Did you believe in Santa as a child, even for a short while?

[Pavementworrier]

Yabu for yes
Yanbu for no

Yeah I believed until I was about 10, found out from school

I did when very young but had older siblings so realised before I started school.

Same - I don't remember ever truly believing although I did go along with it (because it was fun, not because I felt I had to). Maybe I believed when I was very young (3/4) but from an age I can remember I never did.

WHAAAT - he isn't real….😉 He only comes to thise that believe!

Yes, I absolutely believed until about the age of 11. In the later years I had even found my presents hidden in my parents wardrobe, but come Christmas morning still thought Santa had visited.
I can remember my brother and I creeping down the stairs, standing outside the living room door, neither of us daring to open it, nudging each other forward with ‘you go in first….no you… but…what if he is still there?’

Opening that door and seeing he ‘had been’ was magical. Presents, stockings, Santa’s & Rudolphs food and drink gone….special memories.

We definitely did, until probably 8. But we carried on with pretending for my parents until much older 🤣 they both loved creating the magic in quite a simple way (writing the letter to Santa, posting it, ringing sleigh bells outside our room!) and I can remember in particular Dad's genuine delight on Christmas morning. He grew up with very little and I think making Christmas lovely for us was quite healing for him.

This is a lovely approach and one I’d like to take if/when it ever comes up. I don’t recall ever believing, it was always a bit “nudge nudge wink wink” so it felt like we were in on the story. But I’m going to ask my parents how they approached it when we were small as i expect my memory and theirs will differ! I remember seeing (spying on them!) them sorting presents on Christmas Eve and leaving my stocking, but I was probably older at that point. But no, I have no recollection of ever properly believing!

Yeah I think I'd have felt manipulated for no reason. It's a metaphor I didn't need to be tricked!

Also I'm very much in the tell your kids the age appropriate truth camp with most things... But childhood is about magic and delight, too. And after a year that I've spent recovering from cancer and struggling to adapt to school my little DD needs the magic, as reality has been tough on her.

Children believe because they want to believe. They may know he's not real... but they want magic to be real.

This has brought back a memory of the first year I started to not believe. So every year, Father Christmas filled a pillow case in our bedrooms (my sister and I) with gifts, then left us a big pile each in the living room. When I was around 10, I told my parents I didn’t think he was real etc. they assured me he was and reminded me that children who didn’t believe don’t get presents.

Xmas morning arrives - I’d stayed awake as long as I could trying to prove what I thought I knew, but had fallen asleep at some point. I got out of bed and found an empty pillow case. My heart sank and I genuinely thought I was getting no presents that year. I went out of my room and found a note on my bedroom door - “Dear Father Christmas, the child in this bedroom is still awake. Please leave their presents in the living room”. That got one more year of me believing for my parents lol!

writing the letter to Santa

I still have all of the letters my boys have written to Santa, a delight! They also show their different mark making, drawing and writing over the years, as well as their choices of gifts.

A real point in time.

No, I never did believe it. Neither did my sister.

My mother kept up the pretence though, talking about Santa coming etc. We always got presents on the bed on Christmas morning, but knew our parents were frantically wrapping them and creeping around at midnight to put them there. I didn't mind indulging my mother the so-called magic of Christmas, I just felt that the pretence that Santa was real was a pretty stupid lie and ought to have been dropped.

When I had my own children I was determined they wouldn't be put through the same nonsense. They still had Christmas, they still had presents left at the bottom of the bed and all the 'magic' but also knew that Santa wasn't real, it was just a nice Christmas tradition which parents did for their children. I wasn't prepared to tell lies and all the associated pretence around 'Santa'.

My daughter loved her presents and would often leave out a little note saying thank you on the following night. One year the note had the usual thanks but she'd actually written "but I wish we could believe in you" !!

Honestly, you can never win as a parent!

Yes. I was absolutely convinced I heard the jingle of the sleigh bells! 🔔

Oh and when it came to my kids, when they started to not believe, I explained that as a person, he doesn’t exist. But as a concept he does. He exists in the hearts and minds of everyone around the world that works to keep the magic and belief alive for children everywhere. And that’s the true magic of Christmas - people who love each other enough to put all the effort in to keep things feeling so magical.

I believed until I was 9 or 10, it was so magical - one of my favourite childhood memories. For me Christmas was never quite the same after I found out so I disagree with others on that.

DS believed until the same age, I don't think he was as bothered as me though.

At Secondary school we had this batshit RE teacher who informed us all one day that we were doing a lesson on Father Christmas and that he was the first lie our parents ever told us and that we had to start by discussing it (like it must be some big, awful traumatic discovery that our parents lied). We all thought he was mad, besides he believed in god so who was he to criticise?

Yes, I remember the excitement and genuine joy.

No. My Dad didn't believe in lying to children apparently so Santa was never real in our house.

Yes until I got up one Christmas Eve night and saw through a glass window in the hallway door my parents arranging presents around the tree.

I was 33 (only kidding. I was about 6). I still believe, though!

I believed until I was about 11! I was sad when DS stopped believing when he was 8.

Completely believed and loved it. When I was about 11/12 I started questioning it, asked my mum who queried what I thought. I said it doesn't really make sense to me anymore and I think you are Santa and she confirmed that with me. It is like everything fairies, banshee, etc you get to a developmental age where you start looking at things more logically and you no longer believe it. Nothing traumatic about it, just growing up. Never ever felt lied to and never ever met anyone else that did.

My experience with Santa included:

1. Discovering the presents in the wardrobe at about 4 years old
2. The worst nights on Christmas Eve where I couldn’t sleep for what felt like hours (probably just an hour or so), and then worrying that Santa wouldn’t come because I couldn’t sleep
3. One parent saying the presents were from Santa, and the other saying presents were only delivered by Santa (I should have clocked that one sooner)

So I suppose yes? But not fully for long, and there was no drama when I “figured it out”/stopped pretending to believe. Finally got a better night’s sleep on Christmas Eve either way.

Same.

I genuinely did believe in him, and I’m glad I did because it felt really special and magical. I never once, then or afterwards saw this as my parents lying to me, so I just don’t get the idea that some people don’t encourage this because they don’t want to lie to their kids. It’s just magic and imagination.

No, never. Obviously I wrote my letters to Father Christmas and we talked about him coming and I had a stocking and all that, but I always knew it wasn’t real and I just sort of saw it as a let’s-pretend game At no point, even as a tiny child, did I believe that an old man with a flying sleigh was going to leave me some presents. I knew it was my parents, even though they kept up the pretence brilliantly. Same with the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.

Here’s the thing, though: it didn’t make Christmas any less magical for me at all! I still had that intense feeling of excitement on Christmas Eve, I still had that struggle to get to sleep, lying in bed with butterflies in my stomach wondering what would be in my stocking, and I still woke up at the crack of dawn and leapt up with absolute joy to tear into whatever was in the stocking that was suddenly full to bursting. Not believing in Father Christmas didn’t make any difference to the magical feeling at all.

Yes, I did - but not for anything like as long as children seem to believe nowadays. I think I was aged about 6 years old when I learned that Father Christmas was just pretend.

I think most children of average intelligence would start to question the veracity of it all at around the age of 5 or 6. It is adults who perpetuate it, by trying to persuade children that their legitimate doubts about the logistics of Santa getting to every house in the world (including those without chimneys) are unfounded.

Adults are the ones who enjoy the "magic" of Christmas most, vicariously through their children.