More than once in the last week or two, I've had conversations with parents of elementary and middle school aged students about Santa Claus. As children in late elementary school and early middle school develop, learning logic and rational thinking, they begin to develop questions: how does Santa make it all the way around the world in one night? How does Santa's sleigh carry the weight of all those presents? Why do bad kids sometimes get lots of presents? (Or as we ask in Pittsburgh, "Hows come them jagoffs didn't get no coal, n'at?")
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{As a side note, how creepy is this picture of Santa? And why are there so many pictures of Santa telling us to be quiet?}
Eventually these questions evolve into: "Is Santa Claus real?"
This is a fundamentally hard question for parents to answer. In answering truthfully, we admit that we've been in essence lying to our kids for years; it feels like we've taken away with one word the twinkle and sparkle of innocent childhood. It is a transition for us to understand our awkward teeny-boppers as mini-adults. It is almost akin to baby's first steps: our world will never be quite the same.
So there are lots of ways to respond to this question, and I thought I would leave you with some blogs of real parents and how they've responded to the question.
This one tells us how to capture the spirit of who Santa is and the lessons we can learn from the Santa Claus myth.
This one empowers older kids to bring the Santa Claus spirit to others in their family and community.
This one gives a good history of the real St. Nicholas and how his "spirit of giving" lives on through the Santa Claus myth.
There are lots of other ways, and I would love to hear your experiences! Let's work together to teach our children and youth to be caring people, to believe in things they can't see, and to believe that there is so much more good in the world than we know.
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