Too Soon To Learn About Santa Claus?

No. Not at all.

I was never raised to believe in santa and I never felt like I was missing anything. It was all about the good food, family and PRESENTS as a kid.

None of my siblings ever mentioned like they were missing out, although I recall my little sister was confused for a bit.

I always just thought other people were weird – like the jewish kid who didn’t even celebrate christmas at all.

Santa is fun. I never told them that he did or didn’t exist, they naturally gravitated to the fantasy because it is everywhere at Christmas and children have great imaginations. When they started to question it, they asked me if he was real and I always responded, What do you think?

Eventually as their minds developed they let the fantasy go, but those were such fun years with the children. I think Santa existed a bit longer than he normally would have because he was such a good playmate to rediscover as the sun became scarce.

Thinking on this… They had invisible friends, too, that I would never have dreamed of telling them they weren’t real.

I was never raised to believe in Santa and both my parents were christian. All my presents were from “mom and dad”. I did get presents from “santa” from my grandparents though. My mom always told me she didn’t want to lie to me, which looking back is amusing since we went to church 3x a week. I’m pretty sure I was the kid telling the others in grade school that santa wasn’t real.

I have some friends who are big into telling their kids the truth about Santa Claus.

But they aren’t skeptics like Jay – no, no, they’re fundamentalist Christians. Wow, full circle.

I was never told Santa (or the 3 wise men, who are the ones who bring gifts in Spain) were real. I knew it was fake, just like the tooth fairy. What I remember is that my father and I would have a game where I would pretend it was Santa and then proceed to try to catch him in the act of getting the gifts to the tree, while he would try (with mixed results) to hide them in the house and then get them to the tree without my finding them first. I defy anyone to say that since the Santa Claus figure was never real to me then I didn’t experience joy at Christmas. I loved it.
If I have children I’ll be going the Solstice route, but I think that as long as there is family, gifts and cakes there’s really not much you can do to ruin the holidays for a child.

My mom would always sign the tags on a few gifts from Santa, but I don’t remember a time when I actually believed in him. It was clearly Mom’s writing. I still was crazy in love with Christmas and the cookies, gifts, family time, etc. I remember at age seven writing a letter to Santa just to see if it was any fun (since other kids were doing it) and being really annoyed at the babysitter who thought I believed in him. I tried to convince her that I didn’t, but it was clear to me that a) she knew perfectly well there was no Santa, and b) there was no way she was going to admit it.

With my first son, I never bothered to talk about Santa. I just didn’t see much point, since I’d never believed. But he eventually came home from preschool aware of him, and came home from public school having emailed Santa his requests! Fortunately he brought home copies of the emails, because Santa had rarely bought the right things. So I started to play along, signing a few tags from Santa. Now that my younger son is 11, I have to assume that they have both figured it out. But they’ve never actually asked me or informed me that they figured it out, so who knows?

I like Dale McGowan’s take on it, that it is a lesson in being skeptical. A year or two ago, my Christian neighbor told me that her son found out the truth about Santa from a friend. He was devastated, and was sobbing when he asked her if it was true that Santa wasn’t real. She told him the truth. She said he then sobbed “what about the tooth fairy?” and she told him the truth about that, too. Then she said he asked “Well what about God?” and she said “Oh, honey, no, God is real.” But at least he’s thinking about it…

Santa is the best lesson in free thought ever. Use the tools we have. And Santa is the best one we have for skeptical thinking. The best. Every kid figures it out by age 8, give or take. (Some play at it longer because they think they’ll get more presents or help mom and dad perpeuate the fraud on younger siblings.)

I think there’s something fundamentally wrong with teaching your kid to be a skeptical thinker but your word is always to be trusted. Always. Like you’re perfect and can’t ever be mistaken and that they’ll have your opinions is a given. There’s something as unyielding and hard in that as there is in fundamentalism. Santa teaches also don’t believe it automatically because mommy and daddy say it’s so and I think the parents who have a bug up their ass about what is really a childhood game (c’mon, there’s no cult of Santa that’s gonna enslave them for life) have some serious issues with their kids having to take their words as if they were written in stone.

