I remember the year I found out. You know. The truth about Santa. I remember clearly being "able" to hear the bells from Santa's reindeer on the roof and certain he must be there. I remember the "Yeah RIGHT!" of my sisters. I also remember feeling VERY upset when I was finally told the truth. Angry may be the more appropriate word. I could not understand why my parent's would lie to me. Why my siblings humored me and let me believe something that was not. It distrurbed me. I think I may have been older than normal. I can not remember the exact age, somewhere between 8-10. It so rocked me as a child that when I grew up and had my own kids I did not want to ever dileberately lie to them. Hubby was in agreeance so we decided that we would not do santa with our kids. Nor the Easter bunny or the tooth fairy. We taught them early on the difference between make-believe and truth. And I do not regret it one bit.
Some people begin to get nervous to be around my kids when the holiday season approachs. What if my kids ruin it for theirs? So I complied a little list of do's and don'ts. I hope it helps.
1. Don't ask my kids what they are getting from Santa...
2. Do ask them what would they like for Christmas
3. Don't press them in any discussion about Santa...
4. Do drop the subject after they give you the polite wink
5. Don't try and convince them that Santa only comes to nice kids
6. Do mention that Jesus loves it when they are nice
7. Don't ask if they want to watch Santa is Coming to Town or Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer.
(They have watched them. That is not the issue, they may open up dialogue that Santa is not real.)
8. Do read stories about Christ birth
9. Don't pity them or think they have missed a part of childhood
10. Do love them and see that they are still very happy kids
They do know that others believe and that their parents will tell them when they choose. That it is not their job to do so. They will usually get a twinkle in their eye and perhaps give you a little wink when you talk about Santa in their presence. They may cast me a glance and shake their heads. They will normally not say anything if it is a brief mention and then dropped. But if you press them, all bets are off. They will more than likely educate you on the truth. And that is Santa is not real. Jesus is.
Hope this helps.
10 comments:
We told Jessica the truth about Christmas from the very beginning, too. If you lie to your kids about one thing, I always thought they'd believe you might lie about something else, too, and it might be much more important than the existence of Santa Claus.
We always told Jessica that Jesus blessed us with the money to buy her gifts. Santa was just another childhood story to her, like Frosty and Rudolph.
Everything Diane just wrote is true for us. We haven't had this as part of our Christmas traditions or Easter or tooth fairy and they haven't missed out at all. We are just choosing to do things differently, but also not judging someone else for their choices.
We never did the Santa thing as kids and I don't think we missed out one bit! My dad would tell us the story of St. Nicholas and made sure we understood that other kids believed in Santa and not to go around ruining it for them. We had some great Christmas traditions including reading the story of Jesus' birth, with my dad stopping at certain details and letting us fill in the blanks. That and a grand breakfast (of course food had to be a big part of Selleck tradition) were what we did even before we were allowed to open presents, so for us the focus really was on Jesus and spending time with family.
Mike and I have already decided we won't be doing the Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy thing with our kids either. So I'm totally with you on this!
I could really use some wisdom in this subject... CJ and I definetly have told our kids about Santa. But we never really went into a lot of detail - EJ is just getting to the point of details (only 4). The problem is, EJ is very outspoken and will tell anyone anything that we tell him and has problems with not always getting the facts straight. (recent incident - he told his cousin she was going to he** if she went trick or treating- ugh...) So, I need to pray and definetly could use some godly wisdom on how to approach Santa and even other make believe things (like Dora or VeggieTales) in a way that he will understand. He totally gets the Jesus part of Christmas - its just the Santa part that I need help with.
If you have some thoughts on this, email me!!! Thanks!
This is what I love about parenting--we each get to do things the way we think is best! I like your list of Dos and Don'ts.
Also, thanks so much for the helpful info you left at my site. I'm going to have to check him out! Science wasn't my favorite in school, and I'm finding that I'm not doing as much of it with him as he'd like (ditto for math!). So I needed some good suggestions for fun stuff to do with him! Thanks:)
Deej and I have talked about this very thing several times. Thanks to everyone who's posting their experiences. It's nice to know that if/when the day comes to make these decisions that others have forged a path. I love the idea of "St. Nicholas" and I hope to come up with a creative way to include his story as part of the Christmas celebration.
I've been debating this issue a bit myself. I posted about it in my blog. Let me know what you think (I could use some help)...
my parents would put "love santa" on presants but told us in hushed tones that it was secretly them. and that other parents did this too, pretended to be santa, and some parents told their kids it was really them and some did not, so we needed to be careful. i liked that. i always felt like i knew the inside scoop. and i always trusted my parents.
You know this is similar to what we did growing up. Actually my parents never mentioned Santa, or the Easter Bunny. Yes we got stockings but we just "assumed" they were from Santa. They only talked about Jesus' birth, and then we did have a little fun thinking Santa was real. As soon as we asked if Santa was real, they told us no. I knew at a young age. The other option is to disucss the real Santa from years ago too as he was a Christian.
I had the same experience as a child as you did. I can remember the place I found out the truth. I was 6 and I was devistated. My world was rocked!!! So we chose not to do the Santa thing with my two older kids.
We did however, watch all the Santa videos and visit Santa, but we also learned about St. Nicholas, the first Santa. We have books and video cartoons on his life!
I have a ceramic statue of Santa kneeling down to worship baby Jesus and it's my favorite Christmas decoration.
Though we don't promote Santa as being real, and tell our kids he's just pretend, several of my children have believed anyway. One of my sons actually argued with me that Santa was real and I had to drop the subject. You can never win an arguement with a four year old.
So I'm not uptight about the grandparents asking about Santa anymore. And when it comes time for Christmas, my kids definitely know the reason for the season.
Post a Comment