I ruined a Christmas

[Lovecats]

My sister is 7 yrs older than I am. We were at my Aunt & Uncle's house one Christmas and she mentioned that she had gotten this stuffed animal (a white, fuzzy cat) from our parents. I knew it had come from Santa. I don't remember it as being terribly traumatic though. Now we kids actually had to at least pretend to believe longer because of my Dad. That's what my Mom told me.

[Food Lady]

A news anchor said there was no Santa on the air. She later apologized.

It was nice that she apologized for upsetting kids, but I agree with those people:

Robinson said in her apology that a "very few" viewers defended her statements, arguing that kids "mature enough to watch the nightly news" and the sometimes-violent and upsetting content it contains should be unaffected by the anchor's gaffe.

[wolfie]

Fortran programmers know that Santa is real - unless declared integer.

[Ironclad Alibi]

Of course Santa is real. And I have it on good authority that I am Santa.

On August day several years ago I was pushing a cart (trolley) through a grocery store, with Mrs. IA a few steps being me. I passed a mother with a young child, maybe 2 or 3 years old. Mrs. IA reported that as they passed, the young lad pointed at me, turned to his mother and said, "Look, Santa!"

So there you are.

[Kheldarson]

But I still have them on the hook for the Tooth Fairy. They can't figure out how I can get a dollar bill into the envelope they put their tooth in without opening it, and I'll never tell.

Share your secret, o great one? I have a little one who will need money in a few years...

[wolfie]

I believe it's the same method spies/censors used to get letters out of unopened envelopes. They'd stick a pair of thin knitting needles through the small opening at the side (one inside a fold in the letter, one outside), then roll it up around the needles and extract it sideways. After reading it, they'd re-roll it around the needles, stick it back in through the opening, and unroll it.

[Food Lady]

Or you can wait until the kid goes to sleep and change out the envelope for an unused one.

[EvilEmpryss]

Or you can wait until the kid goes to sleep and change out the envelope for an unused one.

Kids quickly twig to that one. Mine would initial their envelopes, even taping the flaps down, to make sure it was the same one they woke up with.

Wolfie, you're close: the problem with that particular trick is that the bill should ideally lie flat lengthwise in the envelope for maximum awe. If you're using a square envelope, though, then a bill folded in half is just as impressive to a kid.

Yes, the trick is in the unglued openings at the edges of the flap: you get the tooth out through it and slip the dollar bill in the same way. It can take a little work to finagle a bill flat inside it, but super-thin knitting needles help to poke it about inside the envelope. I've massaged them flat through the paper of the envelope on the easy ones.

If you control which envelopes are used, it makes it easier. Envelopes with wider unglued sections on the end and made of stiff paper help (the envelope can be opened up inside to give you more space to move the bill around inside). And practice beforehand. I can't wait to teach my kids the trick when they get older and have kids of their own.

Oh, back on topic: my kids believed in Santa for a long time because I'd do things like leave "sooty" boot prints around the Christmas tree. A couple of bucks at a thrift store for a pair of boots (best) or at least sneakers in a size much larger than anything anyone in the family wears makes the trick really stick. Just make sure to throw away or otherwise hide the evidence in case your kids are smart enough to go looking.

[raudf]

When I was a military brat, base security would often get in on the act, especially in Iceland, where they'd grab larger boots and a pair of "reindeer hooves" a couple of blocks of wood carved to look like reindeer hooves, and walk them around outside the windows of neighborhoods that had a lot of kids.

The parents would "call" them to complain and the morning shift would gleefully come out and point out that it had to be Santa doing a breaking and entering, because who else would leave those kinds of tracks. I was too old for it, but my younger friends would have a blast.

[manybellsdown]

I can remember gifts under the tree labeled "from Santa" ... a week before Christmas. It's like my belief in the Loch Ness Monster; I choose to believe in it, just like when I was 10 I chose to believe "Santa must have come early" that year.

[Kogarashi]

We do Santa for our kids.

Our oldest is at the same age now as when I first learned Santa didn't exist, due to a slip-up of my mom's youngest sister (who is only about five years older than me). I recall being absolutely upset by it and crying to my mom. While I don't recall what she said in response, it made me feel better by that evening, and I continued to participate in the charade for the sake of my younger sisters. Even when we were all in high school, we'd still do "Santa gifts" because it was a fun tradition and all.

For our girls, I'm not 100% sure how I'll deal with things when they finally hear otherwise. I like a suggestion I heard somewhere (possibly here, possibly Etiquette Hell) to explain that Santa is something adults do for kids to help keep some of the magic of Christmas alive, and then enlist the child's help in keeping up the game for the younger kids. I want to say our oldest may have brought up something like hearing that Santa wasn't real and I took that approach, and she was surprisingly okay with it, but she hasn't referenced it since (and that was last year), so either she's forgotten it or she remembers but hasn't said anything. Either way, as others have said, if you don't believe in Santa anymore, then what's the point of Santa gifts?

[MoonCat]

That customer was an idiot for trying to make you feel bad. As a little kid I wouldn't have believed a stranger saying there was no Santa. By the time I figured it out, I was more "oh, well," than upset by it.

Don't remember how old I was but I recall how I found out. I was standing on a chair poking around in the various odds and ends that were on top of our refrigerator, and I found a Christmas card that I had made for Santa the previous year. For a moment I actually wondered how it had gotten up there when I KNEW Santa had taken it with him .... and the I had the "Oh!" moment. But I didn't tell my two younger sisters.

[RealUnimportant]

One of my aunts would insist to her kids that Santa brought all the presents, even the ones we'd take round - they would have been "dropped off" for us to bring over. We found it very annoying because we'd work hard on getting the right thing, then have credit stolen from under us! My cousins started getting upset when they got older, when their friends told them about all the stuff their parents had bought for them, as they felt that meant my aunt & uncle weren't getting them anything...

[Food Lady]

You didn't do jack to her christmas.

Can I have credit, though? In previous years I've felt left out. Just kidding. I did feel kind of bad, but you all put it in perspective for me.

[AccountingDrone]

When I was a military brat, base security would often get in on the act, especially in Iceland, where they'd grab larger boots and a pair of "reindeer hooves" a couple of blocks of wood carved to look like reindeer hooves, and walk them around outside the windows of neighborhoods that had a lot of kids.

The parents would "call" them to complain and the morning shift would gleefully come out and point out that it had to be Santa doing a breaking and entering, because who else would leave those kinds of tracks. I was too old for it, but my younger friends would have a blast.

They did that in K-town also Being an insomniac from the start [I used to stay up at night because I couldn't sleep and breath at the same time, so I would just hang out in bed propped up on oxygen and watch out the window. In housing there were people doing stuff around the clock.]

Oddly enough my parents never pulled the Santa thing - totally wrong culture for my mom [Amish] and being exposed to NATO populations with such disparate beliefs [hey, I still have klompen <Dutch> that get put out as well as a stocking <British heritage tradition> at Mom's house] in all the different traditions that Santa sort of got lost somewhere. I also didn't get the Easter Bunny, so it really doesn't matter.