And I certainly hope Jay asked the parents if it was okay to put that on baby’s card before egotistically doing so. Sure, baby can’t read now but many of us save these memoirs.

But I admit my mother wouldn’t allow us to believe in Santa because she considered him a false idol and I felt gypped as hell of a whole lot of fun. I’m 52 and a grandmother but I still feel robbed and am still making up for lost time by going overboard. Likewise with the Easter Bunny.

The funny thing is, my daughters use observation to satisfy themselves that Santa and the Easter Bunny are real and (in the case of my oldest) that God is not. Just yesterday my five-year old confessed that she heard the Easter Bunny “hopping around” downstairs last Easter. For both of them, the presents and left-over cookie crumbs are solid evidence that Santa has visited. On the other hand, my eight-year old is just not buying an invisible “guy in the sky” – even though Grandma says he is real.

I don’t have kids yet, but we will surely be doing the Santa thing.
First of all: because its fun!
And second: because like others have already said, its a great introduction to being skeptical. Once they start asking about Santa, I plan to encourage them to think for themselves on that matter: “What makes you think that Santa isn’t real?” Hopefully it’ll get them thinking and realize that not even the all-knowing Mom and Dad are always right.

When people try to make you believe something they know is a lie, it’s called a “prank.” When everyone pretends a lie is true, it’s called “make believe.”

In my option, it’s better to let Santa Claus be a game right from the beginning — without any pretense of being real.

The game can still be fun for the child, even if they know you’re pretending.

I told my son, when he was about 5 years old, that Santa wasn’t real. He took it in stride. He had no problems with it at all. However, my wife and mother-in-law were mad at me for a couple of years about it. As for a god belief, I have taught him to think rationally. So far, the mother-in-law hasn’t caught on to it.

I use to spread “reindeer feed” outside when I was a child. I can’t believe my parents use to go out in the middle of the night and clean it up so I thought the reindeer ate it. It was pretty magical though.

I found the Santa myth very useful. I didn’t confront my mom about it until I was about 8, and after she told me the truth I used the same logic to realize there probably was no God, either.

I just spent some serious time examining this issue.

Why does anyone have to tell a child that a mythical being doesn’t exist?

Because we also spend a considerable amount of time telling him that it does.

If you don’t teach your kids about Santa, you don’t have to UN-teach your kids about santa. It’s really pretty simple.

I think atheists can do what they like, but as I wrote in a series of Santa posts on my blog, the eventual disillusionment may be bad news for Christians trying to raise their children in their faith. They’ve already been caught in a lie once.

For atheists, the Santa story could be a way of talking about noble lies when the kids are older.

Fun fact, it turns out a lot of my blog readers tried to test the existence of Santa as children. With predictable results.

–Leah @ Unequally Yoked

Haha, fun comments.

I’d never destroy a child’s imagination. The card was more of a joke to the parents but the mom did say she was going to keep it for her. I’m 24 and I still have imagination, but I know that’s what it is. I don’t believe it to be truth. Anyway, it was just a fun thing to do between two atheist friends. I’m not a dad yet so who knows what I’ll lie to my kids about!

I was never brought up to believe in Santa Claus and I turned out normal… *eye twitch*

I lie to my kids all the time. It’s great fun. The most rewarding part is when they call you on it. I think that teaches them to be skeptical just as much as straight out telling them the truth about everything does.

I figured out Santa/Easterbunny/Mickey Mouse when I was 4.

What’s interesting is that I don’t have a problem playing along with those myths for my 3 year old. But I have a real problem reading him religious stories. e.g. in the waiting room he brings me a Veggie Tales and it’s full of God talk. I feel compelled to replace “God” and “Jesus” with “Zeus” and “Thor”. So why does one set of fairy tales freak me out so much more? And am I being hypocritical? I kinda think so. Gut wise, it’s tough for me to not sell him on Santa, at least while he’s into it. But gut wise I can’t give him any myths that some people actually believe. And yes, changing the names of the main characters is pretty superficial.

