THE BIG SECRET
Ah, Santa.
This is something that’s really crept up on me. I grew up with Santa Claus and the idea of Santa was always all around us. My whole extended family, all of our friends, the children’s schools when we lived in England until last year – everyone around us supported the Santa Story.
It never really occurred to me to question whether or not we would tell our kids the Santa Story. It always, at least to me, seemed a given – just a part of life.
But my husband didn’t grow up celebrating Christmas, and certainly not believing in Santa. By the time we had our eldest child, my husband had lived in Christmas-celebrating places for more than a decade, so he was definitely aware of the Santa Story – but in a detached sort of way. (Listening to this grownups-only piece was probably his most positive personal experience of the topic.)
To him I think it’s confusing at best – why would you lie to your kids in this way?
Even now it feels strange for me to write that – to say that the Santa Story is a lie sounds so harsh, so malicious that it hurts my heart. I can’t imagine any parent, any person, is actually feeling malicious when they talk to a child about Santa.
And to be fair, many cultures tell “lies” to their children. It’s also known as storytelling and it’s one of the best ways for children to learn.
Of course there are, potentially, some good things to learn from the Santa Story: gratitude, respect for elders, belief in something they cannot see.
But arguably our kids also learn quite a few other things from it too, things that we might not otherwise want to teach them: that there are wholly “good kids” and “bad kids” (who get rewarded and punished accordingly), that someone(thing?) is always watching them, that it’s okay for a stranger to come into their house while they are sleeping at night, and – this is the one that is tripping us up in our family – that there is endless potential for receiving material things.
I don’t think that any of that consciously bothered me as a child, but now that I’m (trying to be) a conscious adult – it’s something that’s hard to un-see now that it’s been pointed out to me. And, I now know adults who were bothered by these things as children – and that it’s not always easy for children to articulate it when something is in fact bothering them.
And of course, there is also this 😉
OUR MESSY REALITY
As the kids began to enter toddlerhood, my reading and research turned away from weaning and sleep schedules and more towards thoughts on kind, positive, conscious parenting. And broadened cultural perspectives in general.
I slowly started to realize that there was another perspective on the Santa Story. And certainly there was my husband’s point of view to properly consider.
But in all the haze and excitement and overwhelm of new parenthood, we had never really, intentionally talked about this particular part before the time when it started to matter.
So the children heard the first rumblings of the Santa Story, and of course they enjoyed their first few Christmas stockings and presents under the tree. Friends, and playgroups, and schools, and grandparents, and storybooks, and advertisements, and neighborhood events all featured this jolly character – so there he was, a part of our life.
So I did what any thoughtful, self-assured, responsible adult would do… I waffled.
In practice, I have been pretty wobbly in living out the Santa Story with our kids.
We’ve never made a big effort to go to a fancy department store to visit Santa, but they’ve seen “Santa” at their school a couple of years ago, and at a local Christmas market last year. They’ve been told that that Santa wasn’t the “real” one, that he was just a helper.
I also injected a bit of “wisdom” gleaned from a fellow waffler on a parenting forum – that no one has actually seen the “real” Santa in person, but we all believe in him as part of the spirit of Christmas. (I actually quite like this approach.)
They have been told that they get one gift from Santa, and that the rest is from their family.
But they don’t understand why their cousins get more from Santa. And I’ve never been precise about making the Santa presents seem different from the others under the tree. Some years the stockings have been from Santa, some years from us. Back in England Santa used to help deliver the presents from family abroad, but last year in Turkey (to which shipping costs are beyond astronomical) he didn’t quite manage this…
It is a rather muddy pond we’ve been swimming in.
A LITTLE HISTORY
My own Santa experience was a bit stunted. When I was about five, my twin best friends and I were building a snow fort in their front yard when their big brother told us “the big secret” about Santa.
I was shocked, and sad.
But my mother was not ready to hear this from me. She told me that of course Santa was real. I didn’t buy it, but she wouldn’t give. I was pretty sure that my friend’s brother was telling the truth – it didn’t seem like something he would make up – but yet my mom was actually insisting that he wasn’t. It was a strange feeling. I wanted to be comforted, and this is what she was trying to do, but it left me feeling unsettled.
Years later my mom told me that she thought I was just too young at the time to “know about Santa.” I think in some way I had sensed that she needed me to be still little enough to believe in Santa.
