This might sound stupid, but to me, Santa Claus is a state of mind, and thus he IS real. Like, he may not be a physical human person, but he is a spirit of love and generosity that we all manifest when we give gifts or share what we have with others. When we went to drop off teacher gifts at the daycare and preschool, I told my kids "let's go be Santa." We are trying to instill in them that Santa is both no one and everyone, and you can choose to be Santa or not to be Santa and to believe or not believe and it's all okay, whatever you decide.
I’d wanted to subscribe for a while, but I hadn’t. Then this post came along, and I had to. But by the time I had the few minutes to do it, you’d broken it out of its paywall! But I like your work and appreciate it (and devour it), so the January sale sold me!
But! I really am here to talk about Santa. We chose to be honest about Santa with our 4yo. Last year, at age 3, he didn’t really get it. But this year we told him Santa isn’t real, he’s a little game parents and kids play, and we will play it with him if he’d like. He was on the fence until a few days before Christmas. And when on Christmas morning, there was the blue bike he wanted Santa to bring, he declared, “We thought Santa wasn’t real, but he IS real!” And he repeated that probably 20 times over the next week. I wanted to share because this is a twist on what the focus in the article was - finding out he’s not real after believing and being upset vs never believing, learning the truth, and choosing to believe anyway. Perhaps it’s because how she mentions that our entire culture is complicit in the “lie”, so he’s hearing evidence that Santa is real from other sources than us. Whatever the reason, I’m grateful for it because I was feeling pretty Grinchy about withholding joy from him. This way, I don’t have to lie, and he still gets the joy!
This might sound stupid, but to me, Santa Claus is a state of mind, and thus he IS real. Like, he may not be a physical human person, but he is a spirit of love and generosity that we all manifest when we give gifts or share what we have with others. When we went to drop off teacher gifts at the daycare and preschool, I told my kids "let's go be Santa." We are trying to instill in them that Santa is both no one and everyone, and you can choose to be Santa or not to be Santa and to believe or not believe and it's all okay, whatever you decide.
I’d wanted to subscribe for a while, but I hadn’t. Then this post came along, and I had to. But by the time I had the few minutes to do it, you’d broken it out of its paywall! But I like your work and appreciate it (and devour it), so the January sale sold me!
But! I really am here to talk about Santa. We chose to be honest about Santa with our 4yo. Last year, at age 3, he didn’t really get it. But this year we told him Santa isn’t real, he’s a little game parents and kids play, and we will play it with him if he’d like. He was on the fence until a few days before Christmas. And when on Christmas morning, there was the blue bike he wanted Santa to bring, he declared, “We thought Santa wasn’t real, but he IS real!” And he repeated that probably 20 times over the next week. I wanted to share because this is a twist on what the focus in the article was - finding out he’s not real after believing and being upset vs never believing, learning the truth, and choosing to believe anyway. Perhaps it’s because how she mentions that our entire culture is complicit in the “lie”, so he’s hearing evidence that Santa is real from other sources than us. Whatever the reason, I’m grateful for it because I was feeling pretty Grinchy about withholding joy from him. This way, I don’t have to lie, and he still gets the joy!