IS THERE A REAL SANTA CLAUS

(AND OTHER CONTROVERSIAL QUESTIONS)

I was thinking about my childhood and how I never did ask a

lot of questions. I was interested in knowing things, but rather
than ask, I just quietly observed and listened, especially when
the grown ups didn’t know I was there. I was thinking that was
probably because that’s just how I was, a quiet contemplative
child who didn’t bother people with questions. But looking
back, I think I may have started asking questions when I was so
young that people didn’t take me seriously or believe I was
capable of understanding explanations. So maybe I got dis-
couraged early if my questions were met with – “Oh, you’ll
know about that stuff when you’re older.”

I remember walking past the library in our town. It was an old

scary looking building with basement windows that I thought
were intriguing. I came up with a story that the library base-
ment was the place where they held secret meetings. And
when a child got to be whatever age it was where you were
old enough to know things, you could attend a meeting where
they told you all the stuff a person might need to know. Like
where babies came from and what was the religious signific-
ance of Halloween and what you were supposed to do if you
had sons, like how would you even potty train them or anything
if you only had sisters and knew nothing at all about boys. (For-
tunately, I only had daughters because that library meeting just
never did happen for me.)

I had a good childhood actually. Santa Claus brought us

presents, the Easter Bunny brought candy, and when we lost
our baby teeth, the tooth fairy put money under our pillows.
There were explanations for how Santa could get into houses
without chimneys and how he knew when we were spending
Christmas Eve at Grandma’s house, but I did eventually get sus-
picious about the tooth fairy.

Once that tooth fairy jerked my pillow out from under my

head kind of roughly and woke me up. But I pretended I was
still asleep. And another time I woke up to find my tooth still un-
der the pillow and no money. I went to express my disappoint-
ment and my dad said he would go back and check. He
came back and said I had just not looked closely enough be-
cause the money certainly was still there. I went to my room
and checked again and sure enough, there was a quarter in
plain view where it definitely had not been before.

I never did confront my parents about my suspicions and

after awhile, my little sister got old enough that she was about
to ask questions about whether those generous characters
were actually real or not. I discouraged this, though, and ex-
plained that it really would be a shame to ruin our parents’ fun.
They did seem to enjoy it so much. I figured we could just hu-
mor them for awhile longer. So it wasn’t until my baby sister,
who is a full six years younger than me, got to be about too old
to believe in Santa Claus, etc that my parents gave up on wait-
ing for us to ask the questions and had to just tell us the truth
anyway.

Sometime later I read something in a magazine that said –

when a child is old enough to ask the questions, that’s when
they are old enough to be given a straight answer. Of course a
parent needs to use some discretion concerning the details on
difficult topics. But the basic concept seemed good to me so
that’s how I raised my kids. They got Christmas presents and
Easter baskets and money under their pillows for baby teeth,
but I didn’t really say much about Santa Claus, the Easter
Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy. The kids picked that stuff up from the
culture and I just went along with it, not saying much one way
or the other. Ok so my heart wasn’t really in it. I remember one
of them saying – “Hey, mom, can I just have my tooth money
now? I know the ‘tooth fairy’ isn’t going to remember to put it
under my pillow or anything . . .” And the Easter Bunny would
bring a little candy in time for Easter, but the bunny that came
to our house preferred to bring most of the candy several days
later when it could be purchased for 75% off.

My older daughter asked for a straight answer about Santa

Claus when she was 8 years old, just the right age for learning
the truth. So that went well and everyone was pleased. My
younger daughter, though, was not so cooperative. The year
she was 3 years and 10 months at Christmas time, she asked me
straight out if there was a “real” Santa Claus. And true to my
policy, I told her – no, there was not a real Santa Claus. It was
just a pretend thing for fun. I told her that actually parents and
other people bought the presents, so it all turned out the same
really; you still ended up with presents, which was the important
thing anyway. But I told her it might be best not to share this in-
formation with her friends just in case they might be sad or
something. When she came home from daycare that day, she
said, “I told ‘Patty and Gina’ about no real Santa and they wer-
en’t even sad.” I said, “Well, they’re adults, so I guess that does
make some difference.”

A short time later, I took my daughter with me to my office.

Some of my coworkers asked her what Santa was going to
bring her for Christmas. “Well, you know, there is no real Santa,”
she said. “Well, of course there is,” one of them said, shooting
me a disapproving look. “No,” she explained patiently, “there
isn’t. But don’t worry, you’ll still get presents. Your family will
buy them for you.” We left after a few more minutes of this ar-
guing back and forth.

I thought it was interesting that my daughter had accepted

the information I had given her with complete faith, just be-
cause I had said it. This fact led me to believe I had done the
right thing. Even though a number of people apparently dis-
agreed, including her dad who said he thought I should have
gotten his opinion before totally ruining our daughter’s child-
hood.

Later, sometime within the next few days, I took my daughter

to get a haircut. The hairdresser asked, “Is Santa going to bring
you something special for Christmas?” Glancing at me with a
look that said, “hey, how ‘bout we just humor them for now?”
She smiled back at the hairdresser and said, “Um . . . yeah . . .”

Humor them, I thought, just like I did . . . not really so different

after all. And I remembered I had heard it said that if you love
your kids and do the best you can, some of the details of child
rearing practices that come and go don’t really matter all that
much. It all turns out about the same.

RoseDQ August 3, 2009