Parents and the Santa Myth: Who Are They Kidding?

For sheer conceptual brilliance, has there ever been a better song than “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”?

Sweet lyrics, sweet melody, inspired genius. And to finally discover that the song wasn’t about Mom’s infidelity while Dad was out working the night shift only added to the enjoyment.

I got the big picture one Christmas season in Texas when Mom said, “You don’t really think there’s a Santa Claus, do you?”

In that last flickering moment of innocence, I probably was preparing to make my case to her. But in that instant, the steady trickle of information that one accumulates in the first seven years of life suddenly had become an avalanche. And all I could think of was, All those cookies--wasted .

I repaired to my room and took it from the beginning. Hey, wait a second--do reindeer fly? One guy spanning the globe in a single night? That guy in our chimney? Elves at the North Pole?

How could I have missed those clues?

Years later, Mom acknowledged her parenting skills weren’t the best on that day and confessed that she was probably feeling a little mopey--that it was probably a year when we didn’t have much money. She said she was just testing me, and today we can still joke about that day when she tried to tell me there was no Santa Claus.

I recalled the moment because a couple of parents in the office have been talking about discussing Santa with their kids. They want to do the right thing: Should they reveal Santa’s entire life story or let the kids get to know him on their own?

Luckily, people like Heidi Caglayan are around to help. She’s an educational psychologist with a private practice in Laguna Beach but who also works with elementary students for the Anaheim City School District.

She’s a good-hearted soul with an easy laugh who assured me that parents need not worry.

“Most kids find out in their own natural way from their peers and from their own experiences and development. They begin to learn what is pretend and what is reality at a certain stage, anyway. Santa Claus gets lumped into other experiences. It’s like the adult world. We come to certain truths at certain times in life that we have to face.”

I winced at that last remark, wondering why this perfect stranger would say something so cruel to me. But that’s another column for another day.

Between 3 and 6 years of age, Caglayan continued, children begin developing the skills that later help them discern reality. “That’s when they’re basically finding out about their own identity apart from the all-powerful parent and start to have a separate identity and reality. It’s like a rite of passage.”

Caglayan remembers being almost 4 years old with chicken pox but determined to get to the bottom of the Santa business. She lay in bed with a flashlight and, sure enough, late at night Santa came in to leave presents under the tree, which happened to be in the room she was sleeping. Young Heidi flashed the light on Santa, only to be greeted with “a gruff voice that told me to go back to sleep.”

Should parents just blurt out all they know about Santa? I asked her. “I don’t advocate telling children,” she said. “I think kids begin to figure things out for themselves. I think the biggest dilemma is when a real young child is put down by an older peer for an innocent belief and for their tenacious belief that he’s real. That’s when parents need to talk with the older sibling, let them know you don’t need to bully a child out of his belief, that they’re not ready to let go of it and they still enjoy the magic of Christmas and the myth and that it’s OK for them to hold on to it a little longer.”

And what if a child concludes that Santa isn’t real? Is it traumatic for them? “Sometimes it’s more sad for the parents because the child is giving up this innocence of life,” Caglayan said. “But they need to know the presents came from somebody. It’s real positive to know gifts came from a real person. . . . That’s a real necessary thing to start happening, so reciprocal giving can start coming in, so that it’s not ‘gimme, gimme, gimme.’ ” It can begin the transition to the child saying, ‘Oh, what’s on your list, what do you want?’ ”

Above all, Caglayan said, it’s important not to lie to children once they start asking serious questions. I agree with everything she said, and it got me thinking that if I ever become mature enough to have children, I’ll welcome the chance to talk about Santa.

I’ll dispel all the myths the kids might have heard, starting with the silly notion that reindeer don’t fly.