Should we let our children believe in Santa?

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I’m not a parent facing this dilemma, its just something I was thinking off. If I had children, would I encourage them to believe in Santa, or at least passively stand by while they picked up the idea from their friends, tv, media, etc?

On one hand, I don’t like the idea of making up stories like this. Yes its not a big issue, but I would want to be truthful to my children consistently so that they know they can trust me. It also seems to take away the focus from Christ.
Yet on the other hand it seems almost cruel to tell children that Santa doesn’t exist.

The only course of action I can think of is to stand by passively when they are young and hearing about Santa on the tv and what not. However, once they start questioning me and asking whether he exists, they are probably old enough to know the truth.

I know a devout Catholic family who let their son believe in Santa until he was 11. That seems unreasonable to me, but I don’t want to judge their choices…
For parents: How have you personally handled the situation?

I know this isn’t a big issue, but I was just curious. Thanks in advance for the responses!

God Bless
 
Flame4 said:
It also seems to take away the focus from Christ.
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This is the big one for me. It is difficult for me to imagine why we should teach our children to believe that a magic person in the North Pole comes to deliver presents instead of teaching them generosity through gift-giving and Christ’s love.

Would St. Nicholas not be a better option?
 
We did Santa. I have very warm memories of believing in Santa Claus, and it did me no harm whatsoever. I love the kids’ faces as they discover their stockings and see that the cookies that they left are gone. Santa only brought the stocking presents in our family - Mom and Dad got credit for the rest!

If I had it to do over, I would still do the stockings but I would have only 3 presents for each child other than the little trinkets in the stockings. And that would have to include the grandparents, so it would have been one from Mom and Dad, one from each grandparent, done.

🤷

I’d hate for my kids to be the ones who tell everyone “There’s no Santa!”

😦
 
The Santa Claus who lives at the North Pole, has elves construct toys and flies in a sleigh drawn by reindeer does not exist. Using one’s parental authority to encourage children to believe in this falsehood is lying.
 
Personally for me, I stopped believing in Santa due to an amusing blunder. I remember one Christmas eve night I heard a loud “Hohoho”, recognized it as my Dad’s and ran downstairs, catching him in the act of putting presents under the tree. I was two. Honestly, I remember being amused, even at that age. I think I was just proud of myself for having outsmarted my parents. 😃
 
Other_Eric said:
The Santa Claus who lives at the North Pole, has elves construct toys and flies in a sleigh drawn by reindeer does not exist. Using one’s parental authority to encourage children to believe in this falsehood is lying.
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This is probably my main concern as well. It just strikes me as wrong for a parent, who has a duty to be honest with their children, in addition to being a model to them, to encourage a falsehood (although a minor one). Some parents use Santa as a “threat” to promote good behaviour (as in “Santa won’t come if you are naughty”) That really strikes me as poor parenting. I’m not trying to accuse parents who do allow Santa, but I’m just a bit concerned about the morality of it.

God bless
 
With the first 4 children we did the whole Santa Claus routine with me hiding gifts, sneaking around, lying about a jolly old fat man who we let break into our home one night every year, and waiting until they were fast asleep before setting all their gifts under the tree with tags that said From:Santa.

Then when they got older the other kids teased them at school because they still believed in Santa and they’d come home demanding the truth from me. What was I suppose to do? Continue to lie to them? How can I teach my children not to lie when that’s exactly what I’m doing? The Easter bunny & the tooth fairy too… why? Because our culture does?

Well our culture does a lot of other things too but I’m not following them any more. Where’s that going to lead me?

What’s wrong with the truth? What’s wrong with teaching our children about Saint Nicholas? The generous Bishop of the Catholic Church who teaches us the values that Jesus gave us? Or that the symbols of Easter ALL point back to the 1st Easter? What’s wrong with that?

Personally the Catholic calendar and the immense richness of our faith is so much more beautiful then what’s being sold in shopping malls.

So when we took in 5 children from the foster system it was a perfect opportunity to start over right. Our older children agreed. And our faith has grown because of it.