I would teach the version of Santa Claus in the late New York Sun (“Yes, Virginia…”). S.C. is a feeling that we create of ourselves, that all people are the same, and everyone is our neighbor. I think one mythical JHC once taught the same thing (with the example of a dirty Samaritan), and it’s true.

I don’t understand what’s the difference between believing in Santa and believing in other make-believe characters, like Cookie Monster, Big Bird, Spiderman, etc.

Santa is as much fun as they are, and parents don’t grapple with the other characters. It seems like we’re making too big a deal about this.

It doesn’t take the child’s joy away, it takes the parents joy away.

The kid will be happy to get presents on Christmas no matter who they’re from.

The problem with telling them “Hey kid, I’m in charge of what you get, not Santa!” means the kid will now be bothering YOU all year for toys he wants for Christmas, in addition to the toys the kid will bug you about all year long anyway.

With Santa, parents can blame not getting presents on someone else.

Hey Dan, I have another suggestion. Try this:

We buy our daughter one present at Christmas, and help her make donations to all the local charities. She looks forward to buying food, coats and toys for needy families. We’ve been doing this since the beginning, so she has no huge expectations of a pile of plastic crap every year.

We also request that family and friends who buy for her get things like clothes, books, microscopes, or other educational materials.

It seems to have been working well. Her request for her upcoming 8th birthday is a trip to the science museum in Portland, OR.

Santa? here in PH, he is one of the famous Christmas figures right after Christ! almost all of the children here believes that Santa Claus exists and appears during christmas season!
we cant blame christians.. they just want their kids to be happy! even if they know it’s not true!
If we are going to condemn or question their beliefs….

What are the differences between us and Christians?

If we do, we are like them!
So we must not! So that, we can say that the only difference between them and us is WE KNOW HOW TO RESPECT OTHERS’ BELIEFS OR RELIGIONS!

Am I RIGHT?

Santa challenges the imagination!
How can he get around the world that fast?
Oh, he can’t.
But if he -were- real, he’d do this blah blah blah.
Santa provides not only an outlet for skeptical discovery, he also helps to stretch out that creative muscle. Kids soak up everything you tell them, but they also start to create their own solutions and ideas about things.
And I’m on the “no one makes a big deal about Elmo” boat. Parents tell their kids that he lives on Sesame Street. It could be argued that it still exists, but that’s a near lie, considering it’s a studio housing foam puppets, not a bustling active neighborhood where people spend all day counting.
The look of wonder on a child’s face when they use their imagination is incredible. And it’s a rite of passage to figure out Santa isn’t real. And if you don’t want to teach your kid about him, don’t. Just because one person does and the other doesn’t doesn’t mean you’re either lying to your children just like christians do, or being a massive buzzkill super serious skeptic.

And as a note, children still bother you about presents all year long even if they believe in Santa. And Santa creates MORE stress for parents. If you say Santa didn’t bring you presents (because mommy is poor!), it doesn’t become mommy’s fault, or Santa’s fault, the kid blames him or herself.

I never believed in Santa Claus, and I don’t remember anyone telling me to – he was everywhere, of course (I grew up in NYC, land of a bajillion Xmas displays), but it was a non-issue in my home/family, where they assumed I’d pick it up from school/TV/books but didn’t push me one way or the other. I don’t recall asking if he was real because it seemed fairly obvious to me that he wasn’t. My parents are agnostic and do Christmas mostly as a cultural “it’s dark out, we should celebrate SOMETHING” ritual.

I did fake it for awhile until maybe age 6 since I got that other adults really, really wanted me to believe in Santa Claus. My way of doing this was putting Santa ornaments on the side of the tree closest to the chimney, and explaining it to my parents, who thought, oh, how cute, she believes in Santa. My gifts from “Santa” obviously had my parents’ handwriting on them, so figuring out the fiction wasn’t exactly a tough nut to crack.

