Jew here. My parents told me that Santa doesn't bring presents to our house.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Treat it like different religions. “We don’t believe in Santa but other people do and that’s fine. One of the beautiful things about this country is we are allowed to have different beliefs.”

This is correct.

I agree. So also tell kids that believe in Santa: “we believe in Santa but other people don’t and that’s fine...”

Let your kids believe in Santa.
Nothing wrong with that.

After all, there are still some adults who believe in the Cowboys.

Anonymous wrote:Excuse me? tell your kids all you want but Santa is alive and well at our house.

No tooth fairy? must be fun being so grown up.

Yep!!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Uh, it’s the anti-Santa folks perpetrating vitriol. You’re all SO superior ?

Your poor kids.

I agree. The superiority complex from the anti-Santa parents is unreal. I get not doing Santa if you don’t celebrate Christmas or simply don’t prefer to partake in the tradition. But OP is commenting how Santa conflicts with “her values” ... give me a break.

I’ve heard of parents not doing Santa because they don’t want their kids to find out they’ve lied to them. But if you are worried your child will become distraught over learning the truth about Santa and being “lied to” then maybe you need to worry more about teaching them some resiliency.

Don’t do Santa if you don’t feel like it. But stop acting like you’re more enlightened for opting out of what is simply a fun, cultural tradition.

It’s not a cultural tradition for everyone. Not everyone celebrates Christmas.

But it’s a fun cultural tradition for some people. I clearly said don’t do it if you don’t want to. But stop acting like you’re more enlightened for not doing it. There are plenty of traditions from other cultures I don’t partake in because they’re not *my* cultural tradition. But I don’t pretend not to engage in them because it is counter to my morals.

But is there another "fun cultural tradition" that has gotten so out of hand and drives such over the top commercialism and consumption?

I was in the store the other day shopping for some bows and realized the amount of waste that is produced from just our "tradition" of wrapping presents, and felt pretty disgusted. I'm not sure what happened, but it's like a switch was tripped, and in a way, it doesn't even feel fun anymore.

My groceries come home in canvas bags most of the year, but starting the September, I use brown paper bags. A pair of scissors, colored pencils and crayons and markers, a tiny bit of tape, and a ton of time make personal wrapping paper for anything small enough. Larger items sometimes go in a laundry bag temporarily decorated with washable markers or stay unwrapped. Oh, and brown paper is recycled after Christmas.

Holidays don’t have to mean extra purchases to add unnecessary waste to landfills and extra household debt.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Treat it like different religions. “We don’t believe in Santa but other people do and that’s fine. One of the beautiful things about this country is we are allowed to have different beliefs.”

This is correct.

+1, and it’s impolite to tell them Santa isn’t real.

Honestly though if they do, just repeat the same thing and leave it to the other parents to deal with it. They can decide to dig into the lie if they want and tell them Santa isn’t real to your family because you don’t believe. Imo Any kid old enough to talk is old enough to know there’s no Santa but decide if they want to play along for a few more years.

Anonymous wrote:Treat it like different religions. “We don’t believe in Santa but other people do and that’s fine. One of the beautiful things about this country is we are allowed to have different beliefs.”

This is correct.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Uh, it’s the anti-Santa folks perpetrating vitriol. You’re all SO superior ?

Your poor kids.

I agree. The superiority complex from the anti-Santa parents is unreal. I get not doing Santa if you don’t celebrate Christmas or simply don’t prefer to partake in the tradition. But OP is commenting how Santa conflicts with “her values” ... give me a break.

I’ve heard of parents not doing Santa because they don’t want their kids to find out they’ve lied to them. But if you are worried your child will become distraught over learning the truth about Santa and being “lied to” then maybe you need to worry more about teaching them some resiliency.

Don’t do Santa if you don’t feel like it. But stop acting like you’re more enlightened for opting out of what is simply a fun, cultural tradition.

It’s not a cultural tradition for everyone. Not everyone celebrates Christmas.

But it’s a fun cultural tradition for some people. I clearly said don’t do it if you don’t want to. But stop acting like you’re more enlightened for not doing it. There are plenty of traditions from other cultures I don’t partake in because they’re not *my* cultural tradition. But I don’t pretend not to engage in them because it is counter to my morals.

But is there another "fun cultural tradition" that has gotten so out of hand and drives such over the top commercialism and consumption?

