No, Virginia, There's No...You Know

"Santa" comes to our house.

I also pretend that my son could be a doctor cowboy cop jedi who digs for fossils while curing cancer and fighting Darth Vadar all at the same time. I'm not in a rush to tell him he can't do all those things, and I'm relatively sure he will figure it out himself someday.

Without getting into the why we pretend Santa's real, and how i have no guilt over it, I wanna touch on your point about how it's not your job to protect the belief in Santa for other children.

We are not Christian. When explaining the concept of Lent, or the rebirth of Christ, or the signs that say "Remember the real meaning of Christmas" to my children, I make sure that my children don't run to the playground and say "Christ isn't real! Your parents are lying to you! Isn't diversity beautiful!" because I believe that other people can share whatever is important to them with their children, and it's not my place, or my children's place, to take away any of the joy that is unquestioning faith while it lasts (or at least not in elementary school). I even teach my children not to be smug, or condescending about it.

I don't feel any need to tell my children something I don't believe to protect other childrens' world views, but I do feel a need to say "Don't be an ass about it, what makes America beautiful is that we all have the right to believe what we want."

It takes little effort on my part to teach the additional lesson about how to be polite to other people's world views/holiday traditions. Maybe you do do this, but only talked about how you feel other people pressure you to continue the Santa myth?

And a child talking to yours about Santa being real isn't even on the same plain in my opinion to the child that told my daughter that gays rot in hell, or how fairies were minions of Satan, trying to shame her for liking Tinkerbell. Or even the child that told my daughter that Obama was evil because he was a muslim, or the countless children (and parents) in our homeschooling group that talk very poorly about people outside their church, not realizing that we don't believe what they do.

I probably sound cranky, or as invested in Santa or making sure kids believe in Santa as dasunrisin is against it, but I'm not. I couldn't care less about how other people celebrate Christmas (or don't) and I do value truth, but my biggest rule I want to pass down to my children is to respect others' beliefs and not to taint joy for others while looking for your own, and I'm curious, do other parents value the balance of truth and belief with respect as much as I do? And how do they teach that?

You know, other than by saying to their 6 year old "But don't be an ass about it."

~Eryn, who sometimes wears brown with black, but can see why sometimes they don't go together.

We adopted an older child (she was 5 when she came to us), so we had the dilemma of not wanting to tell the Santa lie, but we had a kid who believed wholeheartedly, and whose whole life had been turned upside down multiple times. Did we want to be the bad guys who said, 'oh, and by the way, Santa doesn't exist either'? No, we did not. But I feel you; my kid has dark skin, and she's commented on how she wishes there were a dark-skinned Santa. She's noticed the very white narrative of Santa and the kids he comes to, in all the Norman Rockwell-ish pictures one tends to see of Santa.

So, we've created a nice little tautology for her. Santa comes to those who believe in him.  I wasn't brought up believing in Santa, and she knows that my family doesn't do Santa; the gifts under the tree ar from family, to family. My wife's family does Santa, so Santa visits their house for her. Most people celebrate around the midwinter time, for a whole variety of reasons. Kids often get presents during these celebrations, no matter what the celebration is called. We talk to her about the fact that the universal factor of the solstice can always be celebrated; the longest night, and the slow return of the light, which connects us to the earth in our celebrations, and which hopefully will give her a meaningful bridge for her celebratory focus once Santa stops being real for her.

She's realized this year that there are kids in her class whose families aren't Christian. She herself identifies as non-Christian; she loves the idea of reincarnation so currently that's the centre of her theology. And she gets that Christianity is tied into the whole Christmas thing in a way that's problematic for her moms, and that we prefer to look at the holiday as a celebration of the solstice, and of family.

I totally agree with you. My daughter, like yours, embodies diversity within her skin and her family (which tends to mean deviation from the centre or the norm). It's sad that our ideas of diversity tend to skew in this way; that there's the centre - Christmas, Christianity, Santa - and the Other on the outskirts. It's sad that she has to defend her right NOT to believe in the Baby Jesus at this time of year, rather than all the kids she knows being taught that different beliefs are okay.  But it's a good thing that she's starting to realize that there are a variety of stories told about how we live in the world, and celebrate it, and that each person should be allowed their stories, as long as they're not trying to force their story on somebody else.