I like the “what do you think?” answers to the “is Santa real?” questions. Let kids draw their own conclusions using their brains! I’m not so okay with pushing them to believe in Santa, though – they’ll get plenty of that from, uh, everyone else.

Why tell you child that santa exists or doesn’t exist? Give you child the pleasure of using reasoning and logic for to find out for themselves.

Wait…Cookie Monster is just a puppet? Son of a bitch.

As to the Santa issue, I’ve gotta go with my childhood on this one. Santa was fun for me, and I want my kids to have that fun as well. And Santa doesn’t hate gay folks or brown people or give kids the baggage that Santa died for their sins. I’m inclined to go with the “Well, what do you think?” sentiment that others have proposed. Kids figure it out on their own, and really, presents are what matter when you’re eight anyway.

Here is the Dale McGowan piece that a couple posters have referenced: Santa Claus – the Ultimate Dry Run, as well as a more recent follow-up about the last of his children to solve the Santa puzzle.

If you haven’t read these already, I highly recommend them!

I recommend the rest of Parenting Beyond Belief, as well; even if you’re not a parent (I’m not) I think you can appreciate the brilliant and thoughtful things Dale has to say about raising freethinkers and communicating with religious relatives.

Happy atheist here, raised by happy atheists. When I was a kid, we did the Santa thing. My only negative feeling about the whole experience is that it took me so long to figure out it was BS. I plan to do the Santa thing with my own kids.

I do Santa with my kids, but we don’t drill it into their heads. We do it because it’s there, basically, and fun, but I also want them to understand where their x-mas presents come from and be appreciative of the right people, not some mythical fairy. I figured it out pretty early and I figure my kids will too. We also just dealt with the tooth fairy for the first time as well. My son isn’t much of a magical thinker, so I’m pretty sure this won’t last long, but it’s fun while it lasts. I got inappropriately angry at a friend’s kid when he tried to tell my son that the tooth fairy was his mom and dad. Was that wrong? It was his first lost tooth, I wanted it to be fun for him…

That’s suppose to be “Knowing Santa wasn’t real didn’t make my Christmas’s any LESS fun filled”

It is Santa, you see, he’s mad I don’t take him seriously. 😀

hippiefemme says:

I’m surprised that so many people mentioned letting kids figure it out for themselves as a lesson in skeptical thinking.

Something that is important to remember is that there is more to doing “the Santa thing” than just perpetuating the myth or delivering the straightforward truth – kids are also going to ask questions.

Before they ask THE question of whether or not Santa is real, they’ll likely be curious about the details of Santa’s presumed existence: where exactly in the North Pole does he live, how old is he, how does he get around the world in one night, how does he get presents to kids without chimneys, etc. And I think what Dale McGowan argues in his piece that I linked to above if that the way you answer these questions will greatly affect the takeaway of the whole Santa experience.

Those who want to make-believe Santa is real for their kids and hope they figure it out for themselves don’t have to just let the game stand alone – you can frame it in a way that helps them along the path to discovering the truth.

I assume that most skeptical/atheist parents would be interested in encouraging their kids to be inquisitive and not to just assume things are true because “I said so.” Why should the Santa game be any different?

Revyloution,@

Good to hear how you’re raising your child!

My comment should have a note that I never plan to have children, so it would never be a problem for me.

I’m surprised that so many people mentioned letting kids figure it out for themselves as a lesson in skeptical thinking.

I don’t think my parents intended this to happen, but I distinctly remember, at about 6 years old, looking at the new chalkboard easel from Santa, with a personal message from Santa, and comparing it to my Mom’s writing. I also looked at all the gifts from Santa and found that some of the paper was the same as the ones from my parents. I questioned my parents on both of these, and they said Santa borrowed paper for the last gifts he picked out…

I always felt cheated that my parents had willingly lied to me as if there were some value in deceiving someone as naive as a child.

And when I confronted them around 7 years old, and they told me the truth – I wasn’t upset that Santa didn’t exist. I was upset that my parents had lied to me for so long.

I love my parents, but I always wondered if anybody else had the same reaction I had.

