The other night my friend Nicole commented on what I had
written that she raised her girls believing in Santa. She offered it up as something of a
challenge, because she knows my boys were raised to believe that Santa is not
real. So here is the cold, hard unvarnished
truth about Santa. It does not bother me
for other families to believe in him.
I grew up believing in Santa, and left on my own, in all likelihood
I probably would have done Santa with my boys.
However, Kat was raised differently than I was. Her family didn’t do Santa, for all the right
reasons.
When Kat and I were newlyweds
the whole ‘do we have a tree or not’ sort of eclipsed the Santa issue for
us. I have written how Kat’s sister
raised her daughter Elisa Gail to know the truth about Santa, and failed because
her mother in law told Elisa that Santa was real, and then showered Elisa in
Santa presents every single year. How do
you argue with a Granny like that?
So since I sort of won the tree issue, I compromised with
Kat and we didn’t tell Paul about Santa.
The first year we really had issues was 2001, when Paul was 3 and
Matthew was a newborn. That was mostly because
Paul didn’t trust strangers, and he was certain Santa was a stranger, and a
nosy one at that. What business is it of
Santa’s what Paul wants for Christmas? Combine
that with his big brother protectiveness, (NO, Santa can NOT give my baby
brother a gift, that is a brothers job!) and Matthew grew up without much
temptation to believe.
We had a few rocky years where Matthew was convinced it was
lying if he let other people believe in Santa, but we have recovered from
that. With minimal scaring to the adults
involved. (Read about it here). Which
brings me to my point, I am ok with other people telling their kids about Santa
and believing in that, provided you are ok with me telling my boys otherwise.
It may be that I am like the atheist who thinks he might be
wrong about God. The arguments with true
believers make me uncomfortable. And
that my friends, is the truth.
.png)
No comments:
Post a Comment