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Stop Lying to Your Children About Santa — Especially if Your Motivation Is Wrong
A week or two ago at the dinner table, we were chatting as a family and the topic went to Christmas. My younger son (who is 22 now), being a cynical old self, claimed: “Adults tell this ‘Santa is real’ lie because they want to control their children.”
“Well, I see your point, but the idea is to keep the ‘magic’ real for children…” I said.
He disagreed.
Our kids knew there was no Santa relatively early. In fact, they don’t even remember how they knew about it. I remember when my daughter was probably 5 or 6, my wife told all 3 kids there was no Santa. “Wut?” my daughter whined, but the other two kids already knew. By the way, my wife had a purpose, which I’ll discuss soon.
We were way under the poverty line when they were kids, though every so often we got so many presents from unimaginably generous church members in Christmas, and we did sometimes manage to give kids something, we never made it such a huge deal. We had fun, but probably not like the “once in a lifetime” fun.
To be honest, whenever I see movies/TV about how much the parents work so hard to not reveal the truth to their kids, I grimace. Yes, the idea is to bring…
