By KATHERINE SNOW SMITH
Published December 7, 2003
It starts out easy. We read them 'Twas The Night Before Christmas, and they believe it - flying reindeer and all.
A few years later they begin to question how Santa can be in the park when we just left him at the grocery store and he's at the mall, too. We explain in a very matter-of-fact way that those Santas are not actually the real Santa. They are his helpers who tell the real Santa what kids ask for. Then the real Santa brings the presents via our chimney on Christmas Eve.
They believe that for another year or two. Than around age 6, 7 or even 9, if you're lucky, somebody at school blurts out that Santa is a farce. Your child comes home and asks you why her friend insists that it's really parents who stuff the stockings and buy those favorite gifts. That's when we take a deep breath, collect our thoughts, look into our child's eyes and lie, lie, lie.
I'm at that point with my first-grader. But I'm wondering how long I should continue the lie. I want her to believe as long as possible, because it makes Christmas that much more magical. But then I wonder if I should tell her the truth so I can threaten that she'll never get another present if she spills a word of her suspicions to her younger sister or her friends.
Friends who have older children assure me the myth has to come to an end sometime. Parents tell their kids the truth at different ages. Often the first in the class to have his suspicions confirmed can't get to school fast enough to tell the others. (Here's a piece of advice to those honest parents: If you do tell your child the truth, alert his close friends' parents so they can have a game plan.)
Many of us can remember how we learned the truth. My older sister called me to the kitchen door to spy on my parents loading our "Santa presents" in the trunk before driving to my grandmother's house where we would spend the holiday. My husband heard such conflicting stories from friends and family that he finally looked up Santa Claus in the Compton's encyclopedia and read for himself that he is a mythical man.
My daughter's teacher gave me a good pat answer that she uses with kids who pose the question to her. She tells them when they stop believing in Santa they stop getting presents from him. I took that and ran with it, pointing out to my daughter that her father and I still get little presents in our stocking because we still believe.
But at some point, we have to tell the truth. My friend Susan Keefer shared a good litmus test someone else told her. If your child questions Santa because the whole story of how he flies around the world in one night and has room for millions of toys in his one sleigh just doesn't add up, maybe it's time for the truth. But if your child is suspicious only because of what Bobby said on the playground at school, maybe you can wait a little longer.
If your children ask if Santa is real, you might respond by asking them what they think, suggests Clearwater child psychologist Ruth Peters.
"Usually the kid will tell you what he wants to hear," she said. Back him up if he seems to want to believe a little longer, she said. When you do tell him, you can ease into it by saying something like, "Everyone has their own thoughts about Santa."
"There is no exact age (that children know the truth). A lot of it has to do with who they're hanging with," Peters said. "It's a very independent decision when to tell them, but you do not want your child to be embarrassed when they're 12 years old and they still believe." She thinks by around third grade, parents should come clean.
When parents do break the news to children, there are many wanys to point out that even without a fat man in a red suit coming down the chimney, there is an amazing spirit at Christmastime. Plenty of people make it an opportunity to point out that Christmas is really much more about Jesus' birth than Santa Claus.
Some tell the ancient story of St. Nicholas, who is the supposed original Santa Claus. St. Nicholas was a Christian bishop in the land of Asia Minor, now western Turkey. He loved children, started an orphanage and is said to have saved many from famine and despair through his generosity. Before devoting his life to the church he had to rid himself of all worldly goods. As the story goes, he threw three bags of gold coins down the chimney of a house where three sisters lived who were too poor for any man to want to marry. Of course many of the stories associated with St. Nicholas are questioned by historians and theologians. But we don't know for a fact they are false, as we do with Santa.
Many adults, however, would argue that some aspects of Santa are not known to be false. It depends on how you define Santa. Francis P. Church, the editor of the New York Sun, believed wholeheartedly in Santa. He said so in 1897 when he responded in his newspaper to the now famous letter from 8-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon, who was questioning Santa. "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist."
Some parents told me they shared his complete letter with their kids when they broke the news about Santa.
My friend Michelle Petrillo focused on the spirit of Christmas when her oldest daughter, Ellie, learned the truth in third grade. "I told her we would never buy all these toys like that unless we were moved by some kind of Christmas spirit," she said.
The Polar Express has become a modern tool for assuring children that it's good to always believe there is something magical about Christmas. The book, published in 1985, tells the story of a boy who takes a trip on a magical train to the North Pole and receives a silver sleigh bell from Santa. His parents can't hear the bell ring and in time his sister can't hear it either. But those who really believe in the Christmas spirit will hear it always.
- You can reach Katherine Snow Smith by e-mail at snowsmith@verizon.net or write Rookie Mom, St. Petersburg Times, PO Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL 33731.
