To lie about Santa to a child!

[santaself123]

NC for this as I know his family are on mn
It’s a bit of a long one, sorry!

I’m 16 weeks pregnant so I’m aware I could just be over emotional, and it’s not really that relevant right now but here goes anyway.

Last night I was looking for inspo for Christmas presents, I came across a kids “Santa’s treat” board for leaving treats on Christmas Eve. I made a joke to DP that he’ll have to be Rudolph as I’m not a fan of carrots so wouldn’t be biting a carrot to leave teeth marks!

DP said something along the line of “ or we could just not lie to our kid”

I thought he was joking but it turns out, after a short conversation, that he doesn’t want us to tell our child Santa is real! He says we shouldn’t lie to our child about Santa! He said we wouldn’t tell them God is real so why would be tell them Santa is!

Now here is where I might be wrong but Santa is the most magical thing in my eyes! It’s one of the things I’ve always looked forward to about having my own child! Making our own lovely Christmas traditions and just watching the excitement and anticipation of Christmas through a child’s eyes!

But I feel like he’s ruined it now! I don’t see the point in getting excited about Christmas now or ever if he’s just going to tell our child Santa’s not real as soon as the child can understand the concept!

I know I might be being petty to be upset as I suppose to most people it might not be a big deal but I just feel very deflated and quite disappointed!

So AIBU to be upset with him about it!

YABU- Santa’s not real and it’s not a big deal
YANBU- Santa’s magical and every child should have the chance to believe in him!

^^ I think an issue is when an adult continues to enforce their idea of the story and what a 'magical Christmas' (or any holiday) to their own ends, then it becomes a pageant for the parent's self-image, not traditions passing on.

@BiBabbles I think you have hit the nail on the head with this. If a child got to 8 (or whatever age) and you continue to lie then that’s totally different

Also, we believed in Santa but Christmas day was and remains a day for family. You can have both! Believing in Santa doesn't mean it's the only point of the day. My children love Santa but they also love the family and the giving to people less fortunate as they do year round (we don't have much ourselves but we'll put something into the foodbank trolley when we have a few pounds spare which is probably once a month).

@CatteStreet

People (on here, certainly) get so incredibly invested in maintaining 'belief' and 'the magic' re Santa. I find it a little odd - and I also think it's the route a less 'fun' side of it can go down, it opens up the potential for manipulation, specifically the manipulation of children's behaviour with the notion of 'good' and 'naughty' lists and the implied sense of having to 'deserve' the presents which should, in the actual spirit of Christmas (and Christ, if that's your sort of thing), be an abundant show of love and joy in the child just existing.

While I do think most children can distinguish pretty quickly between a 'lie' that's actually a harmless game and a damaging lie, and therefore am not entirely on board with the po-faced condemnations of Santa as 'lying', I do have strong reservations about the extremity and single-mindedness to which some parents try to preserve the fiction, and I felt I didn't want to do there myself. We've always 'done' Santa in a low-key way, but it's semi-transparently just a nice game and a bit of make-believe by which we give one another joy and fun, and I don't think the dc have ever really 'believed' as such.

I'd like to think that most parents don't use Santa as a way to make their kids fear being naughty. My parents used to say 'Father Christmas is watching' for bad behaviour in December, but he was hardly mentioned any other time of the year. My brother got upset once because he was naughty and regretted it, and my mum said that even though Father Christmas would have seen that, he would also have seen him say sorry and doing nice things to make up for being naughty, so he'd know he wasn't really a naughty boy. It was a nice lesson of good things come to good people - but also that doing bad things doesn't make us bad people, there are lots of things that can be fixed.

Father Christmas is a magical concept.

IMO it's much better to tell your child about Santa and his naughty and nice list than teach them about 'God' and going to hell if you don't behave. It's like an extremist Santa where nobody wins according to the rules in the Bible. Yes, you have to be good to get presents, but fuck me, to teach people that they'll burn in hell if they sin?!

