I finally did it. I told Captain Science, flat out, that there is no such thing as a literal Santa Claus who goes house-to-house on Christmas Eve, delivering toys.
Now, considering Captain Science is nine, some people might say that this talk was long overdue. Others might call me cruel for telling him, rather than letting him figure it out on his own. Of course, still others would go off on a tirade about how terrible it is to “lie” to children about Santa to begin with, and accuse me of scarring him for life, so I guess I’m not too hung up on the opinions of those “others” in this situation.
Last year, Captain Science had indicated to Nana that he no longer believed in Santa, but some time between last Christmas and this Christmas, that believe returned to a strangely fervent degree. When Captain Science asked for several expensive gifts this Christmas, I reminded him that we don’t have an endless amount of money — no degree of hinting or trying to gently imply that we, not Santa, were the ones footing the Christmas bill would sway him from the insistence that “we don’t have to pay for it. Santa will bring it.” His explanations for Santa became more and more elaborate. At one point, he told Nana that he had been praying to Santa for snow.
Praying. To Santa.
In a strange way, that makes sense. Santa is the central figure of a secular Christmas, just like Jesus is the central figure of a religious Christmas. Christians pray to (and about) Jesus. I suppose the logical leap for a nine-year-old would be prayers to Santa, the secular “deity” of the holiday season.
The final straw for me, though, wasn’t the money issue or the disturbing Santa worship, but the Santa-as-retort issue. Captain Science has a problem with little white lies. He fibs about small things that don’t require fibs for everyone to be happy with each other, like “Did you change your underpants?” Because of this, we do have a tendency to question him when we suspect his answers aren’t quite synchronized with reality. Lately, however, any questioning of the truthfulness (vs. truthiness) of his statements has been met by, “Well, why don’t you just write to Santa and ask him?” Santa was fast becoming a cover-up for dishonesty, because as long as we were all playing along about Santa, Captain Science was going to use Santa’s mythical ability to know when he’d been bad or good as a way of deflecting questions of his veracity.
Yesterday, I’d had enough, and I had to drop the S-bomb. “Captain Science,” I said gently, “I think you know that Santa isn’t real.” I immediately felt horrible and his eyes welled up with tears, because even though I think the obsession with Santa’s reality was probably a way of convincing himself to keep believing in something he knew deep down wasn’t true, hearing it out loud was another matter. I explained that a literal Santa wasn’t the one who brought his presents, but that Santa represented the magical spirit of Christmas. I also told him he was about to be inducted into the special Secret Grown Up Club, because it was now his job to help spread that magic to his brother and sister, so that they could keep believing.
That seemed to be the kicker right there. Helping foster the magic of Santa for the Tank and Babypie was a fitting substitute for the literal Santa for whom Captain Science’s logical brain kept having to reach for wilder and wilder explanations. He’s still getting presents “from Santa” under the tree and now he’s greatly enjoying being in cahoots about the whole Christmas thing. He did want to know where we kept all those Santa presents, but I told him that was a secret I wasn’t revealing. He liked that.
I’m sad that this part of his childhood came to an end and a little regretful that I had to be the one to make it happen, but his joy in Christmas doesn’t seem at all diminished. I think it was the right call.
