The Secret Origin of the Secret Society of Secret Santas
December 13, 2018 10:33 AM   Subscribe

What to do when your children stop believing in Santa: teach them to become him. [slImgur]

Courtesy of Tumblr [it aten't dead]
posted by Halloween Jack (24 comments total) 33 users marked this as a favorite
 
Yes, Virginia, you are a Santa Claus.
posted by zamboni at 10:55 AM on December 13, 2018 [4 favorites]


I read this a year or two ago and I really like the general concept. I'm not sure I'd sit down and explicitly tell my kid that Santa isn't real (especially at such a young age), but would definitely do this once they figure it out on their own.
posted by asnider at 11:00 AM on December 13, 2018


Oh, as a parent I really like this.

I had really mixed feelings about going along with Santa being real, but it's something that was pushed in pre-school (along with Day of the Three Kings) and by my parents. She's 7 and this is probably her last Christmas as a believer. She asks for a treasure hunt every year as a gift and it is only a matter of time before she recognizes my handwriting on the clues. (Parental pride moment: I made her use a metal detector to dig up the garage floor to find a key one year.)

Last year we ended up giving a bunch of items to refugee families and this year we donated to homeless children. This would be a great excuse to include her more on this stuff and make it seem less like this has been a big joke on her.

Also, is it just me or is it much easier to believe in Santa Claus in a world where gifts show up magically at your door regularly thanks to the internet? The Santa supply chain is a lot more plausible nowadays.
posted by Alison at 11:05 AM on December 13, 2018 [6 favorites]


I'm not sure I'd sit down and explicitly tell my kid that Santa isn't real (especially at such a young age), but would definitely do this once they figure it out on their own.

Note, however, that this person doesn't ever say that Santa isn't real:
Some of your friends might have even told you that there is no Santa. A lot of children think that, because they aren't ready to BE a Santa yet, but YOU ARE.
posted by Etrigan at 11:10 AM on December 13, 2018 [5 favorites]


This is very in line with our guiding parental focus to raise a kid who has kindness for others as his driving motivation in life. A++ will use in ~5 years.
posted by allkindsoftime at 11:18 AM on December 13, 2018 [6 favorites]


Age 5: You believe in Santa.
Age 15: You don't believe in Santa.
Age 35: You are Santa.
Age 65: You look like Santa.
posted by Miss Cellania at 11:21 AM on December 13, 2018 [16 favorites]


Instructions unclear, taught my kids to be Secret Satans.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:32 AM on December 13, 2018 [39 favorites]


I remember one guy's blog I used to follow regularly years ago and his family's tradition of being "Christmas Ninjas", which is to say sneaking up to a front porch under the cover of darkness, leaving a gift, ringing the bell and away!
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 12:08 PM on December 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


I sent this a few years ago to all my friends who are parents or would be parents someday. It was very well received.

My mother on the other hand is staunchly in the category of, "You do not get presents from Santa if you do not believe in Santa so no presents." I love it. I get presents from Santa, my pets, and (inexplicably) my imaginary friend from when I was like 5. (Only sometimes though. So Inside Out.)
posted by Hermione Granger at 12:26 PM on December 13, 2018 [3 favorites]


I've always wondered about age order and Santa. I am the oldest of all the cousins (all in our 20s and 30s now) and I was naturally the first one to realize there was no Santa. (Daddy is Santa Claus in the song. That's the joke, holy shit how dense are you people?) But rather than turn this into a heartwarming piece of charity I was simply told that now I'm in on the joke.

And I loved that. But I was the first one. And I kind of wonder if my younger cousins resent that I and the other ones were putting one over on them? Because we totally were, that was the fun.
posted by East14thTaco at 12:29 PM on December 13, 2018 [4 favorites]


I am no longer sure if my kids are just pretending to go along with the Santa game, or really still believe. They won't let on either way. They certainly are around the age where they are old enough to not believe anymore, and most of their friends don't. But whatever, we all enjoy Christmas.
posted by fimbulvetr at 12:37 PM on December 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


I find this stuff so interesting. My partner is viet and her family never celebrated christmas, when we had kids I suddenly found myself looking at my white Christmas tradition with new eyes.

When the kids asked about santa I just couldn't lie to them, it felt wrong. They didn't care a whit, and our Christmas's continue to be a time happiness.

Some (white) people have been really aghast when I've mentioned we told the kids santa wasn't real, but the thing I like about the secular version of Christmas is that no one gets to say what or means to you or how you celebrate.

Its flexibility and fuzzy focus on giving and joy is a great strength. I thought I would feel a pang when santa died in our house, actually his passing was all but unnoticed, subsumed by the real love we celebrate.
posted by smoke at 12:39 PM on December 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


Some (white) people have been really aghast when I've mentioned we told the kids santa wasn't real, but the thing I like about the secular version of Christmas is that no one gets to say what or means to you or how you celebrate.

Santa is the secular version of Christmas at this point. The popular conception of him is so divorced from the actual historical Saint Nicholas, or any Christian religious practice related to him, that he's basically become a pop culture deity.