You are absolutely NOT being unreasonable!
I'm sorry but I will never understand the need for grown adults to ensure their kids know that it is they and not Father Christmas who has provided their presents. All this 'I worked hard for those presents so I don't see why a bloke with a beard should get the credit' bollocks drives me crazy. What happened to giving without expectation?
These people must really be joyless. I can't think of any other reason that anyone would want to tell a toddler that Father Christmas, the most magical person in the world to kids the world over, is fake and a lie? What does your husband expect to gain from this?

YANBU of course you tell a child santa is real. Its SANTA. I tell my teens he is real. He obvs doesn't believe me so I say if he doesn't beleive he doesn't get gifts from santa. What an xmas killjoy your partner is

Why would an adult want to not give a child that magical day. Madness

@LavaCake

Explain what exactly is magical?!

I highly recommend you read The Hogfather:

“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY.

Utterly utterly this. THANK YOU

YABU. My parents didn't do the whole Santa thing, and Christmas was still magical for me because the family were together and everyone bought presents for each other and had a lovely time. You don't need Santa to make Christmas magical

I never told mine about Santa except that it was a traditional story and fun to pretend. When he started school he came home and told me about Santa!

The Santa myth is OK as long as parents don't get upset when their children no longer believe or insist he does exist when they ask if he does. That is taking it too far.

@rainyoutside asking a question is hardly overthinking, especially since judging by this thread it's an increasingly common preference.

@D4rwin

YABU. Santa is a load of superstitious nonsense and takes away from enjoying Christmas for what it is (A time to enjoy your family). Most of the world gets by without it!

I dont know where you get 'most of the world' because most countries have some version of Saint Nick or a similar person

to some its Santa others Saint Nick, Kris Kringle, Papa Noel or Grandfather Frost etc... and it can be celebrated on different dates but all across europe, eastern europe, the middle east, australia, north america, south america, russia + many areas of asia and africa celebrate some form of the jolly winter gift bringing man

@mam0918 these countries do have Santa, but mostly without this singleminded determination to make things real the uk has. i‘m not from the uk, we have St Niklas, but its very much a story, and kids from about 6/7 year will be perfectly aware that its a story.
I find this obsession in the uk worrying - mums having sobbing tantrums because their children are having doubts, getting in debt for “the magic“, Christmas being overshadowed by the fear of another child telling the truth - it all goes a bit far!

Yanbu, the santa thing lasts a short time, makes christmas extra excitmagical, for small kids, I'd tell dh that you'll be doing santa thing with your dc, and that's the end of it, he doesn't have to get involved if ge doesn't want to, but he'd have to be pretty horrible to tell them the truth

Truly can’t understand why any parent wouldn’t let their kid believe in Santa. Joyless twats, feel sorry for the poor kids.

@ohnothisagain - I am also not from the UK and can't understand that knowing about Santa - for an sligthly older child, so 6 onwards - automatically means Christmas is a bleak affair.

DD is now 13 and we still have lots of fun, despite her knowing the hard truth for 4 years. She writes a letter, puts out wine and chocolates / carrot, still gets Santa presents and a stocking. She loves the whole of Christmas for the sake of Christmas not because a man in a red coat comes through the chimmney. She now loves being Santa by buying presents for a children christmas appeal and her grandparents.

Saying that, it was a lot of fun when she was younger. We never made a huge fuss about it and never did the "be good" part. But her serious conversations during a Father Christmas visit were worth it.

I find this obsession in the uk worrying - mums having sobbing tantrums because their children are having doubts, getting in debt for “the magic“, Christmas being overshadowed by the fear of another child telling the truth - it all goes a bit far!
That is indeed going too far 😂
I've never known anyone of normal intelligence carry on like that, though, so it certainly isn't a usual feature of doing Santa for your children?

DD is now 13 and we still have lots of fun, despite her knowing the hard truth for 4 years.
Don't most kids realise by 9?

The only problem I have with it is that we tell kids not to talk to strangers but it's ok for this stranger to shimmy on down our chimney... Same for Halloween... Don't take sweets from strangers unless it's Halloween and everyone's in costumes so you can't identify anyone.

