To ask if you don't do Santa/ Elf in the shelf you don't spoil it for others?

[CatWreathkeith]

Last year Dneice was told matter of factly by a 4yo at school there is no such thing as Father Christmas and it's your parents. In reception.

This year another child has told her that you can buy an EOTS from Amazon, because her mum has shown her it.

Why? Why would you do that? Why not say there are only a few elves that get to leave the North Pole and we didn't get one?

Or if your child wants one that badly get a cheap one from the pound shop

Grrr

There is no way my 7 year old would believe the Elf on the Shelf thing, and to be honest, I don't think my 3 year old would either. They would understand it is just a game.

But if they did think it was real, then I can almost guarantee that discovering you can buy elves on amazon would not dent their faith in the slightest .

They do believe in Father Christmas - I quite think if someone told DD he wasn't real, she just wouldn't believe them.

If you really, really want to believe in something, it's surprisingly easy to discount or ignore all the conflicting evidence. Whereas if you want to pick holes in something or be suspicious you will be onto any inconsistencies in a flash, asking lots of questions - even quite little children (again taking my three year old as an example).

HowMuch That surprised me as well.

OP YANBU really to want the 'magic' not to be spoilt. But it's unavoidable at some point, just a shame it happens younger and younger.

I can remember being at school and my friend insisting that the tooth fairy was "your Dad in a dress" and so not real.

My belief in the fairy was unshaken because there was no way my over six foot tall, bearded Dad would be mistaken for a tooth fairy, dress or not. Besides, he drove a lorry, he didn't have time to prat about in a dress collecting teeth.

Elf on the shelf was only written in 2005 so is a relatively new "tradition" written with marketing in mind - deliberately - I saw an early US interview with the mother and her 2 grown up daughters responsible - one wrote, the other was a marketing executive... they started "positive marketing" in the UK last year - flooding social networking sites with crap about elf on the shelf. It seems to be working.

Some child told my dd Santa wasn't real but she still believes it because she wants to. No big deal.

Do some of you live in exclusively white areas?

DD1's been best friends since she was about 3 with a Muslim girl whose parents are from Bangladesh. They don't celebrate Christmas at all- never mind believe in FC, EOTS yadda yadda. Obviously they can't be expected to play along with the Santa myth.

Even if I did teach FC as fact to my kids, I think once you get children from a few different cultures together they'd soon get told that it was all a load of hokum.

Arthur xmas....

What are those? elves
Are they naughty?
What are they doing? Why?
Why isn't Santa delivering the presents?
Why isn't Santa answering the letters?
Who's that?
Repeat for two hours.
We were the wrong demographic.
As Charlie Brooker would say, it was all just too...modern.

You'll never be able to stop the Breaking of the Terrible Truth behind Santa in school unless you can find a way of having a school where no pupil has older siblings/cousins/friends.

So Elf on a shelf is creepy but some dude in a red suit breaks into your house through the chimney in the middle of the night is perfectly OK?

We do neither FC nor EOTS. We do family and church

We are careful to frame our position so that the DC won't spoil it for others, although I do slightly resent having to. I find the idea of EOTS and Santacam creepy and, I don't know, borderline blackmail.

For little children, the presents they get for Christmas simply aren't conditional on their behaviour. They're an expression of the family's love, within the family's financial constraints.

Making Christmas presents genuinely conditional on four weeks of exemplary behaviour (unrealistic aim!) seems faintly cruel to me. Children have to be able to fail and try again, with only immediate and logical consequences: that's what modern parenting looks like.

So no, I won't tell your child you've made it all up, if you won't tell mine he won't get any presents if he doesn't eat his tea.

Before EOTS my firstborn was being spied upon by reindeer magnets on the fridge and all cctv cameras
outside. We do not live in uk so we have the added hassle of three visitors...
Nikolaus on the 6th
Christkind on the 24th
Santa on the 25th
Tis a pain in the arse.
Multiculti kindergarten but all kids get visit from Nicolas, only we expats get Santa.
We do Diwali, Eid etc and lie for Great Britain regarding Xmas.

I've never heard of elf on the shelf outside of mumsnet and won't be doing it with DS.

I will probably do Father Christmas but it's not compulsory and I can see why others don't (wouldn't go so far as the whole "lying to your children" thing but it's just a bit of nonsense and I think deep down the kids know that too). So if you don't do it then of course as long as you don't send your kids out specifically to blab I don't see why anyone should have to go to any great effort to cover it up.

Well from a personal stance, elf on the shelf has paid for my DC's Christmas!

I make knitted ones, maybe more high-end than your pound shop ones; but from the feedback, they're going towards building a family tradition.

My own DCs asked what they were for, and I explained the eots thing, they said cool, and went back to their own stuff! They're 11, 8, 6 and 2; the only rule is that if they don't believe anymore they're not allowed to spoil it for the little ones (DD1 I'm looking at you re:tooth fairy!)

Each to their own, no need to spoil things, we're grown ups a very long time.

Why is EOTS expensive? You don't have to buy the REAL elf, surely any toy elf will do?

EOTS isn't expensive. You don't have to buy the official elf and even if you do, it's £25 which i don't personally consider to be extortionate. £50 and I'd be with you. It's a lovely tradition IMO, it's just a bit of harmless (cute!) fun. The DC love coming down to find what silly thing he's done each day. And also whilst the official EOTS is relatively new (9 years), the tradition goes back much much further. Elves that look similar to the official one have frequented fireplaces for many years to "watch the children and make sure they remained on the nice list." the family that created the EOTS used to do it themselves. Some families would have other things watching the children- the tree topper, reindeer ornament etc.

