Why we Don't do Santa

Hello Everyone.

Today is the 22nd of December and I thought that I would write about why we have chosen not to participate in Santa coming on Christmas Eve.
Before I get started, I wanted to say that if you and your family choose to "do" Santa in your home, that is fine. We are all different, and see things differently. If you are happy with what you are doing, that's fine, I just want to share what we do in our family.

I grew up believing in Santa Clause. However, by the time I was about 9, I was told that there was no Santa! I was devastated and it felt like my whole world had turned upside down. Everything that I believed in,  the sleigh, the reindeer, the North Pole, and the magic had been taken away. I didn't handle it very well and I felt like I had been lied to terribly.

When I became a mum, I didn't encourage Santa as a real person. My son had a photo taken at 1 year old as a cute thing to do, but I knew he was too young to understand anything like that. By the time he was 2, the idea of Santa had started to come into our home because everyone was talking about it. And I was unsure how I wanted to go about it without sounded negative to a 2-year-old. Over the next few years, it wasn't that I encouraged him to write letters, and kept talking about it but it was almost like an unspoken knowledge that Santa would come on Christmas Eve. It was the Christmas when our daughter was 3 months old, that we kind of knew it would be the last year that Henry would receive a gift from Santa. And by the time Claire was 1, Henry (aged almost 8)  knew the truth.

How did we tell him?

One day, we were talking about Christmas shopping and we mentioned how he had been asking if Santa was real or not and that was how started the conversation. We told him about the stories of St. Nicholas but the man that is known as Santa these days is a pretend person that parents have continued over the years to bring magic into other children's lives. We said we felt that the spirit of St. Nick lives on through the love we have for each other and the pleasure of giving gifts. And he just understood. He wasn't sad about it or anything, he just "got" it. We have chosen not to lie to Claire about Santa Clause and she has known properly since she was 3. (before then we just didn't really talk about Santa coming on the 24th because she was too young to understand either way).

Today, we treat the stories and watch movies like any other wonderful, imaginative story or character. It's not that we have a  "No Santa anything " kind of home, no, because I love Santa. I think he is amazing, but so are the characters from any great story or movie. My current favorite version is Santa from the movie Rise of the Guardians and to tell you the truth I watch Christmas movies so much more than my kids do.

Henry is now 11, and looking back he has never really been into Christmas as much as I have, I think that is part of his personality as well as just growing up within the typical Australian traditions. For many, Christmas is a bit more casual here than in America (just for comparison), but we still have fun and enjoy the day.

As Claire is now 4, she understands that Santa is pretend but she still likes him. She is enjoying the new movie Klause a lot (it really is a great movie) but she knows that he is pretend, just like the other fun things she likes. And she too is totally fine with this. She asked me a little while ago why do grown-ups pretend Santa is real. And we have said the same thing to her as we did with Henry, about St. Nick.

I know that there a probably a lot of people out there who think this kind of childhood is "unfair" or "not magical" and that you "just have to", but over the years, I have not seen any difference. If anything, things are more fun and exciting because the season has more honesty and love. Our children know that we are the ones who think about them when choosing gifts. We are the ones who try to bring in the magic and the excitement. We talk about how amazing it would be if Santa was real and what it would be like if the Elves were real, and so on.

Why did we choose to do this?

We wanted to be honest with our kids. We didn't want to lie to Henry anymore and we wanted to be truthful to Claire as much as possible. We also wanted to be realistic when it comes to consumerism,  and we wanted our kids to know that we are the ones who picked the gifts. We also didn't want Santa to be used as a tool for bribing kids. If we were going to bribe them into better behaviors then we would do so with real things like outings and treats etc. We didn't want our kids to think that the only reason to be good was so that they could go onto the Nice List, but because it is the right thing to do. And though we all make mistakes, being honest, kind and to show love is the best gift of all.
It was also important that our kids keep this information to themselves. It is not our job to tell other children what we think and believe and they understand that.

So that is how we do and not do Santa. I have always loved watching my favorite Christmas movies. I love the old artworks of the old Santa and I am always pointing at things and saying to the kids "oh wow look at THAT Santa, doesn't he look great?" and things like that, but it is the same if it were Harry Potter or anything that my kids love because they know is just for fun.

My next post will be about minimalism during the Christmas season and what we got each other this year.
Thanks for reading.
Beke