If Santa only brings the stocking, why write a list? What do we say now?

[stillsleeptraining]

I read on here that it's a good idea to tell the kids that Santa only brings the stocking, so they're aware of their privilege and it's more equitable with kids who don't get much for Christmas.

What I can't get my head round is how this links to Santa's list. If you write a dream list to Santa and all you get is your stocking, then why bother!

Can anyone make the link for me?

We dont write list... I think its teaches terribly entitled/spoilt behavior to lead kids to 'expect' gifts and then tell them that they can dictate those gifts and obviously they will be upset/angry when they dont get as the wrongly assumed was their right to request, thats not how anything in life works though.

We dont do stocking from Santa either... Stockings are just in memory of the story of St. Nick and just a bit of fun not 'gifts' (more like an easter egg which I class as tradition more than 'gifts').

I dont greatly understand why people believe 'Santa' is the one giving gifts, I always interprated the story as he is more a fancy 'delivery service'.

We did recently add Santa Sacks 'from Santa' as I enjoy incorperating other traditions into our current ones and like expanding to incorperate others traditions but even then the Sack only contains cheap traditional toys that are a suprise (things like a harmonica, teddy, bat and ball etc...).

A teddy or simple toy made by the Elves in the workshop seems in line with most Santa stories but I certainly don't understand why Santa would be BUYING a kid and then wrapping up a boxed RC monster truck clearly from Smyths or something that the kid wrote to him that he wanted... just wierd to me.

I'd love to see a stressed Santa stood in line in The Entertainer freaking out that they are sold out of 'fart guns' and 'suprise poopee fairies' (or whatever this weeks trend for kids is) on xmas eve because 1.2 million kids changed their mind last minute about what they want from Santa lol.

Don't get me started on the concept that an old man is sneaking into little girls rooms to put new pairs of pants in their bed because frankly is creepy beyond what I can express.

Father Christmas brings everything in our house and drops presents off at grandparents too. We've never had stockings.

And they all appear in the living room - no creeping into bedrooms!

Big Magical Postie is the perfect way to put it lol.

They will know when they find out Father Christmas isn’t real though. Hopefully that’s when they are old enough to appreciate all the time and effort put into the gifts over the years. I play the long game.

My parents and me with DS have said all the presents that arrive Christmas morning are FC. A list would be written in neat handwriting and put up the chimney of any one of his friends or latterly the postbox. Family and friends gifts went under the tree so be poked, prided and shaken.

I always thought that it had the advantage of being able to deflect a smallish pile or the wrong gift on Father Christmas. No judgement about my choices from my child.

Wow, thank you! That's so helpful

By the time mine could write, they already had an idea of what sort of thing Father Christmas brings.

Their lists tended to be whimsical rather than big items. (things like “a coat and wellies for my teddy”; a “chocolate panda” ). Still often quite hard to track down, but quite small in size.
Anything bigger would come from parents.

They still write lists as teens, and FC gets any little bits he fancies from the list, and leaves the —expensive— more straightforward stuff for mum and dad.

SIL does similar, but her dc also get one big FC present. My kids never questioned things being different for their cousins.

So that’s what I would do - cherrypick from the list what you think the FC items are.

Santa brings each child 1 gift and if your parents want you to have more than 1 gift they buy them for you. Santa can only give 1 gift as he has to get 1 for every child

We dont write list... I think its teaches terribly entitled/spoilt behavior to lead kids to 'expect' gifts and then tell them that they can dictate those gifts and obviously they will be upset/angry when they dont get as the wrongly assumed was their right to request, thats not how anything in life works though.

In reality though none of this actually happens unless a child also spoilt and allowed to be entitled the other 364 days a year. One day doesn't cause this behaviour 😆. Surely it's better to get dc what you know they really want!

I wanted my kids to know that actually I had put in a lot of time and effort into their gifts! They didn’t all just magically appear! My MIL used to tell them that the gifts she’d bought had been left by FC at their house. It used to irrationally annoy me!