It's ok if you don't like it, don't want it to be a part of your Christmas and traditions but it's not ok to ruin it for other children, no. Same with the santa myth. Unacceptable.

We've got a tiny door in the hallway that the Christmas elves come through at night. I sprinkle snow or glitter footprints on the floor near it when I can be arsed some nights and that does the Christmas magic for me. An actual elf on the shelf would be far too much effort for my lazy bones .

Also we were given a Toymail messaging thingy that distorts your voice to a 'fairy' voice, so I've been leaving messages for DD from the Christmas elf. I sound like a fairy stalker but she loves it.

I'm rather amazed that I'm doing all this as I've always been very pragmatic with DD, but she believes in Christmas magic and it makes her so happy to believe that there really is someone magical giving all the children in the world a gift for being good.

As we're not a religious family I suppose this means a lot to her so I'm not going to spoil it for her. I don't think I could. In fact just the other day she came home chuckling to herself because a schoolfriend had told her that a Father Christmas wasn't real, and she thought that was "so silly, Mummy, of course he's real, I met him last week!". Crisis averted for another year.

The phrase I think we're looking for is "some people believe..." Covers Santa, weird elves that come alive on cause chaos/ spy on children, gods, prophets, fairies, ghosts etc...

Once a child is old enough to start questioning Santa etc they can be told not to spoil it for others. I'm sure most children who come from families that do not celebrate Christmas or believe in Santa are told not to spoil it for others. However once children are in school they're going to hear all sorts from their friends/ peers. Santa is probably going to be the least of out worries.

Adults should just stay quiet, why make a child upset for no reason.

I don't understand the elf on the shelf hate. Can someone please explain it to me?

I only heard of it a month ago and DS is only 6 months, so no point right now, but can't wait to do it when he's older.

Sounds like great fun, can't understand what's not to like.

My kids are 18 & 20. EOTS didn't exist back then, thankfully. I could not have been arsed with pissing around once they had gone to bed everyright, creating some mischief that the flipping thing had so say caused.

A child told DS1 that FC didn't exist in Yr2, but he had pretty much worked it out by then anyway. He kept it a secret until DS2 worked it out. They have both since played along with it for the sake of younger relatives.

I don't think you can dictate to other people what their children can and can't say, tbh. You have to accept that you will have some traditions and other won't.

One line (nicked from Libby Purves' How Not To Be A Perfect Family) that I found immensely useful for when DC are hovering on the edge of belief (or have heard something in school is:

"oh ChildX doesn't believe in FC? What a pity. Because real FC can only come to DC who believe in him. Of course, when that happens, parents step in so no-one is disappointed on the day. But it's never quite the same"

That lets them cling to belief or half belief or whatever for as long as they like. But it also covers the scenario when they spot something that means they know it's you.

.

EOTS does something different every day, not just this year but next year and every year until your children don't want to carry the tradition on (you could be doing it for 25 years!)
Let's assume you have 2 children, 3 years apart, they stop believing when youngest is 5, so 8 years of 24 different poses. 192 different poses you have to think of to keep it going, while also writing cards and wrapping presents, making costumes and everything else you have to squeeze into the evenings when you are a parent of a small child.
The whole pay off is themagic and if your child is housebound I totally understand, but if they aren't there are so many things you can do that are exciting and magical outside of the house and don't create more work for yourself, I just don't get why anyone would take on more!

Poster who's been making them - that's a great idea! I'm glad you've done well.

EOTS do-ers please batter on, start a tradition and have your fun, but maybe you don't need to share the hilarious antics on FB etc?

It makes you look like a turnip.

Well, I told ds1 that Santa was just a game when he was only just three. I also told him not to tell anyone, because some people think Santa is real. He was perfectly happy with this, and enjoyed putting a real carrot out for pretend Rudolph.

Poor DS1 doesn't know what to believe, now that he is six. He can't understand why intelligent adults keep talking as if Santa is real. Do they really believe it, or are they trying to deceive him? His friends at school have told him he won't get any presents if he isn't good, and he was confused by that. I explained that he will get presents anyway, because we love him and want to give him presents, but he is unconvinced and is now starting to believe in Santa. I'm really annoyed about that - I didn't want him to get muddled up and upset because he thought grown ups were lying to children!

I wanted Christmas in our house to be about the nativity, not about Santa. I'm pretty sure ds has never told another child that Santa isn't real, and I wish other people would show similar respect for our beliefs.

EOTS isn't a family thing here because I suspect everyone would get bored of it after a week (and we would get fed up of doing it every night). It's a funny idea though. If it had been a thing when I was a child then I might be more into it.
We're in an odd Santa position this year - DS (14) hasn't believed for ages and DD1 (9) informed me quite smugly 3 weeks ago that she knows where the presents are moved them now smartypants!) and that Santa isn't real. DD2 is too young to really 'get it' this year so we'll all play along but not go overboard with it.
Wrt to other traditions, 2 of DD's friends are very religious and don't do FC (one gets a present from Jesus, other is Muslim) and it's always been a case of 'X doesn't do Santa' and that's it. They've always known that some people believe and some don't. If you don't make a huge deal about it in the first place then it won't spoil anything.

Other beliefs, not traditions