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Josephine in CA
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| Posted: Dec 06 2006 at 5:45pm | IP Logged
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Dear Ladies,
I'm new to the 4reallearning board, but have gleaned a wealth of spiritual guidance from all of you .... and now I want to invoke your humble opinions.
For those of you who don't acknowledge the existance of Santa Claus, how do you instruct your children to handle "santa questions" from other adults and children?
Thanks for your insight.
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Sarah in SC
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| Posted: Dec 06 2006 at 7:59pm | IP Logged
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Josephine,
We do include Santa in our celebrations, but I am anxious to see what other responses you get here. Living in the South, we've encountered a number of families who don't include Santa, and I've had several questions about why we DO--and those situations can get sticky. (Especially if the children are within earshot!)
Thanks for bringing this up! It's that time of year & I'd like to have some stand-by responses, myself!
__________________
Happy wife to Tom and mama to Mac, 12, Hannah, 8, Rosemary, 6, Luke, now 1! and the 9 little angels that Mary is rocking.....
"What good shall we then do with today?" --Benjamin Franklin
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Marybeth
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| Posted: Dec 06 2006 at 11:18pm | IP Logged
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Good question. I never really thought about it. We do Santa so I don't really question kids about it. hmmm...interested to hear responses.
Welcome! 
Mb
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http://held-together.blogspot.com
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Erin
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Josephine,
We don't do Santa, now I'm not sure of the age of your children but when my first were little I just made it a non event. what I mean is I didn;t say "we don;t believe in Santa" or anything like that, the reason for this was that my dc had cousins and aunties and uncles who believed in Santa and I felt strongly about not spoiling it for them so I just never said anything.
So when we would get asked in the supermarket "How many more sleeps till Santa?" and my dc would stand there looking stupid  I would just gently prompt and say "How many more night till Jesus' birthday?" and the light bulbs would go on and they could happily answer.
So I just never discussed him so he wasn't an issue. Family knew our stance and that was fine. When they see him in the shops they always went over and sat on his knee and looked rather blank when he asked what they wanted for Christmas. Their idea was they were after 'that lolly' oh and one for Daddy who prompted them to always get one for him. They proudly come hoime with lollies for Daddy  never for mummy. 
Regards other children I would just let your dc go along with it for the other children's sake. Nothing worse than a kid who tells another. I feel strongly about respecting other parents decision. On a funny note we recently went on a family holiday and the children don;t know each other well. They were sorting out which ones were which, when one young cousins name came up they said" oh he is the one who believes in Easter bunny"  they remembered me instructing them on the way to spend Easter with this family to play along with the Easter bunny pretence.
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Erin
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Philothea
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We don't really focus on Santa Claus here. No pictures with Santa, letters to Santa, "Be good 'cause Santa is watching you," etc. None of the presents on Christmas morning are from Santa. Ian is pretty young yet, so he kind of gives a blank stare when people ask him if he wrote his letter to Santa yet. (He's 2.5 years old, so a blank stare is his answer to a lot of questions, particularly those asked by strange adults.)
I think the way we will be handling this in the future is to celebrate St. Nicholas Day. "Santa" will fill the stockings with small presents and the shoes with sweets, and we will tell the real story of St. Nicholas. That way he'll be able to relate to the Santa excitement and not spoil it for his friends, but it will have proper context and not get out of hand, plus it will be long over with by the time Christmas actually arrives.
As he gets older, I will explain that some mommies and daddies play a game with their kids about Santa Claus, and we don't want to spoil their fun by suggesting that Santa isn't real/doesn't live at the North Pole/doesn't drive a sleigh/etc. So we will play along with our friends and keep the *real* story of Santa our little secret until everyone is ready to hear it.
This is all theoretical. Hopefully, it all works out. Our next door neighbors are very into Santa and their oldest son is my son's best friend, so I know this might get sticky very soon.
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J.Anne
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We handle it like Erin's family. We don't promote it at home with books or movies or talk of Santa Claus. I'm not going to say there ISN'T one, but I hope to minimize the focus on the whole Santa/gift thing because it has never made sense to me. To clarify, my children do get small and practical Christmas gifts, we just never really address who brings them to the house. And the grandparents spoil them with toys, so our Christmas looks very much like everyone else's. Through careful planning though, "Santa" has become a very small part of our Christmas celebration. There are so many other things going on, it doesn't really feel like anyone is missing out on anything. My extended family has the same mindset, so there aren't a lot of awkward questions.
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hylabrook1
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We don't exclude him, nor do we make a big deal of including him. When the children have asked how he gets in or whether he can land on the roof, all we say is, "He'll figure it out." When they offer more complex, imaginative ideas of their own about what he does and how he does it, we say, "Maybe that's it."
They write Christmas lists, which they give to us, so we can "discuss it with Santa." Even when they were all little, they pretty much realized that *we* had those lists and they directed our shopping, but everyone, young and old, sort of *pretended* it really was Santa. We put the lists away, so the dc don't see them laying around.
We leave out cake (a slice of Jesus' birthday cake that we have had as Christmas Eve dessert), milk, carrots (for reindeer) and water, for the animals as well. Those things are always nibbled on, but the children only pretend to think that Dad isn't the one who snacked on those foods.
So, I guess what I'm saying is that we have fun with Santa, but regard him as a tradition and not the basis or focus of celebrating Christmas.
Also, our Christmas tree has a wide variety of ornaments. One of them is St. Nicholas, but no Santas.
Peace,
Nancy
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Mrs.K
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We have never done Santa but we do not "instruct your children to handle "santa questions" from other adults and children." I don't think it would be very charitable to have them announcing there is no Santa to other children or proclaiming 'we don't do Santa' to adults who are trying to be friendly. If an adult asks them questions like 'Is Santa coming soon?' they've always just kind of giggled because they think it's silly, and the conversation moves on to other things.
Like Erin said, we never really discussed it but as they grew up they sort of figured out that most people, old and young, like to play pretend about this guy in a red suit. They find it all very amusing.
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Sarah in SC
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Mrs.K wrote:
I don't think it would be very charitable to have them announcing there is no Santa to other children or proclaiming 'we don't do Santa' to adults who are trying to be friendly.
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See, I feel this exact same way! But I am running into children (and parents who let them!!!!) who will just flat out say, "there's NO SANTA!" (with conviction!!) and the parents' viewpoint is, "I'm not going to lie to my child." One parent thought it was really funny when the child said, "well, my Mom said there's a Santa," and the other kid said, "well, then your mother is a liar!" I was appalled, but definitely in the minority.
So what do you do with this kind of situation?
I'm not of the mindset that I'm "lying" to my child about a fantasy world of Santa. I grew up loving Santa, and my kids do, too. Now, we do PLENTY of talking about St. Nicholas, and so I think my kids have a pretty melded view of "we get presents from Santa to remind us of God's gift of Jesus." But I don't know what to do with this idea that it's okay for kids to "spoil" the story for other kids.
When my kids ask me a question about Santa, I usually turn it around and ask, "well, what do YOU think?" And either they work out an answer with their imagination, or, like my oldest--who is starting to reeeeeally doubt because the "logic" doesn't quite add up.
I'd just like my kids to figure it out for themselves, kwim?
__________________
Happy wife to Tom and mama to Mac, 12, Hannah, 8, Rosemary, 6, Luke, now 1! and the 9 little angels that Mary is rocking.....
"What good shall we then do with today?" --Benjamin Franklin
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Topic: Do you "celebrate" Santa
