The Santa dilemma

A good friend, Gaia, and I were talking the other day about Santa and how she had told her children aged 6 and 8 that he didn’t exist. I was shocked (she’s a very open-minded person but very spiritual), I asked her if it was because it clashed with her Catholic beliefs. She laughed and replied that her parents had been very strict and had ruined Santa for her when she was young. She in turn had inadvertently ruined it for her younger sister; her sister had never forgiven her! Gaia then told me her story.

When she was about 8 years old Gaia was very naughty, as 8 year olds are. Her parents told her that Father Christmas was watching and if she carried on with her badly behaved ways Santa would bring her nothing but a stick to smack her bottom and chillies to put in her back-chatting mouth. Christmas morning came around and little Gaia sneaked down to the Christmas tree, what did she find propped against it? You guessed right… a stick with a string of dried chillies tied to it and nothing else! Gaia being the tough little girl that she was decided to hide the evidence and pretend that Santa hadn’t come.

Her parents came down from the bedroom and immediately asked where the stick and the chillies were? Gaia lied and said that Santa hadn’t brought them anything. Her parents then of course said that he had and N figured it out! She yelled at her parents that the only way that they could have known about the stick with the chillies on it was if they had put it there and that meant that Father Christmas didn’t exist. Gaia’s parents agreed and so the dream died for Gaia. Her little sister was standing nearby and heard it all, two dream murders in one morning.

The conclusion being that Gaia decided never to use the lie that is Santa to blackmail her children (that includes the tooth fairy, Easter bunny, etc.). She’s very implicit with them that they shouldn’t ruin it for any of their friends who do believe but the not so subtle eye rolls that they give when someone mentions Santa give it away to we who are in the know.

My children believe in as much make believe stuff as I can get them to and I can be very creative when it comes to explaining anomalies that they may find. I think that the longer they can believe that there are purely good beings that always have their best interests at heart the better. There is too much violence, anger and bad stuff in the world already, what harm will a little imagination do? Some of my fondest memories are of my sister, brother and I hiding behind a dividing wall in the lounge waiting for Father Christmas to arrive. We never saw him of course but the thrill of the hunt made us try every year. Then one year, I don’t even remember which, we stopped believing. Pity really.