Bummer! Just heard Ds and friend
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| Fri, 12-01-2006 - 9:48pm |
talking in the other room. The Polar Express was on and I heard the friend say "you know Santa's not real". My Ds age 9 said "Yeah, I know". Actually I am pretty sure he DIDN'T know but didn't want to admit that to his friend. I went in a few minutes later and it came up again. The friend said "Santa's not real. My Mom and Dad admitted it to me". I caught his eye and shook my head and put my finger to my lips. Then he said "It's o.k. Austin already knows". Austin said "yeah, Mom, I hear you and Dad". Now I know that is not true because he has always been sound asleep and he believed last week! I said "Well, I believe in Santa. He is the symbol of unselfish giving. If you don't believe you won't receive!"
The friend is a really nice kid and wasn't trying to be mean or anything. Just a lack of good judgement of keeping a secret quiet.
Oh well, I knew it was coming, I just feeling really sad right now. I guess that it is just another fun and lovely part of childhood that is gone forever now!

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Years ago I began thinking about how the Santa thing was going to come out when the kids at school started talking about how it wasn't real. I decided that if people can believe in Jesus, they can believe in Santa Claus. So what I've told my dd (now 11) is that Santa doesn't fly all around the world and the elves don't make toys. That's simple, because they can do the math and figure out that no magic could serve billions of kids in a 24-hour period, and the toys obviously come from "Mattel" and "Hasbro," not from the North Pole. I told her that because Santa can't do it all, parents help. Then it gets a little creative: the letters go to Santa and he confers with parents to make sure that the items on the list are "approved." We've had some issues with my ds8 who thinks that he can get whatever he wants from Santa. So he's had to understand that Santa's pockets are Mom & Dad's pockets. ;0) Santa delivers the goods to the parents, who get up in the middle of the night and put it all under the tree.
As they get older, I hope they will keep in mind that the spirit of Santa Claus is a very powerful thing. Maybe Santa was once a real person, or always just a myth, but people believe enough in the magic of the Santa story that when we grow up and have children, we become willing to go to a lot of effort to create that magic for them. Why, then, would we suddenly one year say, "Yeah, it was all just a hoax we did when you were little." That kind of attitude just invalidates my years of getting up at 2 a.m. and working for 2 hours setting up lego villages and Hot Wheels tracks. I hope that when they are teenagers, my kids will understand that the "ritual" of Santa Claus is a tribute we adults pay to the spirit of giving, and they will start to be Santas themselves. And what do I tell them to say to their friends who ask, "You still believe in Santa Claus?" I tell them to ask that friend if they believe in Jesus. Because it's the same thing. The holy spirit is alive and well as long as people keep Jesus Christ in their hearts. And the spirit of giving is alive and well as long as people keep Santa in their hearts.
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