One of my earliest memories is of Christmas eve, sharing a room at a relative's house with my younger siblings. It was some time after midnight, my siblings were asleep. I heard a rustling outside and, knowing santa was purportedly coming, I pretended to sleep and kept one eye very slightly open.

In comes Santa. I can just make out his big fat belly, red suit, white beard, and a big sack. He unloads presents in various places around the room. Then, as he's leaving, the light from the slightly open door catches his face and I realise it's my dad in a Santa outfit. I remember very distinctly feeling crushed and exhilarated at the same time. Santa wasn't real, but I'd found out what grown-ups know.

I planned to confront my dad about it the next day. When I woke up there were sooty bootprints in the fireplace, and my siblings were just so incredibly excited about the whole thing that I didn't have the heart to bring it up.

There are few things outside of fantasy that will create that feeling for a child. Reaching a level of maturity where you get that excited about the real world is a rite of passage. So that's what I'm going to do. I don't care if my kids believe in Christmas or whatever, but if there's some fantasy that enriches their lives without harming them, I'll commit to it until they grow out of it.

Honestly I will probably do as my parents did. I will buy christmas presents, label them "From: Santa", and I'll put them under the tree in the middle of the night, and I will decline to explain how they got there. My children can choose or decline to believe whatever rumors are swirling around the neighborhood.

EDIT: personally I never asked about it because I didn't want to risk stopping the gifts.

My mother was insistent that my siblings and I knew Santa wasn't real. She was very naive as a child, and when she was 16 someone at school made a joke about kids that believe in Santa. She got in an argument with them, herself believing that Santa was real. Kids were cruel, as they are, and I guess it followed her for the rest of her school days.

My own children are young right now, so I let them enjoy it. I'll just make sure when they get a little older they know who's really buying those presents.

in the culture i was raised in (indian), santa was treated as a shared joke between parents and kids - there would be some anonymous presents under the tree and our parents would insist that santa had placed them there, and we would groan and try to get them to admit it was them, and everyone would laugh about it. if i had kids i would almost certainly bring them up with a similar system, regardless of where we were living at the time.

I didn't; I've always showed my child the non-sense others believe without cause. Now 20, she has a solid grasp on reality and a firm bullshit detector.

I let them figure it out themselves. "Hmm, if Santa is real, why don't we hear the bells?" Same for the Tooth Fairy. "Wait... fairies aren't real." "OK, so how does the money get there?" "Well... I guess you put it there." "Your words."

I try hard to never explicitly lie to my kids. Sometimes I have to pad my words. Like to answer "Are you going to die today?" Well, maybe, but a rather low probability. That scares them a bit, so sometimes I have to reassuringly tell them no. I feel bad about not being totally truthful, but I think the confidence and security for them is worth a loose interpretation.

> Do you think you'll raise your children to believe in Santa, HN?

I'm sorry, is this meant to be a defense of smug superciliousness?

Yes. It's an important life lesson.

Sometimes, you go along with obvious bullshit because there's something in it for you.

I plan to not, on principle, but who can say for sure until they've actually experienced raising a child?

I'll probably do what my parents did to me, call Santa a "fun game".