Letters to the Editor
-
Just another fairy tale
I don't remember ever being told that Santa Claus wasn't a real person. I think I just figured that it was pretty impossible for one person to get to everyone's house (unless he was God- but that's another story) and just enjoyed the gifts!
-
Santa: Fairy tales, lies, and abuse
I can't believe people still abuse their children this way. I call it "abuse" because they make their kids invest emotionally in an absolute lie, and when children learn the truth sooner or later in a usually traumatic manner.
No matter how "cute" it seems your kids believe in something ridiculous, you are emotionally harming your child. You're raising your kids to believe in fairy tale magic AND indoctrinating them in our oh-so-wonderful consumer culture. And you expect us to believe your children are "bright". Oh yeah. Applause.
Childhood innocense is a beautiful thing especially when used to teach them about the amazing natural world we live in. Filling their heads with lies and fairy tales is such a sad, sad thing to see.
Rich
-
Santa Claus is magic...
And like any magic that exists in the world, Santa Claus is made of people's imaginations and hope. Unlike other gift-giving occasions, Santa Claus is truly selfless in that he is anonymous. To be "Santa" is to give without expecting to be directly thanked, and to receive a gift from Santa is to receive something with no strings attached. It is giving and receiving for the pure joy of it.
-
Space aliens are real
Elvis is alive, with Tupac and JFK on the moon. I want to believe.
-
We went just through this!
My 8-year old figured out this year that Santa Claus was really his parents, and he was very worried that he wouldn't get any presents.
We told him that Santa was real, even though he didn't exist. He's the spirit of generosity and giving, and we give gifts to each other in his name to honor these things. This satisfied him.
My 12-year old has never admitted belief or disbelief in Santa, though, so he may have been in the same situation as the LW's child. I think he eventually caught on but kept quiet about it to protect his brother.
-
I Believe!
The story of Santa reminds me of the ‘Fish & Loaves’ story from the New Testament. The way the story is often remembered is that Christ, being the magical son of God, just created lunch for the crowds that came to hear him speak. But that’s not what happened. As the trays of food were passed around those who needed food took it and those who had extra added and everyone was fed. Christ didn’t do any magic tricks. Giving and receiving and taking care of each other – that’s the magic.
To put this into terms a 13 year old might understand this is like Dorothy discovering there is no Wizard of OZ. The important part of Dorothy’s story isn’t that the Wizard was a lie: the important thing was that Dorothy, and all of her companions, had the power inside themselves all along.
Christmas cheer and the magic of the season are real things even if we can’t touch or personify them. This 13 year old is questioning that old symbol intended for children to help them understand something larger. So talk to her about the ‘something larger’ (whatever it is that means to you). It sounds like it’s time for this girl with ‘an amazing social consciousness’ to step up her Christmas game.
-
Be more careful about what you assume is not proven
Next time pick an example that is suitably absurd, rather than comparing belief in Santa to a belief in the irrationality of pi. The later has been proven since 1761...
-
Let Santa Be Santa
Leave the kid alone. Let her believe for as long as she wants. I have four kids aged 18, 16, 14, and 8, and this is the last year of a believer in our house. The daughter has explained to her three older brothers how it simply isn't real. "A fat man coming down our chimney? Get real." was the way she explained it to her older brother home from college.
That depresses me in a way, as it is the last year of having a believer in the house. It just puts me one step closer to the eternal dirt nap.
Let the kid believe as long as she wants.
You might want to put her through her paces on the uses and practical applications of birth control, as a kid that naive could wind up pregnant, trying to sell you on the idea she is having a virgin birth.
-
Stepmom=Friend
I think that the child brought up the subject because she hoped LW would share her own doubts. My own stepdaughter used to prod me for my opinion in a similar way. She would make a statement, i.e. "My cousin bought a dress, wore it, then returned it to the store. I think that is okay".
THIS IS A TEST, stepmom! Can she trust you to level?
-
I never told my parents that I don't believe in Santa
I stopped believing in Santa when I was 9 and found out that the North Pole is really a frozen ocean instead of a land mass. (you can't live on an ocean, now can you? Flying reindeer I could believe, but I couldn't believe that he lives on an ocean.) But I never told my parents that. Why? Because I didn't want to stop getting gifts from Santa. It seems to have worked so far - Santa has brought me something every year! However, after the presents are unwrapped, I couldn't for the life of me tell you which ones came from Santa and which ones came from my parents. I was more worried (as a young child) about whether Santa came, and (when I got older) about what kind of loot I got, rather than the quality of the loot that came from Santa specifically.
I don't think it makes sense to deliberately sit her down and tell her. That just seems awkward and weird. Thinking back, if my parents had done that when I was 13, I would have taken it as "We don't want to give you as many gifts because you're not worth it." I just can't see any good coming of it. She has surely already been exposed to the idea and decided to accept it or not. (I was first exposed to it in some Judy Blume-type book, I think.) She has also already been exposed to the cruelty of kids in their early teens, and will have figured out by now that she can pretend to not believe in Santa in front of her friends if believing gets her too much crap from them.
Assuming you can afford to do so, continue giving her some gifts from Santa and some from your and her father. If money really is tight, tell the kids that you aren't going to exchange gifts within the family this year, but have Santa come anyway. If she does still believe, this should be enough to keep it up. If she's just keeping up the pretense, she'll be especially thankful to you and her father.