These ones always make me laugh- there is always one on a post like this 😆. 4 year olds aren't thinking what a lovely effort you've made. 10/11 year olds might but it's unlikely they still believe in Santa. I was happy to keep the excitement going for the sake of a bit of glory. Glad they have their MIL to keep the magic alone in this case

We do stockings from Santa, and then they do write a list. We've explained it as we send santa money to pay the elves to make the presents, so they know there's financial limitations, we work hard to give santa the money but it keeps the magic of santa bringing the gifts. Same with extended family, they give santa the money and he drops the gifts back off at theirs when they've been made ready for Christmas day

Santa brings one present per child from the list and the stocking. Simple.

We don't have stockings. We have santa sacks and father Christmas fills them. It's how it was when I was a kid so it's how it is for mine. Don't think we even own stockings.

Any Santa questions I get are answered with ‘I have no idea, what do you think’ 😄

Santa brings each child 1 gift and if your parents want you to have more than 1 gift they buy them for you. Santa can only give 1 gift as he has to get 1 for every child

But what happens when they mention this to a friend and that friend says that Santa left them 20 presents?

@mam0918
I fundamentally disagree with your whole post. Christmas is supposed to be about magic wether you are pagan, Christian or just a bit whimsical it’s about the goodness of the universe
.Father Christmas isn’t a real man. He is therefore not a creepy peadophile as some men in the real world are.
Waking up to find a heavy stocking filled with gifts on your feet is one of the nicest memories of childhood.
Lists are the opposite of spoilt as there is no expectation that they will arrive because you aren’t asking a real person.It’s just putting it out there that that’s what you want. The fact that they normally get something on the list reinforces the message they are listened to even if all the people in the real world don’t.

Does that mean parents are buying extra fillers to make under the tree look better?

We don't put presents under the tree

Here, Santa brings the stocking, one thing from the list and one thing that positively definitely wouldn't be from us (for many years he brought a silly poo-themed gift every year). The big present has always been from us. DS is 15 now and we're still carrying on this tradition - he has a hideous vintage singing lobster coming 'from Santa' that I said was a terrible waste of money.

OK I rephrase the questions
Are parent buying extra fillers / pad out the pile because it's only gifts from Parents and Santa which are in the living room (grandparents and auntie gifts are at their houses to be collected later)

We didn't have stockings growing up. We just woke up on Christmas day to find Santa had laid everything out on the couch. Mum and dad paid for the presents, Santa just delivered them.

The Santa myth doesn’t have to make logical sense. Because obviously it doesn’t. At the point where your children start questioning that, let them.

Even the whale? 🤣

Christmas is supposed to be about magic wether you are pagan, Christian or just a bit whimsical it’s about the goodness of the universe.

It really isn’t.

My DC are too young to write lists so we haven't dealt with that yet, but growing up we had the rule that Santa only bought stuff for stockings. We wrote 2 lists, one for Santa which had stuff we wanted in our stockings, and also a wish list for parents/relatives (I have a big extended family)

DD is just turned 4 so this is the first year it's really been a thing she understands. We're going for stocking + one present from Father Christmas. She hasn't done a list but she's been 100% consistent when asked what she wants by anyone or an elf or Father Christmas so she's getting that as her Santa present.

Mine write the list for Father Christmas, and I give him the budget. Then he picks surprises based on the budget. This is better for them than if I pick, as I normally only pick books (faux stern look). This year, our village gave them gift cards, so the DCs gave them to me and asked me to add them to the FC budget so that he could pick them more things from their list of other surprises.

So they’ve understood there is a budget, it’s different for different people, we pay for it, and FC surprises them from it and does a fancy magic delivery. He also brings little things for the stockings which aren’t on their lists (fun boxers, chocolate coins, colourful bath foam, marbles, miniatures for D&D etc).

Father Christmas delivered all the presents when I was little, but they still had the labels to say who they were from.