It didn't affect me much at all, actually. I was about seven or eight and said to my parents "Father Christmas isn't real, is he?" and they confessed. So I'd evidently got the idea by this time that it was just a story for fun, nothing to be taken very seriously.

My daughter is three and has heard about Father Christmas at nursery. I'm wondering how to pitch him to her. I think as a story for fun would be ideal, because she's very into stories for fun that she's nevertheless quite clear are just stories. She enjoys playing along extensively with stories (e.g., her toy dinosaurs talking to her and her to them) without breaking character, but she doesn't get confused between story and reality.

(I hope to bring this approach to religion as well. Reading a picture book of the Nativity to her - she'd grabbed it in a bookshop and talked her mum into buying it for her - I asked what each thing was and she said "That's an angel. It's a sort of fairy." Can't say fairer than that!)

Edit: It may be relevant that this was in Perth, Australia, where Christmas is in the middle of summer, it's frequently forty Celsius on Christmas Day and the insane English-descended people still... (read more)

I'm not thrilled about the societal emphasis on gifts to make children happy, but otherwise, as a parent of two young kids, I am grateful for Santa Claus.

Santa Claus is a perfect, uncomplicated person that also loves your children. I think it's a good thing to give children the impression that love for them extends beyond the family; someone out there with power, resources and magic also loves them, personally. The gift they get from Santa is the 'evidence' of this love and this gift is usually the best gift they receive -- more carefully chosen and grander than even the gifts their parents give them. I view the phenomenon of Santa Claus as an outlet for society to express their views and hopes about generosity. Santa Claus is a model of what it means to be generous, and we all feel more generous when we channel his personality to pretend that his is real. Possibly, we teach our kids to be generous for later. (Sometimes people are generous when they've been generously treated, and sometimes they feel entitled instead, I don't know why.)

I don't see it as a deception about whether Santa Claus 'exists'-- for the first time on the other side of the conspiracy, I'm amazed by how exten... (read more)

I had my suspicions about Santa pretty early--as a too-curious preschooler snooping in my parents' bedroom, I found boxes for some gifts that had been "from Santa"; my mother had made up some story explaining it. Later (6 or 7 years old?) I found a page stuffed into a drawer that had been ripped out of a book--it explained how to tell your kids that Santa wasn't real. I read all of the books on the shelf at home, including the parenting book; that was the bit of knowledge my parents wanted to hide from me! (I suppose they thought I would be too young to understand some of the other stuff I'd find, but that I would understand that if I found it. My parents really had no idea how to deal with a young voracious reader.)

So I knew that Santa wasn't real but that my parents (my mother, really) cared that I not find out. I don't think Santa in particular affected me much in part because I was a voracious reader--I knew a lot of things that were different than what my parents told me, and I also knew that most parents were advised that kids might not be ready to know them. (Like I said, I read their parenting book.)

Knowing that I couldn't trust my parents to tell me the truth ab... (read more)

My parents not only pulled the Santa deception, they used a service whereby an actor in a costume would come and deliver their presents as an intermediary. This left me with a longer lasting, but much less absurd version of the Santa myth; I knew that the stuff about flying around in a sleigh and climbing down chimneys had to be wrong, but I didn't see anything wrong with the basic idea. I never thought about theb scale involved, but if I had, I probably would've concluded that "Santa" was a role, not a person, and that there was someone in that role for each participating community.

I always questioned the existence of Grandfather Frost (the Russian equivalent of Santa). It didn't make sense to me that someone could break into so many tightly locked apartments all in a single day, and leave no traces of it.

To that end, I tried to stay awake on New Year nights and see for myself how he does it. This required my parents to jump through hoops, like carrying me to a different room "for my own good", to preserve the illusion. The turning point was when I peeked into my parents' closet and saw gifts that Grandfather Frost was supposed to give me. I still wish they just told me the truth from the get go, and I'm annoyed that they're bent on doing the same thing with my brother, who lacks my capacity for critical thinking.

Strangely, I stopped believing in God long before that, and before I knew it was called atheism.

The Ewok deception.

I've said before that I think I care about the truth more than other people because a parent lied to me- but I don't think the Santa lie was the traumatizing one.

I slowly gathered more evidence there was no Santa year by year. Once my Aunt thanked my mother for something that had a "From Santa" label. We had a tradition of calling Santa to tell him what we wanted for Christmas, Santa being my mother's older brother the actor. I recall my belief diminishing when I realized none of my classmates were talking to Santa on the phone. And then there was the fact that my brother and I began to hunt and find the hidden presents- presents we assumed would be put under the tree as "From Mom" but a few ended up coming from Santa Claus and that pretty much gave it away.

The Tooth Fairy was the first myth I realized was false- figuring this out was easy. Like the fifth tooth I lost I didn't tell anyone and put it under my pillow. I woke up the next day and it was still there. Then I told my parents and the next night, found money. I then pretended I still believed in the Tooth Fairy until the rest of my teeth came out.

