Thoughts on Santa

The one thing that was problematic about Christmas this year was Santa.  I've never really done the whole Santa thing with Jack.  Again, it's been well-documented, but I want my children to know that their gifts are given by people who love them, not some mythic figure.  We've always done the Santa picture, but, for me, it was like the way we'd get pictures taken with Pooh at Disneyland.  Indeed, Jack has never really understood why the Santas keep asking him, "What do you want this year?"

This year, however, he started realizing that many of his friends believe that Santa is this person that gives presents.  Things came to a head one day when Violet was in timeout.  We really need to be careful about what she looks at while she's in timeout, because she often develops a phobia of whatever she's staring at while she's serving her sentence.  One time, Tom put her near our front door, which is where we display all the previous year's Christmas cards.  Apparently, she was staring at a card that featured Santa on the roof while she was in disgrace.

"I don't like that guy who flies like an airplane!" she kept saying afterward.

It took us quite a while to figure out that she meant in Santa.  But she kept saying it.  "I don't like him!  He's scary!"  No matter if we acknowledged her feelings or tried to ignore her saying it, she kept repeating it over and over again how much she didn't like Santa, especially when "he flies like an airplane."  After nearly an hour of this, in exasperation, I burst out, "It's not even real!"

If I could, I would have clapped my hands over my mouth.  Even though I didn't want to promote the myth, I also didn't want to actively ruin it for my kids.  I quickly changed the subject, but Jack evidently heard.

The next day, while we were in the car, he asked, "Mom, does Santa really fly like an airplane?"

I told him that some people believe he does.

He asked if I believed he does.  I said I didn't know.  I told him that some people believe in Santa and some people don't, sort of like the way some people believe in God and Jesus and some people don't.  But I told him, no matter what he chooses to believe, if he decides to not believe in Santa, he can't tell any of his friends who do that he's not real.  Because that wasn't nice.

He seemed to accept that.

Over the next several weeks, he would ask me randomly, "Is Santa really real?" or "Do reindeer really fly?"

A lot of his friends have "The Elf on the Shelf," which is a doll that people move about the house and tell their children is in their home so that he can report back to Santa whether the kids were naughty or nice.  When his English teacher had the class do a craft where they decorated an elf and wrote why they thought they'd be a good elf, she asked them what do elves do?  Jack had no idea that there is a story that elves build toys for Santa in the North Pole, but he raised his hand and said, "Elves watch you and tell Santa if you're being good."

 It's actually pretty difficult walking this fine line of not telling him that there's no such thing as Santa while still not buying into the whole Santa machine completely.  I like all the fun around Santa, but I don't like how much of it is designed to get my kids to believe something I know is not true.

One of the fun things to do is make a Portable North Pole video, where Santa talks to your kids.  Even though it's sort of crossing the line for me, it's too cute not to do.  This was the first year, the kids really got into it.  I'd done it before with Jack, and he couldn't have cared less.  This year, they both kept watching theirs over and over again.  One thing, though, is at the end, when Santa signs off and says that he has to take the reindeer on a practice run.  He calls, "Merry Christmas!" at the end and a silhouette of him in his sleigh flies across the moon.  The only problem is that you can clearly see that there are six, not eight, reindeer pulling the sleigh.

"Mom! There are only six reindeer!" Jack said.

"Oh, that's because this is only a practice run," I said, without thinking.  It only then occurred to me how easy it was to make up stuff to keep the charade going.  I'm still not sure how I feel about it.

I don't know how many more years I will realistically need to worry about this, though.  I will admit, it's kind of a nice if it adds to the magic of Christmas.