My earlist childhood mememory is discoving Santa isn't real and being enraged with my parents for lying to me
I plan to never lie to my children about Santa. This was the last Christmas where they are too young to even ask (oldest is 2)
Any parents with some fresh experience with this, this year that they can share some best practices from?
Over here we don't do santaclaus but we have sinterklaas. Don't ask about the specifics but it boils down to the same theme. I loved that my parents "lied" to me about it because it was freaking magical for 5 years when i discovered the plot by myself.
You may not approve with lying but you may want to think about it before you ruin what could have been a magical time for a while. It is clear that not everybody experiences this the same way you did or else we could have gotten rid of all of it by now. There's more to it than just a lie.
Addendum. Over here in The Netherlands it is common until age 7 or 8 for some (depends on what school grade they're in at that time). My kids are now 7 and then and i just told the youngest the whole plot a while ago and even though she was sad it wasn't real no other harm was done. Context is imho very important, more so than trying to be a 100% pure and perfect parent. That's impossible anyway.
i get your point but also think there's plenty of magical things that are actually true. all the time and energy spent of santa can redirected
I am on board with not lying about this. My memory is that when I discovered it, I felt stupid for believing them for so long and I felt annoyed that they were doing it to amuse themselves at my expense. I would just tell children the truth: that people give presents to make each other happy.