Maybe there is a rationalist case for these lies. There ... (read more)

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).

Personally I would have no problem with not bringing up my children with a belief in Santa, but I would worry about how this would affect my and my family's status. What if my kids told other children that Santa didn't exist? Would they be upset? What would their parents think?

I don't remember believing in Santa Claus. It was always a game to be played with grown-ups.

My experience of other children believing in Santa was very much one of them not quite realising it was a game, and my not wanting to spoil their fun.

Conversely, I did and still do believe in God, though again I have no memory of believing in the old man on a cloud version often given to children.

As a Muslim with a weak grasp on the difference between fiction and reality, I was a bit weird about Christmas. Santa Claus definitely didn't deliver to us, and my parents never made a big deal of buying me stuff, which they never treated with the fuss and ceremony associated with "gifts": instead, it was more of a "Take This, It May Help You On Your Quest": the goal wasn't to make me feel happy and loved, but to deal with just the, bare necessities, the simple, bare necessities, to deal with all the worries and the strife of a growing ... (read more)

I was taught to believe in Santa Clause by both parents (atheist father and catholic mother).

One particular year (I think I was five) my mother told to me to pray the night before Christmas to get everything I wanted for Christmas. And I did. And I got everything I wanted for Christmas. Awesome! This prayer thing apparently really worked. (I had also written a letter to Santa a few weeks earlier)

The next year, my dad suggested I write another letter to Santa. I said "nah, I tried this prayer thing last year and it worked pretty well." Dad said &q... (read more)

I don't recall my parents ever encouraging a belief in Santa. I think I still picked it up from the general culture, but not very strongly- Christmas was "here's $100, pick out a gift for yourself" and so there wasn't really the mystery that accompanies it normally. If anything, I think I thought "Santa" was the codeword for the commercial part of Christmas rather than an actual entity.

That actually taught me the (probably unintentional but still greatly appreciated) lesson that spending windfalls on expensive things was really difficul... (read more)

I've been exposed to the alternate viewpoint that this realization may be good for developing rationalists, because it provides children with the experience of discovering that they hold beliefs which are wrong and absurd, and that they must reject them.

At least one vociferous anti-rationalist agrees with this viewpoint: learning the truth about Santa Claus can lead one to reject Jesus, with disastrous results. You all know Jack Chick, right?

I'm struggling with this myself right now.

I've long had the idea that, if I ever raised a child from a young age, I'd introduce Santa Claus as a make-believe game. I might be a little coy about it: tell the story of Santa and see if the kid can figure out the truth without giving a direct answer one way or the other; but I wouldn't lie. OK, there's a plan, but it's all theory, since I'll probably never raise a child.

But now I'm dating the single parent of a six-year-old. She is raising her child to believe in both Santa and Jesus; she herself knows the ... (read more)

To answer my own question, I personally figured out that the whole Santa story was a lie around the age of six or so, but I continued to believe in belief, that it was right or appropriate that young children be encouraged to believe in Santa Claus. I never confronted my parents about it, but we held an "I know you know I know" understanding, and I continued to prop up my younger sister's belief for years afterward. It wasn't until years later, after my sister had stopped believing, that I started to wonder why adults would want children to beli... (read more)

I'm slightly embarrassed. I actually thought I had been around 6 or 7 years old, but now found out that I had been nine. I found it out by "altruistically" wishing for world peace, which the all-powerful Santa should have been able to provide. I only got a game called Game of Peace (Looking it up right now, I found out that it was published in 1993, so I can't have been younger than 9 at the time). That's when I definitely stopped believing (Although my parents could have probably convinced me that Santa existed, but wasn't all-powerful, if they had bothered).

I told my younger sibling that Santa Claus was real:

• Santa is the person who brings us the presents.
• Our parents bring us the presents.
• Our parents are real.

Therefore, Santa Claus is real.

I don't remember how I found out the truth, but this is how she found out, when she asked me.

Growing up as a moderate Jew, I never really gave Santa or the Easter Bunny much thought. My parents pretended to believe in the Tooth Fairy, but I started losing teeth late, around age 10, and by then I could tell pretty easily that they were pretending. I felt vaguely smug about not having been taken in by common myths when people in middle school swapped stories about when they found out Santa wasn't real, but I don't think it was that important.

One thing that did bother me was teaching Bible stories in Sunday school, as a college student supervising fi... (read more)

If you want to ask conspiracy theorists about this, I'd probably try the http://abovetopsecret.com/ forum.

I don't remember believing in Santa Claus. I don't remember how exactly I came to disbelieve. I do remember a conversation with my mother (I can't have been more than five) in which I stated my disbelief and she asked me not to share it with my younger brother, so that he could believe for another year or so. I don't remember any great emotional upheaval. I also don't think my parents went to any particular lengths to preserve the delusion.