Unfortunately my memory of this has faded. I know I had broken the charade by 6 or 7, but I can't recall my thoughts about it at the time. I recall playing along with it for rather Pascal's wager type reasons (more downside to risking the presents).

I take my poor memory of it as implying that it seemed less of a big deal to me. Same goes with the tooth fairy and Easter bunny. In comparison, unraveling the God story had a much longer and more significant timeline. Although the seeds of that were planted about the time of Santa's destruction I can't recall how the two are intertwined.

I would be surprised if the consensus here was that the story of Santa is a good parenting practice. We have a status quo bias potential here, so turn it around. If there was no such thing as Santa currently, would it be a good idea to invent him?

Or to further abstract it from reality, make up a whole bunch of stories. Would a child be better off with a pantheon of artificial creatures that want us to behave in certain ways? How about magical elves that make sure your schoolbus doesn't crash if you brush your teeth every night, or crows that poop in your milk carton if you tell a lie to a teacher. Seems all bad to me. There's enough challenge dealing with reality and our psychological bugs (like thinking that it's quite plausible that a crow pooped in your milk because you are an unlucky or bad person).