🍨 Soul Snacks

2.5 min read

Dear Snackers,

Maybe it’s a little early in the year for this topic, but if your kids are anything like mine, the day after Halloween when the holiday décor starts hitting the shelves, they are going to start thinking about Christmas and the questions about Santa will inevitably begin. 

No, Santa is not fucking real, but when is the right time to tell your kids? When my oldest was in first grade a friend of his, who happens to be the youngest of four children, broke the news that Santa was not real during a playdate one afternoon – yet another contributing factor to my disdain for playdates…Maybe I’ll get into that on next week’s Soul Snacks. When my son returned home that afternoon he asked, “Mom, is Santa real? (Unnamed friend) told me Santa is fake and parents are the ones who put the presents out.” To which I replied, “Do you really think I would ever buy you that many presents? Ha! No way! Do you want a cookie?” hoping to distract him from any further interrogation with a sweet treat. The cookie decoy staved him off from diving deeper into the truth behind Santa for the remainder of the day, but it was only about a week later when he, again, inquired. This time, I started to sweat. He knew the truth, and I knew that he knew the truth, but did he want to still believe or would I be making him the fool by evading the truth?! What the fuck do I do?

I found out about Santa when I was in the first grade, because my older brother told me approximately ten seconds after he came home from school the day he found out. He was in the fourth grade. I was crushed because I really still wanted Santa to be real, but I suppose when I thought about it all, the hoax of it was pretty obvious. My brother, on the other hand, was BULLSHIT. He felt so duped, drowning in the embarrassment of having defended Santa’s honor to his friends. He was pissed that my parents had been lying to us all those years, and he was ready to scorch the earth with the truth about old father Christmas, and I would be his first victim. 

When my son, again, asked me if Santa really was the one who put the presents out on Christmas, my brother rushed to my mind – the idea of my kids resenting me for lying to them, particularly in the wake of the defaming remarks he’d heard about Santa recently, was all I could think about so, reluctantly, I told him, “Honey, Santa represents the spirit of Christmas and giving, and there is still an incredible amount of magic around the season of Christmas, but parents are the ones who give the presents to the kids.” Cue the lip quiver. Cue the disappointed eyes. Cue the tears. What had I done? Right there and then I watched one of the most prominent symbols of the magic of his childhood turn to dust – I might as well have told him about taxes, too. I immediately regretted my decision, wishing I could rewind back to a few moments sooner when all of his hopes for the magical things the world has to offer still existed….suddenly the punches about the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and our St. Patrick’s Day Leprechaun started rolling in, one devasting blow at a time. As a consolation prize for his innocence, I reminded him that his younger sister and brother still believed in Santa, and he could now be a part of the magic for them, which immediately brightened his spirits. We let him in on all the presents we got for the other kids that year and he was a great sport about playing it cool. 

My daughter, now in the third grade and about to turn nine, has, on several occasions, inquired about the existence of old Saint Nick. Still feeling as though I prematurely broke the news to my son, I have awkwardly skirted around the question…until this past week when her first molar fell out, not long before bed one evening. After tucking her tooth away in her special “tooth fairy pillow” (a small pillow with a little pouch sewn to the front which conveniently hangs from the door knob, the far superior alternative to locating a child’s tooth from under a pillow in the dark of night while they’re sleeping (WHO MADE UP THIS TRADITION?!) and swapping it out for $1)) she entered my room, laying right up against me, face to face. I could almost smell the question coming out of her bloody mouth. She looked me in the eyes and demanded, “Mom, is the tooth fairy real? Seriously, if she’s not real, you need to tell me now.” With tight lips and a furrowed brow, I nervously muttered out of the side of my mouth, “She’s not real.” Cue the lip quiver. Cue the disappointed eyes. Cue the tears. She took the next five minutes or so to meltdown as I hugged and stroked her head. In an effort to break what might turn into an all-night downward spiral, I made a joke in my typical deadpan, sarcasm-laden tone, “Oh sweetie,” I said, “I’m so sorry. There is no tiny fairy flying through the night with a sack of children’s teeth on her back that she collects in exchange for money. I know how hard that is to believe.” My daughter, with her quite similar sense of humor, held back a smile which turned into holding back laughter which, 1000% of the time, results in a full on laugh attack. She asked me why I told her, and I reminded her that, five minutes earlier, she firmly demanded that I tell her the truth. I then reminded her that she might avoid questions she does not want to know the answer to, in a subtle hint for her to avoid the topic of Santa, if she were not ready to hear my answer. She obliged. In anticipation of the holidays, when she asks me about Santa, I am going to tell her the truth. 

Like most of what I’ve encountered in motherhood, I had no set plans as to how to deal with the Santa/other special-occasion-fantasy-characters question and, in the times I thought I had a plan, things typically did not go according to my plan. What I do know is, almost always, unless it would deeply hurt your feelings or it’s not my place to answer, if you look me in the eyes and ask me a question, you’re going to get the truth. Despite both my older kids taking the news about Santa/the Tooth Fairy pretty rough at first, they were over it within about ten minutes. In my son’s case, knowing how innocent he was then and still is to this day, I wish I had kept the magic alive for him at least another year. There is no right way to handle these questions – I have friends with teenagers who have never truthfully answered the Santa question always responding, “If you don’t believe, you don’t receive.” which is fun, too. 

I will say, when I see my son’s face on Christmas morning looking at my husband and I with an incredible amount of gratitude, knowing all the effort we put into making a special morning for him and his siblings, I feel at ease in knowing Christmas, and indeed the magic of all that childhood has to offer, is kept intact with the love and warmth of having your family together, which has nothing to do with Santa, and I’m ok with them knowing that. 

Caitlin 

• EAT: A sheet pan recipe that my whole family would actually eat.

• BUY: Here are some examples of the hanging tooth fairy pillow I was talking about, in case it's not too late for you to use it as your family's tradition:

• LISTEN: In the spirit of childhood, here are some songs that might spark up some nostalgia from the years of your youth, if you’re a young GenX/Old Millennial like me.