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kids should find out for themselves though. i'd say about 5 is when they should GROW UP

but kept up the charade because I didn't want the presents to stop

I'd say that's a bit on the old side. I thought many would figure it out a few years before that.

you don't need to pretend some made up fatty to help kids understanding why share and give is good

even after my brother and I had found a load of presents hidden away on top of the wardrode I still belived. constructed a scenario where father christmas had droppped off some of the presents before hand to svae a bit of time on the big night.

teachers tho, it's not their place.

to stop them from asking for loads of stuff

:D

my parents never bothered telling me about santa at all and were just straight up in generally not getting me much. they rule

is that bad ? I just think it'd be nice to have a family holiday without deluding my children

So you should lie to your kids??
- the truth , London, 07/12/2012 14:41

and double weird when people who love sci-fi and World of Warcraft seen eager to write it off as silly.

This teacher was a massive nob and if I was my kid I'd probably be photographed standing outside the school with my child both with massive glum expressions on our faces.

I was still believing in Santa at 10. It probably had something to do with the devout Catholic upbringing I had and the expectation to believe in truly weird things without question. Of course, as a 10 year old, you’ll believe the stuff that teachers and your parents will tell you, since you trust them with all the information you’ve been fed already. In the playground, naturally, I denied believing in Santa and ridiculed others brave enough to admit their belief. But I clung onto the faith, sure there must be something there. I still remember how horrible it was to see one of the harder kids in my year tell a 6 year old that Santa didn’t exist repeatedly with such force and conviction that the younger boy burst into uncontrollable tears.

When it came to my tenth Christmas, and we were stopping school for our holidays, my wonderful teacher Mrs Murray said to us, ‘I hope Santa’s good to you all’. But she said it was a strange sarcastic intonation and the other kids all sort of giggled with a similar sarcastic tone. I joined in with them, but also secretly thought ‘Oh boy, I hope he is!’

A few weeks after Christmas, my mum was talking to me in the kitchen and casually relayed the most heart-warming and heart-breaking story I’d heard up to that point. She told me how, two years previously, my dad had gone above and beyond the call of duty to secure a Buzz Lightyear action figure for my Christmas. My dad put himself through hell and stress to get that toy just because he wanted to see me happy on Christmas morning. As my mum told the story of how my dad had to drive for miles and miles to wait in a queue outside a toy shop, and then finally get to the door and be denied, all the while having to hide from TV cameras in case he was spotted by me, all I could think was ‘Santa isn’t real’.

It wasn’t until the end of the story, when my mum said, ‘Wasn’t that brilliant of your dad to go to all that trouble? Just shows how much he really loves you’, that I realised ‘oh, THAT’S what Christmas is: doing anything for the people you love’. And when I thought back to all the difficult-to-get presents of years gone by and the ones that came in the following years, they meant so much more because I knew that my dad had ripped the world apart to see me happy.

before I come down on Christmas day.

they should be asked when they want to be told that father christmas doesn't exist

Maybe I thought they told him what to get...

related: every year, we used to leave out a mince pie and a glass of whiskey for Father Christmas and a carrot for his reindeer. In the morning we'd find a few crumbs and the carrot top left.

Only a few years ago, my dad confessed to me that he used to dutifully eat the whole carrot before going to bed, and he'd only just realised he could have chewed the top off, and put the rest of the carrot back in the fridge.

outraged headline, bother to read the story and apparently it was an...

"'awkward exchange with pupils' after one of them quizzed him over Santa's existence.

Speaking to Mail Online, he said: 'He responded clumsily and didn't do his best.

'He was asked whether he existed and responded in a way, and with a look, that gave them doubt.

'He made a mistake, but we have covered it up, just as you do with children and they haven't asked about it anymore.'

He added that the teacher was 'mortified' by what had happened."

So not like they just told them, the kids worked it out. I don't remember ever truly believing in Santa Claus, so I don't remember finding out that he wasn't real. It is just really bloody obvious. Same goes for Jesus, the tooth fairy, the PC brigade, all these mythical things.

my dad explained santa had had enough milk by the time he got to our house and he could do with a nip of whiskey

And I remember being in assembly in the top year when one my classmates read out a piece that included the line *when you grow out of believing in Father Christmas*

Well, we all chuckled away at the back, but a load of the youngest kids sat down the front just burst into tears, which made us laugh even more. The headmaster had to issue an apology and a letter to the parents of those affected.

is you're appropriating the revelation of the lie to your current self, as if a child is going to feel the same deception you'd feel if somehow someway somebody just revealed to you that santa isn't real.

have to remember that children live in a 24/7 fantasy world anyway (well, the ones not being abused or whatever) so by the time they start figuring out that he can't be real, they're also figuring out all kinds of other realities about the world around them so it's all kind of lumped in together. it's just growing up, and the process of actually transitioning from fantasy world to real world seems way more disturbing looking back on it than it actually was at the time. for most kids.

Dad: oh, that's easy, he has the ability to take on the handwriting of whoever's house he goes to.
Me: Hmmmmm.

old -- I know -- but a few of my friends at the time and I adamantly held onto the belief Santa was real. I finally figured it out and it was just kind of like, "Oh, drag" but Christmas was still fun and 'magical' I guess. I still love Christmas Eve.

However, some asshole in Texas just ruined it for a bunch of 5 year olds which I think is going way too far: http://gawker.com/5966107/texas-kindergarten-teacher-ruins-christmas-tells-5+year+old-students-santa-claus-isnt-real

probably mainly because the only present i've ever got that said it was from `santa` was a pair of scissors. Which is a really odd present to get a 5 year old NICE ONE DAD

and then gradually over the years decreased the presents from him and increased the presents from her

it was a very smooth transition, i don't think i even had a 'santa isn't real' moment

that Santa Claus is some sort of black lesbian feminist asylum seeker filling up children's stockings with copies of The God Delusion or something.

They havent got time for that shit. What a bunch of squares

because at the moment she has absolutely no doubt that he exists. I would prefer her to work it out for herself but it's not exactly a given thing that it will happen like that.

She is coming up 4, she has been with us when we have bought her presents and still believes santa will deliver them. The wife came up with some story such as 'parents buy all the presents and then we give them to Santa Claus and depending on if you're naughty or nice, he brings them back on christmas day.'

As far the food that she leaves out, the milk and cookie is swiftly eaten by myself and the carrot is dropped into the guinea pig cage.

No one seemed to care very much, something to do with me being 21.