Controversial approach to Santa

[Lynsey953]

My children are 2 and 3 and I have never spoken to them about Santa. I've never said anything about him and they've never asked. We don't pay for them to see Santa and I don't allow other people to make a big deal about Santa in front of them (i.e. this present is from Santa, I would rather people say "this is from me merry Christmas").

This is how I was brought up and I have lovely memories of Christmas.

My sister in law is very upset by this and is worried that my controversial approach to Santa is going to ruin the magic for her kids. She has requested that we go to my parents house for Christmas day so that my kids don't ruin Christmas for her kids (8 and 9).

I am fine with this but I hadn't realised my approach was so controversial.

Is it? It's just what myself and my siblings always had.

Yes, I can’t imagine my dds or Gdcs missing out on that huge 🎄Eve excitement.

At DD’s house we’d put a few carrots in a dish on the patio, so before going to bed one of us would chew one and scatter a few chewed bits around the empty dish.

Then in the morning we’d say e.g. ‘Goodness, what a mess! But at least they didn’t poo in the garden…’.

Yet more LIES, as the misery-guts killjoys would have it…

I never made Christmas miserable for my kids. We had decorations and lights and fake snow and glitter. We’d have Christmas music playing and stockings and presents under the tree. I’m not sure what my kids were missing out on just because Santa was a bit player in it.

I’ve seen threads on here by mums getting worried because their kid is starting senior school and still believes in Santa. I wouldn’t have wanted the issue of working out when or how to tell them or if there would be tears and upset. I never said a cynical he’s not real, I just didn’t actively partake in the Santa stuff so it was never a big deal. I’m very much of the whatever is working in your own family mindset.

Well that was needlessly aggressive and explained precisely nothing.

I don’t know why you think that not being big into Father Christmas means that you don’t put effort into making Christmas special. I figured out Father Christmas pretty early and plan to take a similar approach to the OP with my baby, that I won’t make a big deal of it and not do anything to extend belief beyond his natural scepticism. But I absolutely plan on making Christmas special for him. We’ll go on light walks, spend time with friends and family, get him involved with the Delivery Joy campaign, bake together, decorate the house, develop traditions so he has the best time. There doesn’t need to be an imaginary man delivering gifts to make it magical. I think that part of the reason I’ve never stopped loving Christmas is that I’ve never had the disappointment of the loss of Father Christmas because he was never a big deal anyway.

Part of the reason that I stopped believing fairly young is that we always had Christmas morning with family friends and their Santa worked very differently to ours. Father Christmas just gave us small stocking gifts and gave our friends everything in stockings I could have climbed into. But the joy of that tradition of sharing Christmas morning with loved ones is something that I would never replace with a few more years of belief in something that wasn’t real anyway. My friends’ mother died two years ago and the happy Christmas memories of her pouring orange juice into champagne glasses every year so we could pretend we were drinking Bucks Fizz too is the opposite of the joyless Christmas you think I might have had

My parents were quite like you (they were quite religious) and never pushed the idea of Father Christmas either way. We got stocking and understood it was a traditional thing originating from Saint Nicholas dropping gold coins down the chimney. They never said he actually delivered the stocking gifts but they didn't say he didn't either. It just wasn't a '"big thing".

I admit that I never believed and nor did my sister but we made our own minds up. My sister was actually terrified of men with beards so she definitely didn't want to think one was creeping into our house at night!

We experienced lots of Christmas excitement. The excitement was about the gifts and traditions, not the funny man in a red suit. I don't feel we missed out at all. In fact i sometimes think it was beneficial because we never had that crushing realisation that the magic wasn't real after all. We didn't spoil it for anyone else by announcing the awful truth!

My husband was horrified with my parents approach, like most posters on the thread, so we struck more of a middle road path with our own kids, laid it on a bit more thick about the tradition of stockings without being too literal and let them make their own minds up over time. They admitted they gradually worked it out but enjoyed maintaining the fiction. We still all have stockings on Christmas morning, adults too!

Exactly.

My now adult DC is trying to replicate their childhood Christmases for their DC despite having been brought up knowing that Santa wasn’t real. I like the description as a bit player as knowing Santa is not real, not bringing presents etc doesn’t even stop playing along in some capacity if that is what you want to do.

They admitted they gradually worked it out but enjoyed maintaining the fiction.

I think there is a lot of this. IMO it's perfectly harmless. I only remember feeling gratitude to my parents for making everything fun.

At the end of the day, I think the important thing is to HAVE traditions. That is what makes the time of year special and makes it your family's thing. It probably doesn't matter if that is paella not traditional Christmas dinner, or donating gifts not getting them. But I think the sense of bonding and belonging by doing something that works for your family is really what it is about. But I'm hugely pleased our family had father Christmas!

But everyone who is “pro Santa”:

it is a harmless fiction when Santa brings a small stocking containing an orange, an apple and a wooden toy, he “eats” a mince pie. A nice fun thing.

It’s very different when he brings expensive gifts to some kids but not others, when you have apps faking photos that show the reindeer standing in your bedroom and when the TV has a Santa tracker showing you which country Santa is currently visiting. And when he sends elves which come to life every night and report back to Santa if you are bad (how sinister is that?!)