I dutifully spent the next couple of years playing along. I remember when I was about six or seven, opening some presents with the price tags still attached and catching the murderous glance my mother gave my father, who must have been sleeping on the job during wrapping duty. I tried to smooth it over by saying that the elves must have needed to get a sample to follow in order to make the toy, and they must have given me the sample by accident.
A few years later, the first Christmas after she did let me in on “the secret” was a bummer indeed. We had just moved house – my parents, me at age nine, two little brothers and a newborn baby sister – a chaotic endeavor with bumpy school transitions, unfinished building work and copious amounts of frantic last-minute packing. “Santa” had taken the trouble to track down every single Jem & The Holograms doll in the collection for me, knowing how much I had loved them in recent months. On Christmas Day I was utterly unimpressed and in moody pre-adolescent fashion promptly asked to exchange them for a stereo. To this day the memory feels cloudy and gray.
In a way this experience might have elevated the importance of Santa in my mind. Thinking that “the magic of Christmas” was a right of passage, something that parents were “supposed” to do or provide for their children, that childhood was not complete without it – I think all of those things were weighing on my mom’s mind when she insisted on continuing the charade for me. And happily, in subsequent years I enjoyed Christmas a bit more, with a new baby sister providing a reason to continue the Santa charade throughout my school years.
Whatever the context, we have in fact been “doing” Santa for our kids. Maybe it was just going with the flow in the haze of new parenthood. Maybe trying to find something to make the holidays special since we don’t celebrate with family nearby. Maybe part of me really did want to try to create a little magic for them after all.
NOW WHAT
Now my eldest is 8. Solidly in between the ages of my first and second “reveals.” He is, gently, questioning. He has said out loud, many times, in front of his younger brother and sister, that “Santa is Mummy,” and he is mature enough to be pretty thoughtful in his reasoning.
Each time he gives me a look to gauge my reaction. Each time I meet his eyes, and ask him what he thinks. Sometimes he offers evidence for, sometimes against. I smile, and gently change the subject.
I wish I could think of a way to enlighten him that actually feels enlightening. I love this Santa reveal idea but we don’t have this sort of relationship with our neighbors/community here. I am struggling to find an alternative way to evoke this same kind of sentiment – I know there must be one, but I want to buy some time to figure it out.
At the same time, he is going through a rough patch in his experience at school, and I wonder if it would bring him down or lift him up to be let in on this “secret.”
I also wonder how to approach it with the middle and the little. The middle one is only 19 months younger than the eldest, and in practice they do nearly everything at the same time. I think (?) the eldest would have a hard time keeping a secret. And the middle doesn’t normally appreciate being treated differently simply because he is younger.
But at the same time, he really is younger. He likes the magic. Or at least the idea that Santa and his elves “make” the toys and can therefore make “anything he wants.” (He currently has his heart set on a discontinued Lego set currently on eBay for more than five times its original price. He is a sensitive soul, but also a very pragmatic and goal-oriented one.)
And for the littlest, she didn’t like Santa when we saw him at a holiday market last year: he was “too red.” But she definitely likes the idea of presents. Where we live at the moment, in Turkey, she is not surrounded by children, other than her brothers, talking about Santa – though he does also creep into FaceTime chats with her cousins and the Christmas stories and movies we have been enjoying this month.
I feel like I want a graceful exit. But I want to get it right, and find a way to preserve the special, magical feeling of Christmastime even when Santa is only a story. I feel like I need a little more time. Maybe that’s my mother’s influence creeping in – but that’s what my instinct, wherever it comes from, is telling me.
Last night, we were speaking with my sister on FaceTime and she asked what was on their list for Santa Claus. After a whispered aside with his brother, my eldest again came out with “Santa is Mummy.”
Since they were both in on it, I finally asked both boys what they wanted to believe.
The middle answered first: he wants to believe in Santa because he really wants that elusive Lego set. The eldest echoed this – he is always rooting for his brother.
Then, his big round eyes meeting mine, he said the words I think I knew he would say at some point. “I want to believe in Santa because it makes Christmas more fun.”
That’s enough for me, for now. Maybe we should have done things differently, maybe not, and I want to think carefully about where we go from here. But my boy’s heart is a little sad these days and if he’s telling me that he needs a little Santa in his life this Christmas, then Santa is what he shall have.
Though since we are sticking with Santa for one more year, we need to come up with a good reason why that precious Lego set isn’t going to magically materialize under the tree.