Santa Claus Myth

Post Reply New Topic

Thanks!

I stopped believing in Santa when I was 3,5 years old haha. I don't remember this, but my mom has told me about it:

The summer after that Christmas, my parents and I were driving past my grandparent's neighbor's house one day. One of their neighbors was standing outside his house and waved at my parents and they waved back. I didn't see who it was, so I asked "who was that?" and they said "*name*" and I said "oh, Santa". My parents were both shocked that I knew lol. So somehow I must have figured out that he was our Santa last Christmas. I have no clue how because obviously he was wearing a Santa costume and mask. My parents also wondered why I didn't mention it until half a year later.

When I was 10 I remember I was very annoying that Christmas, because I kept saying that Santa isn't real over and over again even though my mom told me to stop since my little brother still believed in Santa. I didn't listen because I thought it was stupid to keep pretending, when obviously it was just our neighbor dressed up.

I don't remember how old I was but I put it together when my mother made the mistake of using the same wrapping paper that Santa did.

Her explanation was that he had to borrow some because he forgot to wrap them. I didn't believe her. It wasn't like a big deal to me though.

My family did the Santa ritual with the stockings and the cookies, but I don't remember ever believing that Santa literally existed. Somehow I always understood the whole thing as a special pretend game people played at Christmas. I'm not sure if my parents explained that to me outright during early childhood and I've forgotten, or if it was simply clear to me from the way they talked about Santa's supposed activities with a wink (metaphorically speaking). Anyway, I enjoyed the pretend game, and I'm just as glad that I didn't reach a certain age and realize I'd been lied to. I would try to raise my own children in a similar way.

I believed in Santa until I was 10. It seems that a lot of my childhood ended when I was at the horrible age of 10.

I never believed in Santa. My parents told me they tried to push the "Santa Myth", but I guess I just never bought it. I knew well enough not to tell other kids that, though.

I worked out he didn't exist at quite a young age, but I pretended I still believed so the supply of presents wouldn't dry up.

When I was 8, I and a bunch of other third graders sat down to eat lunch at a table together in the cafeteria, and began talking about what SC was gonna give us. One boy said "its really your parents doing it- putting the presents under the tree". Everyone nodded, and I thought to myelf "yeah,that figures". But I still sorta believed in it. Like 90 percent believed it. And went through a gradual two year seque from mostly believing in SC to totally not believing in it by age 10. No big deal. It was like a song being gradually faded out on the radio.

I never really believed in Santa. At the beginning my mum didn't say much about whether or not Santa was real. She didn't try much to facilitate a belief in Santa, nor did she say that he didn't exist. At some point I talked to her about it and she ended up confirming that he wasn't real, at about 7 I think. Since I've been an adult, she's told me that finding out that santa, the tooth fairy, etc weren't real had quite an effect on her, and I guess she felt betrayed by being lied to all those years by her parents and didn't want to do the same thing to me or my brother, and I appreciate her approach, because I don't think it should be normalised for parents to lie to their children that way. If I have children, I'll likely take a simolar approach.

Probably wouldn't have mattered if she'd told me or not in terms of whether I'd figure it out, because when I was 9 it occurred to me that there were differences in the way santa was depicted on Christmas cards and on tv, etc, and that if Santa was a real person, there'd be no reason for those subtle differences in depictions to exist. In some depictions he had glasses and others he didn't, in a couple he didn't even have a moustache, etc.

I don't remember what age I stopped believing, I just remember my older cousin being the culprit of me stop believing. It was no big deal, I thought Christmas was still fun. Now that I'm older, I question the purpose of raising kids under the belief that there's a jolly bearded man in red that gives them presents. I mean...what's the point?

My mother used to take great pains for me to only see the Santa in one store. It never occurred to me that having him in our city meant that other places could have deputy elves at best. Now, I can confirm the calculations showing Santa having to break the sound barrier to meet all his commitments, with devastating results.
I think that parents learn how their children are developing from their gullibility, although there was also one 12 year old girl I knew who just figured that belief was what she needed to get the goods, so why ask questions? She may have been drawing an analogy to stories in Sunday school. Her peers felt smart for not believing, but she probably thought we were the stupid ones for turning off the tap.
Maybe my first big clue was seeing that the toys were produced much like any others, with no evidence of elf handiwork. My dad's home made gifts were easy to distinguish from machine production, and I was getting a lot of my education from tool marks.

Me and my sister never believed in Santa. My parents just talked about Santa like he was a story, or didn't tell us Santa was getting us the gifts and was honest about who the gifts were from. They didn't want belief in Santa to interfere with belief in God, because getting older and finding out that Santa doesn't exist, it may lead us to the same mindset about God.

I never actually believed in Santa Claus, always preferring to think of him as the fun, kid-at-heart, aspect of the Christmas season.

I think I was either 8 or 9. I wanted this particular toy that had a "urinating" functioning. It was a stuffed dog that would "urinate" on it's newspaper. My mother HATED any toy that had a bodily function. I asked Santa for this and when I didn't get it I realized that's when he wasn't real.

I miss being young enough and naive enough to believe in myths.