By making it such a big thing, haven’t we gone too far - a touch of childhood magic has become a huge faked reality?

ds noticed age 4 that Santa is apparently in at least several places at once - he saw him with his grandad at exactly the same time his friend Billy saw him at Legoland. And whenever he encounters Santa he looks different. He’s not dumb - he has asked how Santa has time to be in every shopping precinct, school fair and garden centre in the world every Saturday. And when he saw him in school he was fat but next day at the department store he looked thin.
How do I answer that?

Oh they don't send the REAL Santa out to the malls.

They are messengers who report back. Santa can't possibly leave North Pole Headquarters at that time of year.

I agree. My Christmases were wonderful - my family are Christian. Santa is just a cute bit of fun, like decorating the tree and making a wish when you stir the Christmas pudding mixture.

That's it. Or a third possibility, they're horrified at suddenly being told some bloke is coming into their house at night because it's new information!

Edited to add: I agree with not making it a huge thing or working too hard to provide evidence. I go with a middle ground, we talk about santa, have stockings but when they are ready to figure it out it's explained that it's a fun story but that some children really believe it and they're not to spoil it!

Is there ever a point where you feel you've dug deep enough with the lies? Do you struggle to remember them? How do your kids handle it when their friends think garden centre Santa was the real deal?

I do think it is a little sad… we are a fully believing household. And clearly we aren’t believing in a jolly, red suited, Lapland dwelling, omnipresent, fat man. It’s the magic and the wonder that we are all Santa - bringing joy and love to each other. I think it teaches children to join in to believing the world can be magical and peaceful for at least a day if we all work together.

I guess, maybe in the absence of believing in a jolly, toga wearing, cloud dwelling, omnipresent, god man.

i don’t know where my DD found out about or managed to fully believe in the Easter Bunny, as I never mentioned that - but by her first year in school she was completely convinced. So you may find that happens to your kids too.

It’s your life but joy, excitement, wonder, magic and sharing are surely things to be encouraged.

We also do small things in a stocking from Santa and big things from parents. My DD specifically asked that Santa be discouraged from coming into her room and that she could hang her stocking by the fireplace. Works very well for us of course!

No elf on the shelf for us. I told her I didn’t want to put up with that kind of mischief and I have a choice of who to let into my house!! And I did not have the time or energy with work etc to be sorting that out!

Honestly, people seem to manage.

Children clearly absorb what they absorb and privately reject the bits they don't believe, but most people seem to manage to "live and let live" with it.

TBH neither I nor my dc have ever asked that much about it. It is what it is. Don't scratch too hard or you ruin the patina. Just kick back and enjoy it.

But if you have dc who don't read between lines much I guess it probably gets awkward.

I think people are weirdly aggressive when you day you don't do Father Christmas (hate the term Santa). I don't remember ever believing in FC, I think my family must have been like yours, it was never mentioned. Christmas was still always magical. I did do it for my son when he was tiny though. I think he cottoned on when he was about 7.

The loveliness of Christmas isn't dependent on whether or not the kids believe in Father Christmas. I can't actually remember really believing in him (and my parents did pay lip service to it despite both being major atheists - we went to the grotto at Selfridges every year and I always hung up a stocking) but I still loved seeing the empty stocking at bedtime and the full one in the morning. I'm afraid for most kids it's much more about what's in the stocking than who filled it.

We do a big family Christmas and the magic for the kids is much more in presents and playing together and eating together than it is in whether or not a magic wizard delivered the toys.

The beauty of it though is that you can pick and choose. You don't have to do the elf at all but if you do, they can just be around to cause mischief (and a mess), they don't have to report back to Santa just like you can simply ignore the naughty/nice list part about Santa. That's what we do.

Santa has helpers for this time of the year. He's far too busy to be making trips to Legoland or the garden centre if we all want our presents to be delivered in time.

That really flies in the face of your earlier concerns about kids like mine "spoiling" it. Either your kids can cope with varying beliefs or they can't. Otherwise you're just lying for the sake of it, and that's not very magical.

I think they are weirdly aggressive when you say you do.

All anyone is asking is that they don't have their dc blurt it out to other children who enjoy it. I can't see why that is such a big ask to be honest.

I don't think anyone is telling their kids to blurt it out on purpose to spoil things. That's an imagined problem.
Just remind your believing kids that not everyone believes, then they won't be shocked when they hear it on the playground.

But digdongdoo all this "flying in the face" business is totally beside the point.

You are trying to apply logic to something that isn't a logical thing: it's just a bit of fun. That's the point.

Yes, that is a useful approach.

I just think all parents should remind their children of different attitudes and the benefit of not needing to chase the rabbit down the hole over it.

This thread has made me think. I don't remember EVER believing in Father Christmas, or even being told stories about him. I loved Christmas and still do, but my children never had the whole Santa myth told to them (I don't think it occurred to me to do so) and they didn't suffer. We had more of a 'some people believe in this...' Pretty much like religion, I left them to make up their own minds - never telling them outright that it was a lie but not observing it in our own house.

They're all adults now and we all still adore Christmas.

I never made a massive deal about Santa or Christmas and that seemed to work well for my family. Like I remember childhood christmases where me and my siblings would have no sleep and there would be tears before breakfast and everyone would be on their worst behaviour. I have no idea how my mum put up with it. My youngest brother is 11 years younger than me and once it got to the stage of it just being him left believing she started fake daying him and telling him it was the day after it actually was. Christmas was much better then. More relaxed and less fraught. Especially for my poor mum.