I was responding to the article that czacza posted, with a teacher who told the kids that there was no Santa.
I completely agree! We go all out for St. Patrick's day and children believe all the puppets in our classroom actually talk, even though they can see my lips moving. Just because I'm not into Santa does not mean I can tell my students otherwise. Although I nearly did this week, without even thinking!
I tell them two things: that I still believe and so does my family (hs senior, college daughter), and that different families celebrate in different ways. I had a whistle-blower once - very difficult situation. I almost had one last week, but I pulled him out to finish something in math and asked him to be careful when making Santa statements because different families celebrate in different ways and have different beliefs.
With my own kids I simply turn the question around and ask if THEY think Santa is real. If they say yes, I smile and tell them that is their answer. If they say no, I ask them why they think that. By the time my kids say that they have always had good answers (my experience with naysayers telling them, they answer yes to my question). Once they have good answers that aren't about other people's opinions I smile and tell them they are right but that Santa was indeed real and I explain a little bit about previous history and about continuing the spirit, etc. As they get older they understand that he didn't have the same kind of magic portrayed in movies and in our culture but that he did have a magic of kindness and giving. But that's my right as a parent to continue that talk. I never encountered it during teaching. I like the question format but my answer to their no reason would not work out quite as well because I'm not their parent.
I heard one of my boys telling the kids last week that "there's a rumor going around that parents give us the gifts." lol
Ha ha, when my own kids were younger, they told me they heard a similar rumor but they just laughed and said, "We know that's not true because YOU would never buy us all of that!".
I am sad that my children are too old to believe any longer (both teens). I tried to keep them believing for a long time. When the youngest was getting just a bit too old and she asked me directly, I told her the truth. She was devestated. But she's also one that would defend Santa to the death at school and I didn't want her humiliated. When the oldest was on the verge one year I had a really difficult situation. She had been given a bracelet a week before that she really loved. It had an elastic base and she would sometimes fling it off her hand or 'shoot it' across the room. I warned her that she would lose or break it doing that. About 10 pm on Christmas Eve it went flying behind our large bookcase. She couldn't get it out. She didn't dare tell me because she knew I'd get mad. She wrote a new letter to Santa, put it in an envelope and started to march out to the mailbox. I explained about the mail not running and suggested she just write a note and place it by the cookies. She said that Santa was magic and he would get the note anyhow. But why not hte cookies? Because this way she would KNOW Santa was doing it, and not Mom and Dad. I reminded her that he may not do it anyhow since the sleigh was already packed. After she went to bed I found her pad of paper, made a rubbing of her note and saw that she decided that she could go without everything else on her list as long as she got her bracelet back. If Santa could get a sleigh to fly, he could move a bookcase. Great. So I took a photo of the bookcase, took everything off of it and helped my husband move it. Got the bracelet and stacked everything, junk and all, back where it was on the shelf. That bought us two more years of believing!
