My sister told me. As it often happened, she had some hot intelligence and no one to share it with, my parents already being clued in on the Santa thing. (The same thing would happen with sex education. She had to tell someone and all her friends knew, so I was the lucky one.)
I didn’t want to know. I continued to write Santa letters, hoping my faith could somehow change the facts. This earned me mockery from my paternal grandparents, who accused me of being a disingenuous faker and/or hedging my bets. But I felt I could have gone two or three years more in the Santa bubble and I resented having the illusion taken from me.
The result, I think, is a remarkable discipline about gifts. I like to be surprised. I do not poke or pinch, shake or examine. If I stumble on a strange parcel in a place where a parcel should not be, I back away.
What’s the right age to learn there is no Santa, if ever?
Well, I spilled the beans this very day. My 8-year-old still believed, but her faith was shaky, and she caught me in a lie yesterday — I made reference to buying a present she’d previously ID’d as being from Santa. While she didn’t say anything, I could tell it bugged her, and it bugged me, and I finally decided to stop the lying.
A pause here for some explanation: I’m not religious, but I’m not crazy about what Santa does to kids, how easily it turns them into grasping little greedheads parceling out the naughty/nice behavior, particularly as they get older. By the time they’re old enough to doubt, they’re old enough to be introduced to the bigger picture. So here’s what I said: “You aren’t sure about Santa, right? Some of your friends don’t believe? Well, they’re half-right. There’s no man in a red suit who lives at the North Pole. But there is a Santa. It’s me, and it’s daddy, and it’s you. You. You are Santa, because Santa is everyone who’s ever given a gift to someone at Christmas.”
Then I went on about why we give gifts, and how Christmas is a religious holiday, and how gift-giving ties in with that. In my head it all sounded very Wise Parent, but I think it came out sounding really crappy. Anyway, her only response was, “Can we have pancakes for breakfast?”
I can’t decide if I did the right thing or ruined her Christmas.
What do you mean there’s no Santa Claus?
I’m afraid I never did believe in the fat, red guy. My parents knew that my grandmother had a big mouth and spoke as if children had no ears, so they didn’t think they could pull off Santa. I don’t really remember my friends “believing”, either.
I’m afraid I had to be told otherwise I would have gone insane with fear at a very young age. I didn’t care if he was a jolly old guy. The fact was he was allowed to invade my home one night every year was enough.
What about the tooth fairy? The Easter Bunny? The boogeyman?
I definitely believed in the Mole People after seeing the movie on local television. And I was pretty sure they lived under my bed, although the fact that my bedroom was on the second floor made this rather unlikely.
�Are you still awake!� my brother urgently whispered to me from the adjoining bed as we stared at the ceiling and stained to hear the thump on the roof. Our father had removed the coals from the fire and left the slice of Christmas cake and the bottle of Guinness on the table, still I was concerned that I might have had a bad year, promising myself to be better next year and then, daylight and my brother shouting and racing down the stairs. That afternoon out playing with our new toys and some girl gleefully telling me that there was no Santa and what an eejit I was, but my parents flatly denying it and insisting there was, but the doubt had started.
A boy at school, whose family had money, came in one day with a half crown stuck to a piece of paper. He had left his tooth on the piece of paper on the dresser in his bedroom and the Tooth Fairy had glued it to the paper. We were all amazed and examined it closely, but I knew that something was not right.
Why would the Tooth Fairy be carrying around glue just in case some fool forgot to put his tooth under his pillow where it belonged and why did this boy get a half crown when the rest of us only got a shilling?
What?! There isn’t any Santa Claus? Who says