I'm born and raised Jewish, but I always loved Santa and the non-religious Christmas stuff. I even love the traditional Christmas carols to the point that I often ignore/forget their Christian content and am surprised when it gets pointed out.

You characterize Santa as a lie, which seems to imply it's a negative or malicious thing. For me, and I think for most children raised with the Santa myth, by the time we're old enough to know the truth we're old enough to appreciate that it was our parents trying to add a little magic to our lives while we were still able to believe. Learning the secret felt like taking a step out of childhood and into a greater adult world.

I can understand why someone would choose not to do this, but it always rubs me the the wrong way when Santa myth is criticized as some harmful lie when I don't think that captures what's going on.
posted by Sangermaine at 1:07 PM on December 13, 2018 [23 favorites]


I'm wondering if there's a Secret Solstice...
posted by jim in austin at 2:42 PM on December 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


Secret Saturnalia?
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:47 PM on December 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


Wife: "I don't know, shouldn't we tell them the truth?"

Me (Batman voice): "Sometimes, truth isn't good enough. Sometimes people deserve more. Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded."

Wife: "Okay, Jesus."
posted by officer_fred at 3:40 PM on December 13, 2018 [9 favorites]


it always rubs me the the wrong way when Santa myth is criticized as some harmful lie

That's kinda what I was referring to in my post: people are so defensive about santa. There was nothing about harm or malice mentioned in my post, nor did I characterise santa as a lie, I was talking about lying to my kids.

As you say, in one sense santa is secular but in another there's an element of the sacred to him. Sacred for secular people. There can be a strong reaction when people "profane" santa, as I am sometimes perceived to by not playing along with my kids.

I'm not personally judging what anyone wants to do with the idea of santa. But I think it's worthwhile remembering that lots and lots of families everywhere engage with this idea even different ways, and they are equally valid.
posted by smoke at 4:45 PM on December 13, 2018 [3 favorites]


We didn't do the whole Santa thing at our house (nobody had to tell us he wasn't real; it just never occurred to us that he might be) but I remember how awesome it felt when we were old enough to get little presents and put them in our parents' stockings.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:20 PM on December 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


I was one of those kids (I don't think there are a lot of us, but I don't think I was the only one either) who was really mad when I found out about Santa - how dare the adults lie to me? I had been slow to figure it out, and I think that in addition to feeling betrayed, I was vaguely embarrassed, as the oldest child in my family, that I was still being lumped in with Santa-believing babies. I don't think it helped that my mom refused to confirm my Santa-doubting suspicions when I asked her. I used to wonder (worry, even) about how I would handle this with kids of my own, but my partner is Jewish and Santa is not in the cards for our future kids, so that takes care of that.

I really like how kind and respectful this approach is - it does a nice job of validating children's intuitions and acknowledges the process of growing up while protecting some of the fun and magic of being a kid.
posted by naoko at 6:50 PM on December 13, 2018


I think I was fairly young when my family shifted from labeling non-specific gifts (the ones that weren't "from Grandma" or "from Aunt C" or what have you) as "from Santa" to labeling them as "from [name of one of our cats]". And since the cards attached to the presents were in my parents's fairly distinctive handwriting…

I still have the manicure kit that Pinky, the wonderfully cranky cat whom I adored, my mother tolerated, and an artist friend once dubbed "the ugliest cat I've seen", gave me 35 years ago. I use it regularly.
posted by Lexica at 8:14 PM on December 13, 2018 [5 favorites]


My kids know that Spiderman isn't real. They still love Spiderman as a character, and have fun with the comics and shows. I feel like it's very much the same thing with Santa.
posted by Harald74 at 11:08 PM on December 13, 2018 [6 favorites]


My kids know that Spiderman isn't real. They still love Spiderman as a character, and have fun with the comics and shows. I feel like it's very much the same thing with Santa.

It does make sense that Spiderman would have an easier time climbing down chimneys...
posted by EndsOfInvention at 1:54 AM on December 14, 2018 [7 favorites]


I missed the train on transitioning them from "Santa brings the presents" to "in reality Spiderman brings the presents".
posted by Harald74 at 3:46 AM on December 14, 2018 [4 favorites]


I don’t actually remember believing Santa was real. I recognized Mom’s handwriting the first or second Christmas I could read (age 4 or 5). By the time I have any semi-continuous memories (age 6), I already knew what was up. But as a kid, I totally understood it as playing pretend, and playing pretend isn’t fun unless you commit to it. I think Mom and Dad thought I believed much longer than I really did, though. I didn’t want to ruin their game of pretend by saying anything — and they didn’t want to ruin mine. At a certain point we just kind of mutually gave up the game; there was no Big Conversation and I don’t even remember when it totally died out.

It is absolutely typical of my family that we never actually talked about it, and just did a whole silent “I know that you know that I know that you know” thing. We were possibly the strongest Guess Culture family in all of history. (We’ve all learned to be a little more direct over the years, when necessary.)
posted by snowmentality at 5:53 PM on December 14, 2018


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