A story about generations and about reality and about childhood questions. Do children need to have a fantasy world created for them in order to develop imagination, or do they just want straight, honest answers?
Original Title
Is There a Real Santa Claus and Other Controversial Questions
A story about generations and about reality and about childhood questions. Do children need to have a fantasy world created for them in order to develop imagination, or do they just want straight, honest answers?
A story about generations and about reality and about childhood questions. Do children need to have a fantasy world created for them in order to develop imagination, or do they just want straight, honest answers?
I was thinking about my childhood and how I never did ask a
lot of questions. I was interested in knowing things, but rather than ask, I just quietly observed and listened, especially when the grown ups didn’t know I was there. I was thinking that was probably because that’s just how I was, a quiet contemplative child who didn’t bother people with questions. But looking back, I think I may have started asking questions when I was so young that people didn’t take me seriously or believe I was capable of understanding explanations. So maybe I got dis- couraged early if my questions were met with – “Oh, you’ll know about that stuff when you’re older.”
I remember walking past the library in our town. It was an old
scary looking building with basement windows that I thought were intriguing. I came up with a story that the library base- ment was the place where they held secret meetings. And when a child got to be whatever age it was where you were old enough to know things, you could attend a meeting where they told you all the stuff a person might need to know. Like where babies came from and what was the religious signific- ance of Halloween and what you were supposed to do if you had sons, like how would you even potty train them or anything if you only had sisters and knew nothing at all about boys. (For- tunately, I only had daughters because that library meeting just never did happen for me.)
I had a good childhood actually. Santa Claus brought us
presents, the Easter Bunny brought candy, and when we lost our baby teeth, the tooth fairy put money under our pillows. There were explanations for how Santa could get into houses without chimneys and how he knew when we were spending Christmas Eve at Grandma’s house, but I did eventually get sus- picious about the tooth fairy.
Once that tooth fairy jerked my pillow out from under my
head kind of roughly and woke me up. But I pretended I was still asleep. And another time I woke up to find my tooth still un- der the pillow and no money. I went to express my disappoint- ment and my dad said he would go back and check. He came back and said I had just not looked closely enough be- cause the money certainly was still there. I went to my room and checked again and sure enough, there was a quarter in plain view where it definitely had not been before.
I never did confront my parents about my suspicions and
after awhile, my little sister got old enough that she was about to ask questions about whether those generous characters were actually real or not. I discouraged this, though, and ex- plained that it really would be a shame to ruin our parents’ fun. They did seem to enjoy it so much. I figured we could just hu- mor them for awhile longer. So it wasn’t until my baby sister, who is a full six years younger than me, got to be about too old to believe in Santa Claus, etc that my parents gave up on wait- ing for us to ask the questions and had to just tell us the truth anyway.
Sometime later I read something in a magazine that said –
when a child is old enough to ask the questions, that’s when they are old enough to be given a straight answer. Of course a parent needs to use some discretion concerning the details on difficult topics. But the basic concept seemed good to me so that’s how I raised my kids. They got Christmas presents and Easter baskets and money under their pillows for baby teeth, but I didn’t really say much about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy. The kids picked that stuff up from the culture and I just went along with it, not saying much one way or the other. Ok so my heart wasn’t really in it. I remember one of them saying – “Hey, mom, can I just have my tooth money now? I know the ‘tooth fairy’ isn’t going to remember to put it under my pillow or anything . . .” And the Easter Bunny would bring a little candy in time for Easter, but the bunny that came to our house preferred to bring most of the candy several days later when it could be purchased for 75% off.
My older daughter asked for a straight answer about Santa
Claus when she was 8 years old, just the right age for learning the truth. So that went well and everyone was pleased. My younger daughter, though, was not so cooperative. The year she was 3 years and 10 months at Christmas time, she asked me straight out if there was a “real” Santa Claus. And true to my policy, I told her – no, there was not a real Santa Claus. It was just a pretend thing for fun. I told her that actually parents and other people bought the presents, so it all turned out the same really; you still ended up with presents, which was the important thing anyway. But I told her it might be best not to share this in- formation with her friends just in case they might be sad or something. When she came home from daycare that day, she said, “I told ‘Patty and Gina’ about no real Santa and they wer- en’t even sad.” I said, “Well, they’re adults, so I guess that does make some difference.”
A short time later, I took my daughter with me to my office.
Some of my coworkers asked her what Santa was going to bring her for Christmas. “Well, you know, there is no real Santa,” she said. “Well, of course there is,” one of them said, shooting me a disapproving look. “No,” she explained patiently, “there isn’t. But don’t worry, you’ll still get presents. Your family will buy them for you.” We left after a few more minutes of this ar- guing back and forth.
I thought it was interesting that my daughter had accepted
the information I had given her with complete faith, just be- cause I had said it. This fact led me to believe I had done the right thing. Even though a number of people apparently dis- agreed, including her dad who said he thought I should have gotten his opinion before totally ruining our daughter’s child- hood.
Later, sometime within the next few days, I took my daughter
to get a haircut. The hairdresser asked, “Is Santa going to bring you something special for Christmas?” Glancing at me with a look that said, “hey, how ‘bout we just humor them for now?” She smiled back at the hairdresser and said, “Um . . . yeah . . .”
Humor them, I thought, just like I did . . . not really so different
after all. And I remembered I had heard it said that if you love your kids and do the best you can, some of the details of child rearing practices that come and go don’t really matter all that much. It all turns out about the same.