I was in the store the other day shopping for some bows and realized the amount of waste that is produced from just our "tradition" of wrapping presents, and felt pretty disgusted. I'm not sure what happened, but it's like a switch was tripped, and in a way, it doesn't even feel fun anymore.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Uh, it’s the anti-Santa folks perpetrating vitriol. You’re all SO superior ?

Your poor kids.

I agree. The superiority complex from the anti-Santa parents is unreal. I get not doing Santa if you don’t celebrate Christmas or simply don’t prefer to partake in the tradition. But OP is commenting how Santa conflicts with “her values” ... give me a break.

I’ve heard of parents not doing Santa because they don’t want their kids to find out they’ve lied to them. But if you are worried your child will become distraught over learning the truth about Santa and being “lied to” then maybe you need to worry more about teaching them some resiliency.

Don’t do Santa if you don’t feel like it. But stop acting like you’re more enlightened for opting out of what is simply a fun, cultural tradition.

It’s not a cultural tradition for everyone. Not everyone celebrates Christmas.

But it’s a fun cultural tradition for some people. I clearly said don’t do it if you don’t want to. But stop acting like you’re more enlightened for not doing it. There are plenty of traditions from other cultures I don’t partake in because they’re not *my* cultural tradition. But I don’t pretend not to engage in them because it is counter to my morals.

Saying they don’t want to participate for whatever reason doesn’t mean they think they’re enlightened or that you’re a bad parent for participating. It just means it doesn’t fit with their beliefs/morals/values. It’s no different from you choosing not to let your child believe that Bigfoot is real (assuming you haven’t passed on that myth in your family). Some people like the mythology, some people have more literal interpretations of the word around them. Neither is right or wrong, they’re just different.

In this case, OP is asking for people to share how to help keep your mythology intact. She’s trying to parent the way she feels comfortable while not stepping on anyone else’s toes. People are still crapping on her parenting style and suggesting her kids should be pitied because she doesn’t celebrate Christmas the way they do. That’s the only sad thing I see in this thread.

The kids who say something are the ones who are wavering or who no longer believe.

What my rabbi told me when I was a young was to not challenge another child’s belief in Santa. The problem was I didn’t want to lie when asked, so he suggested I just say, I don’t know, what do you think? And then, after whatever reason they gave for believing, then listen without challenging or arguing. The big rule was never to suggest that another kid’s parents were liars. And my parents told me that a lot of people believe Santa, so I was always able to fall back on that.

In my experience, if was the kids who were not sure whether Santa existed who would challenged the beliefs of other kids, I assume to test their own theories. The kids who knew Samar’s was not real just didn’t raise the issue.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Uh, it’s the anti-Santa folks perpetrating vitriol. You’re all SO superior ?

Your poor kids.

I agree. The superiority complex from the anti-Santa parents is unreal. I get not doing Santa if you don’t celebrate Christmas or simply don’t prefer to partake in the tradition. But OP is commenting how Santa conflicts with “her values” ... give me a break.

I’ve heard of parents not doing Santa because they don’t want their kids to find out they’ve lied to them. But if you are worried your child will become distraught over learning the truth about Santa and being “lied to” then maybe you need to worry more about teaching them some resiliency.

Don’t do Santa if you don’t feel like it. But stop acting like you’re more enlightened for opting out of what is simply a fun, cultural tradition.

It’s not a cultural tradition for everyone. Not everyone celebrates Christmas.

But it’s a fun cultural tradition for some people. I clearly said don’t do it if you don’t want to. But stop acting like you’re more enlightened for not doing it. There are plenty of traditions from other cultures I don’t partake in because they’re not *my* cultural tradition. But I don’t pretend not to engage in them because it is counter to my morals.

I grew up the youngest in a large family that didn't put a lot of effort in to Santa stuff (like others have said, no going out of their way to make sure we believed), and thus I have no active memories of believing in Santa. This is no way bothered or effected my childhood. I still love Christmas! But I will say I felt a great amount of relief when my friends finally stopped believing in Santa because even as a child it was tiresome to hear the stories and see the hoops families jumped through to perpetuate those stories, and know it was fake. But like others have said if I ever told a kid I didn't think Santa was real they just laughed it off and told me I was wrong. Your kids will be fine.

A 4 year old told my kid there was no santa and I knew I would never lie when asked directly. However as I told my kid everyone who !oves giving to others is Santa...and he is still a wonderful part of Christmas to my now college student.

My brother figured out santa wasn’t real when he was 4. He told me when I was 2 and I asked my mom and she didn’t want to lie, so she said santa wasn’t real. I didn’t believe them and kept on believing until I was 7.