Today we remembered Saint Nicholas’ feast day and celebrated it with me baking cookies and fudge to celebrate a “sweet” man 😉

signed a happier mother & wife :extrahappy:
 
I like the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ (1844–89).

Pied Beauty
GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brindled cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
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All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
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Santa is a childlike version of this.
 
This subject was argued to death recently in a prior thread. On that thread, it seems the anti-Santa faction was largely made up of people who didn’t have children, and many of them give provocative arguments for the sole reason to argue.
IMHO until these people have children of their own, they should stay out of such discussions because they do not know what they are talking about.
As for all those, Catholic or not who don’t believe children should have Santa Clause, as uncharitable as it is, I wish all of you a big Scroogian “BAH HUMBUG”!!!
 
If Santa is that big of a parenting dilema, you’re doing it wrong.
 
TheRealJuliane said:
We did Santa. I have very warm memories of believing in Santa Claus, and it did me no harm whatsoever. I love the kids’ faces as they discover their stockings and see that the cookies that they left are gone. Santa only brought the stocking presents in our family - Mom and Dad got credit for the rest!

If I had it to do over, I would still do the stockings but I would have only 3 presents for each child other than the little trinkets in the stockings. And that would have to include the grandparents, so it would have been one from Mom and Dad, one from each grandparent, done.

🤷

I’d hate for my kids to be the ones who tell everyone “There’s no Santa!”

😦
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I totally agree! I say let them believe in Santa, I believed in Santa and Christmas was so special and magical because of it. Children need things like that. All too soon they will have to face the harsh realities of life, so I say when they are young and innocent, let them believe in Santa, tooth fairy, Easter bunny and anything else. 👍 I was raised to believe in God and I knew it was all about baby Jesus being born, I just thought Santa was a nice guy who gave children presents on baby Jesus’ birthday. 😉 So you can teach them that Christmas is about baby Jesus and still have them believe in Santa. 🙂 Same thing with the Easter bunny, you can teach children the true meaning of Easter and still let them think the Easter bunny brings candy in celebration of that. 🙂 That’s how I was raised. 🙂
 
Baelor said:
This is the big one for me. It is difficult for me to imagine why we should teach our children to believe that a magic person in the North Pole comes to deliver presents instead of teaching them generosity through gift-giving and Christ’s love.

Would St. Nicholas not be a better option?
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Doesn’t Santa giving gifts teach generosity? No one teaches that Santa is paid for doing it, so his giving presents could teach generosity. 🙂
 
I’m not married, let alone a parent, but I hope my point is still valid.

I honestly see nothing wrong with telling kids that Santa is real. What would Christmas be like without it? It encourages their imaginations.

It is easier for Santa to not bring the kids want they want, rather than parents having to say no.

I think it’s a good way of teaching kids they can’t have want they want all the time. It may even teach them to give without receiving.

I knew Santa wasn’t real for a couple of years before my parents told me. I wasn’t really disappointed with them not telling me earlier, I just went along with it. They told me when I was probably about 13 or so. I really don’t mind that they kept it for that long. It taught me to appreciate what I got.
 
Well, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. Plus, I’ve never heard the clergy speak out on it as it being something, “bad.” I also really enjoy hearing parents talk about their experiences with their children finding out Santa isn’t real. 😃 Silly Stories. 🙂

I think that it’d also be a beautiful memory to have, from childhood…the whole Santa thing. 😊

I never got to experience it because my family celebrated Christmas (and to an extent the Holiday season) very differently, than typical American Catholics do.
 
I have found very distasteful and rather extremist the behavior of the Watchtower Society in cutting of their children from common things such as Christmas celebrations. I don’t think that’s how Catholics should behave. I think everything should be done with measure. We also read fairy tales to children, and we let them watch cartoons on tv. Games are one thing, faith another thing. I always saw Santa as a fun thing, something that was there and was amusing. I do admit that some people push things a bit too far ("ex. I was listening to this song that said: “he knows when you’ve been bad”, etc. that makes Santa way too supernatural), but I find nothing wrong in this idea of someone who brings gifts (especially since it is rooted on a true story, and a Catholic one, too).

