So, we’re midway through November and I’m already filled with that stupid “wish my legs were longer so I could kick my own ass” feeling. I get this every year, without fail, since my children have been born. Why?
Because we told them there was a thing called SANTA CLAUS. And we told them Santa brings presents.
Sure, part of me thinks it’s great for kids to have something magical and mythical and super great to believe in (especially someone that brings presents! Whee! Cool dude, right?) – but my goodness, if the whole Santa thing doesn’t just create a whole mess more work for me.
I have to make sure I get special “Santa” paper. Now that The Princess knows my handwriting, I have go get even trickier with gift tags for Santa presents. I have to hide the Santa presents just a little bit better, lest I burst anyone’s bubble. Christmas Eve, I have to sit watch and wait for the kids to zonk out to somehow stealthily sneak the Fat Dude’s presents down under the tree.
And it’s all a BIG FAT LIE.
Why did I do this to myself?
I’m not entirely sure how heartbroken my kids would be without the whole Santa deal. I mean, the presents are still coming from the same place. I’d still do stockings (I love that my mom still fills a stocking for me and I do for her – I think that’s awesome). But I could do it without all the lies.
No more baking cookies and not being able to eat them in front of the kids because they were “for Santa” (I’m going to eat them no matter what – but am I eating them at 5 p.m. or am I eating them at 10 p.m.? That makes the difference). No more long lines at the mall to sit on Santa’s lap only to have my kids freak out after forty minutes of waiting and upon reaching the front of the line because they really don’t want to sit on his lap (that part should relieve me, right?).
But it’s not just Santa. It’s the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and probably more asinine figments of our imagination that I’m forgetting at the moment. I really do try hard to be honest with my kids (even if it leads to embarassing moments like using anatomically correct words loudly in public places), so the act of so purposefully lying to them, in a lie that creates so much work – well, it just makes me crazy. And when all is said and done, they don’t really remember who gave them what? Santa? Well, he was here. What did he bring? Oh, something over there.
Someone talk me out of my Santa-hating tree.
About sarah
Oh man. That is a dilemma. When I taught K-5 in a one room school house (no lie, they still have those), I had a first grader whose parents taught her the “truth”, and a first grader whose parents made much of Santa. The first child had such an elitist attitude, loving the times when she could say, “Miss R, you and I know the truth, don’t we?!” It drove me nuts. And it wasn’t easy to keep the two of them from ruining each other’s Christmas. So I totally feel for you.
I guess I was lucky. My mom and dad told us about the real dude Saint Nicholas from history, and somehow let us still feel all the magic of Santa and the Tooth Fairy with us knowing that it was make-believe the whole time. How they balanced telling us the truth from the get go with letting us enjoy the magic of believing something imaginary is beyond me. But I’m glad they did it the way they did, because we never had to be disappointed. To this day, my dad still refuses to admit that he was the one drawing portraits of the Tooth Fairy to leave with my loot in my little tooth pillow (and a rather voluptuous portrait it was). And to this day, if any of us is home for Christmas, we STILL leave out milk and cookies and reminisce about when Santa and Mrs. Claus signed the guest book one year.
good luck this year!
I was the little twerp in kindergarten telling all the other kids that Santa wasn't real. We got gifts from Santa, but never really belived in him. I'm not sure how my mom pulled that one off. The magic (we left out milk & cookies, wrote him letters, sat in his lap at the mall) without the myth.
That probably has a lot to do with me not telling my kids Santa is real. They argue with me about it regularly, so it's an odd issue at our house.