Whilst we are still in January, I wanted to share my thoughts on Santa Claus. This may sound “bah humbug” but the whole notion of Santa has really started getting on my nerves. Firstly, us poor parents who fork out dosh to buy our children presents, under the guise of Santa, get no recognition from our children for this – all thanks go to the imaginary Father Christmas. But that I can sort of live with… my main gripe is that we are lying to our children. At some point, each child will find out that Santa is not real, that we have lied to them, and they will be disappointed and feel cheated by this. Now before you think that telling our children the truth about Santa would spoil the magic of Christmas, I disagree. Christmas is a religious festival first and foremost, and there’s no reason why we can’t buy presents for each other for this festival. Why do we need the mythical Santa to enable us to do this? What actually is the difference in practice between my saying to my kids – if you’re good this year, I’ll buy you a lovely Christmas present; and if you’re good this year, Santa will bring you a lovely Christmas present.  Your child ends up with a present either way, just that you don’t have to lie to them if you follow the first option.

This then led me to another frustration – I contemplated this Christmas telling my kids (who are 5 and 4) that Santa wasn’t real, particularly as my eldest asked me the question directly. And what stopped me was the thought that most if not all of their friends would believe in Santa, and the reality would be that my kids would tell their friends that Santa wasn’t real, and it would ruin their friends’ images of Santa, which wasn’t really for me to do (indirectly). So I decided to keep stum as a result of this peer pressure if you want to call it that. Which annoys me!