You know, I love these new decorations with Santa kneeling before Baby Jesus 🙂 I think they make great gifts for kids to put things in the right perspective.
 
Love the whole of Chirstmas including Santa. He is Saint Nick. He starts delivering presents in Europe Dec. 6 on his feast day. That’s why he’s able to get around the world and to the US by Dec. 25. He drops them down the chimmney just like he dropped the three bags of gold down the chimmney of the three sisters who couldn’t get married because they had no money.

He was a bishop who carried a hooked staff which is the reason there are candy canes. Turn them upside down and you have the letter “J” for Jesus and the colors are red and white for His Body and Blood.

Twas the Night Before Christmas is a beautiful poem written by a father for his children.

And a little trivia: the three globes over a pawn shop represent the three bags of gold St. Nickolas dropped for the girls. Who knew. :christmastree1:

Somehow all of it worked in my home and with our children. I wouldn’t change a thing.
 
YellowPancakes said:
I’m not married, let alone a parent, but I hope my point is still valid.

I honestly see nothing wrong with telling kids that Santa is real. What would Christmas be like without it? It encourages their imaginations.

It is easier for Santa to not bring the kids want they want, rather than parents having to say no.

I think it’s a good way of teaching kids they can’t have want they want all the time. It may even teach them to give without receiving.

I knew Santa wasn’t real for a couple of years before my parents told me. I wasn’t really disappointed with them not telling me earlier, I just went along with it. They told me when I was probably about 13 or so. I really don’t mind that they kept it for that long. It taught me to appreciate what I got.
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That’s the same thing with me, I started to figure it out on my own, I suspected it one Christmas but didn’t say anything because I wasn’t sure, the next Christmas I did some investigating 😉 and found hidden presents, then I knew it wasn’t real. I still didn’t say anything because I was the baby and everyone wanted me to believe, but then finally the next Christmas I let them know that I knew. I never felt bad or betrayed for having believed in Santa, I understood it was a nice Christmas tradition that made Christmas fun for little kids. 🙂 I never saw it as being lied to, more like a game of make believe to make Christmas fun. 👍 Like someone said, I saw it the same as the fairy tales and cinderella, and all of the children’s stories that you read as children.
 
R_C said:
I have found very distasteful and rather extremist the behavior of the Watchtower Society in cutting of their children from common things such as Christmas celebrations. I don’t think that’s how Catholics should behave. I think everything should be done with measure. We also read fairy tales to children, and we let them watch cartoons on tv. Games are one thing, faith another thing. I always saw Santa as a fun thing, something that was there and was amusing. I do admit that some people push things a bit too far ("ex. I was listening to this song that said: “he knows when you’ve been bad”, etc. that makes Santa way too supernatural), but I find nothing wrong in this idea of someone who brings gifts (especially since it is rooted on a true story, and a Catholic one, too).

You know, I love these new decorations with Santa kneeling before Baby Jesus 🙂 I think they make great gifts for kids to put things in the right perspective.
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Oh that’s a good idea! 👍 I also think it’s wrong of jehova’s witnesses to not allow their kids to celebrate Christmas or birthdays or anything too. 😦
aicirt said:
Love the whole of Chirstmas including Santa. He is Saint Nick. He starts delivering presents in Europe Dec. 6 on his feast day. That’s why he’s able to get around the world and to the US by Dec. 25. He drops them down the chimmney just like he dropped the three bags of gold down the chimmney of the three sisters who couldn’t get married because they had no money.

He was a bishop who carried a hooked staff which is the reason there are candy canes. Turn them upside down and you have the letter “J” for Jesus and the colors are red and white for His Body and Blood.

Twas the Night Before Christmas is a beautiful poem written by a father for his children.

And a little trivia: the three globes over a pawn shop represent the three bags of gold St. Nickolas dropped for the girls. Who knew. :christmastree1:

Somehow all of it worked in my home and with our children. I wouldn’t change a thing.
Click to expand...
Love it! 👍
 
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