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.

Honestly the magic never goes away. We went to Santa’s village last year and I wanted to buy something from Santa’s shop after our photo, but we needed to post it home it wouldn’t fit in the bags. I needed to check the weight and dimensions first and they didn’t have a scale in the shop. They said you can take it over to the post office and have them weigh it if you like. I said , do you want me to leave my card or something here? It was an expensive item €200 and the guy said no that’s ok this is Santa’s house. No one would steal from Santa. I was floored by how trusting they were, that they would let a random tourist take an expensive item without paying, because they know there is something magic about Santa.

i of course did return and pay for the item once I confirmed I could post it. Not that I would have anyway but i certainly didn’t expect they would just trust me!

I honestly feel that parents who go out of their way to force their children to believe in santa are a bit batshit and it's more about them than the child. Nobody in their right mind would go to the lengths that people do for santa, for any other character they wanted their child to believe was real.

Children have vivid imaginations and mingle real with fantasy all the time. There's no need for all the cloak and dagger stuff.

I met a guy in his early 20’s who was still upset that his parents had lied to him for years about Santa. He was brought up to trust his parents always being honest with him……

OP doesn't like lying to her children, every child I have ever known has at some point believed a Disney character is real.
Think of Disneyland and Mickey Mouse, sorry to have to tell you but there is actually a human being inside the Mickey Mouse costume! 😂

Nearly 12 and you have had to tell him. Please don't worry this will settle and he will recover from the trauma, he is not scarred for life and your relationship will recover.

But nobody goes to great lengths to convince their DC that Mickey is real and sneaks into their house with toys. It's not the same. A child imagining that a character is real is entirely different that adults enforcing an idea of an imaginary person that visits every house in the world.

I never did Santa as a child (not part of my culture). I didn't do Santa with my children. They knew not to tell other kids he wasn't real. My children are now way older and don't care that they never did Santa. They thought it was rather cool that they knew the truth when others believed. They still had all the trappings of Christmas.

This is a reason my DH supported not doing Santa. He was devastated when he found out it wasn't real. Especially when Santa was tied to 'being good' and friends got bigger presents. He thought he wasn't as good as them. Sad.

Each to their own. You get to set your own traditions and if Santa isn’t one of them then so be it. I will say though that I have so enjoyed bringing Santa “back to life” once I had my own DC and discovering the magic of Christmas again (it’s easy to get a bit pessimistic about it all as an adult!). We get such a short time in our lives to truly believe in magic, I would never see it as lying to my children to help bring magic to life.

Up to you what you tell your children, but the problem is that they are fast approaching the age when they will hear about Santa elsewhere - at nursery, playgroup, school, on TV, in books, from other children, from well-meaning adults. It’s become part of our culture, like it or not.

What will you say when they ask you? Other parents will not be pleased if your DC tell their young DC Santa doesn’t exist.

I'm not so sure. At 12 it's vanishingly unlikely that he's not known for years. So for years he's probably been learning how to lie effectively to stop a woman being unhappy with him/get what he wants. How he uses that skill in his life to come remains to be seen.

There's this new thing where parents don't want to "lie to their children". But Santa memories are some of my absolute favourite and I remember the magic and the excitement so well. My friend never had that, was never told about Santa, and she absolutely hates Christmas because she used to watch movies and see the Santa stuff and feel like she was missing out. Anecdotal, I know. But it stuck with me.

OP, I wonder if your SIL finds your opinion on the big man problematic because she realises the game is up. At 8 and 9, this is likely the last year (or penultimate year at a pinch) that her children still believe in Father Christmas. And she knows it.
I'm definitely in your camp of not really going to any great effort on Father Christmas. Partly for cultural reasons: one of my parents came from a culture which didn't really have Father Christmas. My kids are teens and young adults now but when they were little, we did stockings but didn't really hide that they were from Mum and Dad. So in the stocking, I'd pop in an orange, a choc, and a little present using the same wrapping paper as the main presents. One of my kids had a school friend whose parents went through huge convoluted hoops to make all presents, including a massive playhouse slide thing, come from Father Christmas. It was so ostentatious that my kids twigged straightaway that there was no such thing as Father Christmas - it just didn't make any sense.

For Christmas 2026, it'll likely be different anyway - your kids probably won't remember much about Christmas 2025, and it won't matter if you do things differently. So I'd play along with your SIL this year (and maybe next year). Don't go along with unreasonable demands, but let her have her fun - don't take her too seriously.

Santa just delivers the presents in our house.

My kids know mom & dad buy them, wrap them and send them to the North Pole, then Santa delivers at Christmas.

We've always done this as it stops the 'well santa brought little Jonny a PS5, why did I only get PJ's' etc...

You do you in your house and let your sister do her thing.

The kids will talk about Santa and ask questions whether it's from your sisters kids or others at school so I just wouldn't worry about it!

I think my mother said, when talking about Santa one day, "You know he's not real, right?"

I can't remember what I said to my children. I don't think they ever had to be told. They just always knew Santa was fictional. And not to spoil it for other children. You can still decorate Santas and enjoy it with them without them having to believe in it.

We do do Santa although we were on the fence when DD was younger, and the backlash you get from others if you suggest being truthful about Santa from the start is crazy.

Nothing screams Christmas spirit like threatening violence on any child who admits to believing in something different to yours. 😂

I would gently remind your sister that the "Christmas magic" is supposed to be about love and family, not a fat man in a red suit.

Sensible! My DH remembers thinking he hadn't been as good as other children many a year.

Oh and when my youngest questions it, I just ask him 'well do you believe he's real, if you do that's fine, if you don't that's also fine'

I'm bemused that anyone thinks in the internet age that a child who attends school will genuinely believe in Santa at 9 years old.

.

DS is 9. He asked me at 5 if he was real and I answered him honestly. Wasn't a particularly big deal and I'd kind of forgotten the last couple of years some might still believe. But only last month 3 other mums from his year were adamant their children still do.

I think as long as you are not going around discrediting other peoples approaches then you do whatever works for you. Everyone has different traditions at Christmas and Santa is just a tradition really.
I'd have some sort of response ready if you children ask why others are different.

We do do Santa but have a few kids at school that don't. My only issue with it is that they keep trying to ruin it for other children by saying he isn't real etc.

The 9 year old most likely is just playing along with their parents now to be fair. DS8 started questioning this year. My response is 'what do you believe' and I am leaving him to make his mind up. Most 10 years olds at his school don't believe according to a mum friend with an older child.

If you're telling your kids that Santa exists and magic happens, what are you telling them when they can't go to sleep for worrying about ghosts or monsters?

Some parents tell them that "if you don't believe you won't receive."

Translation: "I am not ready to accept you are growing up in and you need to put aside your own cognitive and logical understanding of the world in order to placate me under threat of punishment."

Well we kind of do the same, we have never said santa exists or doesn't exist, or that any presents are or are not from him, theres never really been any conversations about whether he exists or not. There is no all the presents are from us, or all the presens from Santa, or one from Santa and the rest of us. That all sounds a bit complicated when I';ve never felt it needed to be. We do stockings, and the same things just we've never told them anything either way. They will obviously have their own thoughts based on what their friends say, or what they see on TV or what is said at school/nursery.

Why is it weird? I always had a stocking as a child (as did my children) without making a big thing about it being from santa...what is weird is children going to secondary school still believing in him, and parents worried about them being upset when they find out that he doesn't exist!

Nuts!