Parents, keep Christmas spirit alive and your mouth shut

Maggie Parks, Reporter

When I was in the third grade I found out that Santa isn’t real. Word started to spread around the class and I was on the defense. I hopelessly tried to convince my friends that all the “rumors” were lies, but I barely believed myself as the evidence stacked against me. At a last attempt of discovering the truth, I scribbled a message to Saint Nick on a post-it-note, asking him to sign in confirmation of his existence. Sadly, when I awoke Christmas morning, there was no signature, just some lonely crumbs from the cookies my dad ate the night before.

There’s no good time for your childhood dreams to be crushed. No matter what, disappointment is unavoidable but there are certainly more preferable ways to have the news broken.

“They very much still believe Santa is real… but I expect them to learn from their friends,” said Biology and Chemistry teacher Thomas Keller about his children, Paxton (6-years-old) and Becket (4-years-old).

Parents shouldn’t have to sit their kids down and give them a “talk” about Santa. Despite first hearing it from my friends, I still think it’s preferable to the alternative.

When you first discover that your parents have been lying to you since birth, it’s a comforting feeling to know that your classmates had gone through the same thing. Even though I wasn’t happy to hear that I wouldn’t get whatever I wanted on Dec. 25 each year, I wasn’t completely despaired when I talked it out with my best friend.

“Two years ago my dad didn’t want to buy [my siblings] presents…so he, in the middle of the night, went by the fireplace and painted blood all across the floor to the door so it looked like Santa crawled through the chimney and got mauled by our dog,” said Dietrich Sweeney (’18), who has three younger siblings.

Not only is the idea of my parents confessing to me that Santa doesn’t exist mortifying, it’s also illogical. If you don’t want your kids to hear it from their friends, then what good are you doing by telling them and having them tell all their friends?

At a certain point I understand that, as a parent, you might feel the need to break the news yourself, but if your child is 5-years-old, it’s really okay for them to keep faith. Also, according to The Atlantic, only around 33 percent of children still believe in Santa by 9-years-old, so they’re bound to find out somehow, and it’s probably sooner than you think.

Maybe parents think that they are sheltering their children by being the first to admit it, but, in reality, it just makes for an awkward conversation that the kid probably would’ve wanted to avoid.