However I am a bit of a kill joy

Santa and other stories like fairy tales, or mythology, have a place beyond being just fn I think. They are about representations of meaning beyond what we think we see or here right in front of us. Children of the age that believe in Santa are still living in that poetic mindset and that sense of poetry needs to be fed. Santa is a collective myth and is nice in the sense that they share it with others in the community.

Kids grow out of that way of thinking in good time, and it has zero correlation with becoming dishonest or foolish as an adult.

@WaterOffADucksCrack

Also, we believed in Santa but Christmas day was and remains a day for family. You can have both! Believing in Santa doesn't mean it's the only point of the day. My children love Santa but they also love the family and the giving to people less fortunate as they do year round (we don't have much ourselves but we'll put something into the foodbank trolley when we have a few pounds spare which is probably once a month).

I agree with this - it isn't Santa that ends up causing the focus on things like gifts, it's the culture of consumerism. People can fully embrace that element even with no Santa involvement at all.

The main way to avoid that is not to go overboard with gifts and other types of commercial consumption. We only have Santa bring stockings, so he's really not the centre of the celebration.

[quote ohnothisagain]@mam0918 these countries do have Santa, but mostly without this singleminded determination to make things real the uk has. i‘m not from the uk, we have St Niklas, but its very much a story, and kids from about 6/7 year will be perfectly aware that its a story.
I find this obsession in the uk worrying - mums having sobbing tantrums because their children are having doubts, getting in debt for “the magic“, Christmas being overshadowed by the fear of another child telling the truth - it all goes a bit far![/quote]
I think this is reflective of some of the weird parenting culture, not just in the UK but also the other English speaking countries. It's not about Christmas specifically.It's very intensive, and also very fear driven, and in some ways very infantilising of children.

@santaself123

NC for this as I know his family are on mn It’s a bit of a long one, sorry!

I’m 16 weeks pregnant so I’m aware I could just be over emotional, and it’s not really that relevant right now but here goes anyway.

Last night I was looking for inspo for Christmas presents, I came across a kids “Santa’s treat” board for leaving treats on Christmas Eve. I made a joke to DP that he’ll have to be Rudolph as I’m not a fan of carrots so wouldn’t be biting a carrot to leave teeth marks!

DP said something along the line of “ or we could just not lie to our kid”

I thought he was joking but it turns out, after a short conversation, that he doesn’t want us to tell our child Santa is real! He says we shouldn’t lie to our child about Santa! He said we wouldn’t tell them God is real so why would be tell them Santa is!

Now here is where I might be wrong but Santa is the most magical thing in my eyes! It’s one of the things I’ve always looked forward to about having my own child! Making our own lovely Christmas traditions and just watching the excitement and anticipation of Christmas through a child’s eyes!

But I feel like he’s ruined it now! I don’t see the point in getting excited about Christmas now or ever if he’s just going to tell our child Santa’s not real as soon as the child can understand the concept!

I know I might be being petty to be upset as I suppose to most people it might not be a big deal but I just feel very deflated and quite disappointed!

So AIBU to be upset with him about it!

YABU- Santa’s not real and it’s not a big deal
YANBU- Santa’s magical and every child should have the chance to believe in him!

YABU. Trying to be gentle, I think your hormones may be getting the better of you. I personally agree with DH and am currently grappling with how I will deal with this issue. At the moment I'm thinking if I'm asked, I will be honest. I won't actively tell DD that santa is real but I will let her play the game. Even if I didnt agree with DH, to be honest I think you're being a little hysterical about it. It isn't the end of the world. It is totally possible to have a magical and wonderful Christmas without Santa. I've never believed in God and have a wonderful life. I still have many of the wonderful experiences Christians do insofar as being altruistic and caring and kind and having a sense of community etc. I still live by the gist of the commandments and general rules of decency. It is possible to neither believe in something nor actively promote it yet still have a nice time

@pollylocketpickedapocket

Truly can’t understand why any parent wouldn’t let their kid believe in Santa. Joyless twats, feel sorry for the poor kids.

lol I understand your opinion but it is very narrow minded to assume people who think this way are joyless or twats.

YANBU-I’m so excited about doing the whole Santa thing with my baby!