and i certainly dont hold anything against my parents for 'lying' to me. Im just glad that they my made my childhood christmas' so special. So on that note YABU

BecauseImWorthIt you explicitly said I was DEPRIVING my children of the gift of imagination. That is out of order, untrue, and what I took exception to.

My mum did santa and I don't have a particular memory (traumatic or otherwise)of finding out about the truth much like the rest of you. I always loved the xmas tree, I can remember looking at it through teary eyes because I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had every seen. Xmas isn't just about santa, there can be beauty in other parts and that is the way it is for me and my child.

I couldn't not "do" FC for my dd, the joy and excitement she gets from it is worth every minute of "lying" to her.

And by the way, she also gets pleasure and wonder from "real" life too, family, nature, giving to others etc. My dd gets the best of both worlds.

Christmas is certainly not just about Santa, it's about being with a loving family, the birth of Jesus and learning how to give as well as receive amongst other things.

My dd loves it all, the decorations, the giving presents to her family, doing the nativity play at school and helping Grandma with the Christmas baking etc. But she also has the added dimension of FC and it makes her very happy.

You know- we weren't going to do the FC thing either... then DD came home from nursery at 22 mo and said "Man! Man go'an come, bring presents!" with a huge beam on her face

Oh, how she believes....

ScarlettCrossbones - I was addressing the OP, though - not you!

I'm not going to do it.

Not unless someone can explain to me how I weave a convincing narrative that contains all the christmas deities - Santa Claus, Sinta Klaas, Swarte Piet (blackface - nice and racist, so bonus mark for how to deal with that one) the Christ Kinder and the Christmas Angel. Oh and atheist DP who feels even carol singing is the thin end of the wedge.

We will still do gifts, trees and food. I'm not being mean - its just not possible to deal with so many made-up things and I'm not prepared to take a stand and say one lot of national nonsense is better than another nations nonsense and just pick one.

JMT I started a thread like this a very short time ago, but I didn't get nearly as much vitriol as you are getting! I don't know why - maybe because it's closer to Christmas now? I'm confused why people think you're being smug and superior, nothing in your posts suggests you think that.

I'm not in favour of Santa either, mainly because of the type of child I was. I liked my world to make sense and it just didn't make sense to me that this one supremely powerful being who could bend space and time (yes I was that geeky) could really exist and only work one day a year. I asked my mum about it a few times and she lied to me repeatedly. Now I know she had good motives in that she wanted to keep the "magic" alive but it pissed me off so much, especially when I realised that she had actually been lying and I wasn't just going crazy trying to work all this out. I was a very logical child and I couldn't understand how one person could be magical and others not. It didn't seem fair somehow. Suffice to say it Santa was not a great friend of mine, and for the short time I did believe in him I found him quite scary.

My baby is yet to be born so I was just pondering the question in an idle fashion. I was actually given some helpful advice on the thread and the thing I took away from it was to wait and see what my DC are like. As others have pointed out some children almost insist on believing while others refuse to believe from the start. I think the main thing is not to lie like my mother did. Lying is just not on, no matter what the circumstances.

In your case your DC obviously had doubts and you answered those doubts honestly, so I definitely think you did the right thing. FWIW I think I saw a lot more "magic" in my childhood than a lot of other children did because I was hugely interested in science and the real world fascinated me far more than any made up story that didn't make any sense to me!

I said everything I wanted to on your thread, WriterofDreams, so hope you don't mind if I link to it, as can't be bothered to say it all again!

the other thread