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Musings

13th Dec 2021

Musings: My eldest child has discovered the truth about Santa, now what?

Melissa Carton

What do you do when your cover is blown?

I feel like my eldest child has always been a bit suspicious when it comes the whole Santa thing.

Always questioning how Santa gets in the house, how he gets all around the world in one night, how no one ever sees him.

In fairness I think we all asked those questions when we were little, but my son seemed to be on a mission to find out about Santa as if he were a detective.

This year, due to him nosing in some of the packages that arrived at our house he came across the gifts that he asked for from Santa, so now the cat is truly out of the bag.

The question now is, what do I do next?

I know what you’re thinking?

What’s the problem, he knows case closed.

Only there is still his little sister who still very much believes that it’s Santa who brings the magic every Christmas eve and I don’t want to spoil that for her.

We can’t really stop doing the Santa tradition with her brother without her beginning to wonder why that is, so do we just keep on getting him to make Santa lists every year even though he knows?

I think every parent knows eventually that they’ll have to cross this bridge but I never really thought about crossing it with one child while the other still believes.

I thought we’d still have a couple more years of my eldest believing in Santa, but between him asking questions and the kids in his class starting to talk, it’s come a lot sooner than we’d hoped.

It does also take a little sparkle out of Christmas once your child figures out Santa isn’t real.

There is also the realization that they aren’t small anymore.

We really do only get a few Christmas’ of them having childlike innocence and wonder about the whole season and you really miss it once it’s gone.

Topics:

musings,Santa