Follow-up: For those with children, do you continue the ruse with your own children, or simply tell them it’s you who gives the gifts? Why or why not?
I don’t quite remember if this memory is actually true (my memory has been deteriorating), but I think it was that:
I found out one of my uncles are pretending to be santa (I mean like bruh, they think we kids don’t recognize their faces after some disguises). So I just stopped believing in such nonsense. Also decided that deities are almost certainly not real around the same time, and so chrismas technically made me an atheist. I think I was about 8 or 9 at the time.
Edit: I don’t have children, and don’t plan on it (due to depression), but if I ever had any children, I would never lie like that. That just cause trust issues.
Like I just start speculating that my parents are always plotting against me somehow.
If you are reading this, please dont continue with this nonsense lie, you dont want your kids to turn out to be paranoid and skeptical of everything.
It’s spelled deities, for a second I thought kid you started calling relatives that are on a diet and don’t take it seriously out for their hypocrisy, very funny
Hard to type on phone 😕
Finding out that Santa wasn’t real was definitely, and undoubtedly, the first domino to fall in my journey towards atheism.
5 or 6. I don’t remember if I figured it out myself or if someone just told me the truth, but I do remember that I quickly started asking my parents if all the other magical beings were real too (Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, etc).
When I was 6 or 7, I realized the neighbors (who were absolutely AWFUL) received more presents than my family did and the only difference was that their family made more money.
I started thinking about all the kids in my class, and the ones that got the most presents weren’t the nicest kids, they were the ones with the richest parents. Then it clicked.
That’s a pretty depressing conclusion of your deductive reasoning for a six or seven year-old.
Do you celebrate Christmas now?
Lol, no.
My husband and I agree that it’s just a marketing ploy and don’t typically exchange high-cost gifts. We’ll make food and enjoy the lazy day with a new videogame or puzzle, but rarely anything more than that.
My six year old has begun to plaintively declare his belief in both magic and Santa, unprompted. I think he fears children who do not play along are not as well rewarded.
I’m the kind of parent who doesn’t tell their kids what to believe, but I also don’t bullshit him. “You believe in magic. So, you’ve seen magic?” I don’t know why he’d think he needs to pretend. Maybe it’s just that he isn’t ready to face facts. I don’t argue, I just try to make him think.
Congrats on teaching your kid critical thinking, but I must say, sometimes kids just want to pretend. It’s a thing they do, and I personally miss the freedom. I had to do that as a child. Let them dream.
At the same time, I think it sounds like you’re doing a good job of planting the seeds of reason and logic that will flourish later.
I’m not here to step on youthful wonder, it’s not my turf anymore…But I do feel a need to teach them that thinking involves more questions than proclamations.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
At that age; magic does exist.
Admittedly I don’t remember when I internalized it, but I remember one day during a car ride I’d told my mom, out of nowhere, completely unprompted, “Mom I don’t care if Santa is or ain’t real, please don’t tell me.” I don’t remember her response, but I was like 8, 9 or so I think.
At that point in time though, NORAD’s Santa tracker is what convinced me he must he real lol
What I wanna know is who are all these people claiming that Santa Claus is not fucking real!?
Of course he’s real.
Sorry mate, it was your parents who punched Arius in the face at the first council of Nicea in AD 325
I think I was around 10 when I first realized it.
What clued me in was my dad, whose favorite meal was a tuna sandwich and a diet coke, insisting that Santa didn’t want milk & cookies, Santa wanted a tuna sandwich and diet coke.
When I was very little, and we put cookies out for Santa, my mom would always let me eat one because she “didn’t want Santa getting fat“.
My father happened to be on a diet at the same time. I figured it out when I was six.
From that point on, my “punishment” was to be the chief gift wrapper. I suppose the one good thing that came from that is, after many years of wrapping gifts for my whole family, I am now an expert at wrapping gifts.
Wow, six? Smart
Or maybe my parents were just bad at hiding it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
5-6 - same with my kids. Keeping it up for too long risks making them religious as well.
I realized the note from the Easter bunny was in my father’s handwriting. I felt “in on the joke” and remember that applying to other holidays like Xmas too. I must have been 6 or 8.
- We had no chimney and future tech person me saw right through it.
Wait…what?!
To answer OP’s question, I’m 37.
Spoilers, sweetie ;)
How will he ever recover?
It was me who broke into your house. hehe
I don"to quite remember, but apparently I said to my mom that Santa has the same shoes as dad.
Lmao
The first time I heard of him was the time I got to know he is the Coca-Cola mascot.
I don’t remember a time when I truly believed that he was real. I remember thinking that it was my parents, but I didn’t want to believe that. I wanted to believe that there was a magic dude who would hook me up with presents. But it was illogical and we kept up with the whole thing, because I wanted my parents to enjoy it too.
The same age I was when I realized my parents are liars