Jenda, I had the same reaction you did.

I remember when I was about 4 or 5 I stood at my window waaay past my bedtime on Christmas Eve because I wanted to see Santa. My dad came in because I guess he realized I hadn’t gone to bed and told me that if I was watching Santa wouldn’t come. I remember thinking “well, if Santa doesn’t know I’m watching, then maybe I can see him”, so I snuck out to the den (across from where the tree was located) and hid under a pile of coats on the floor. I ended up seeing my parents bringing out the presents.

I distinctly remember confronting them later and asking them why they brought the presents out and if that means Santa wasn’t real, and they admitted it. I got really angry because they had always taught me not to lie and here they were, they had been lying to me. I felt very betrayed about it for a while and didn’t really feel like I could trust my parents after that.

While it is good to teach children to be skeptical through experience, do you want their first big experience of skepticism to be finding out that their parents are willful deceivers? The difference between Elmo or Batman and Santa is that no one is actively trying to convince your children that Batman is a real, breathing person that will come and save them. They know Elmo is just this creature on TV. Humans are adept at enjoying fiction without thinking it’s actually real. Children pick up on what we treat as fictional vs. what we treat as real; they know that parents don’t treat Cinderella like they do Santa.

I don’t have a problem with people enjoying the Christmas symbolism and mythology, but actively trying to convince your children that Santa is this guy that ACTUALLY comes to the house and ACTUALLY hands out presents and ACTUALLY watches them all year is I think ludicrous. I will nth all the people who have said that children usually don’t figure out by themselves that he isn’t a real breathing being; someone usually has to tell them later. I know people who believed in Santa until 11-12 years old.

Playing the Santa “game” is fine as long as your children know it is a game. I don’t see any benefit in actively trying to convince your children that Santa exists, or being extra coy about “Well, what do you think?” Treating it as an exercise in skepticism is ok, as long as you don’t tell your kids that “oh, he comes in the front door” when they ask about the chimney, and as long as you acknowledge that they are getting a lot of Santa-is-real messages from everyone else [i.e. that the atmosphere is not neutral to begin with].

Well, as a kid I never thought that Superman was real , but I did have fun pretending he was or flying around with a towel as cape and a spit curl.
Im not sure why saying Santa isn’t real stops any child from enjoying the occasion – but I guess you will have to explain some stuff about myths.

Way, WAY too soon.

C’mon, it’s barely August. The War on Xmas shouldn’t start until November at the EARLIEST.

No, seriously, I see no harm in letting kids believe in Santa at an early age. And while the card is funny, it just seems dickish to seriously tell a child Santa doesn’t exist.

But it could be really good for a kid to figure it out for themselves (as I did). And if they do, I don’t think they should be lied to in response, but rather having their critical thinking recognized and praised. And it could even be a teachable moment (“Who else do we know of who lots of people believe in, but who we never actually see…?”).

I’m really, really surprised that only 2 or 3 comments touch on what I consider the real heart of the matter.

Which is… the confusion we create by teaching our children not to lie unless there’s an important reason… then lying to them…. “for fun.”

It’s a complex and nuanced lesson enough as it is, without muddying the waters this much. You can’t tell me this sort of thing doesn’t dilute the effectiveness of these lessons.

I’m not just a skeptic, I’m also a humanist, and my philosophy puts a high premium on honesty in a child’s character development. There’s a million ways to be creative about making Christmas fun that don’t require lying.

I like the part about asking your child “What do you think?” and letting them figure out the stories they’ve heard elsewhere. But it crosses a line when you flat out lie to them.

I never remember believing in Santa nor remember my parents trying to instill that belief in me.

It’s funny even as a Christian I was opposed to teaching the lie of Santa. As a kid I even went around telling other kids Santa wasn’t real. I remember lots of times telling adults Santa wasn’t real.

At least Santa can serve me as an appropriate metaphor for Yahweh and the disbelief in it.

Well, i’m jewish so i was never raised with santa. I turned out fine. I don’t think it is really a important topic, but it is just christmas spirit i guess.