I’m Glad My Parents Lied To Me About Santa Claus

Dec. 25 falling on a Sunday reminds me of one particularly magical Christmas past.

My age at that time is completely elusive to me now, but suffice it to say I still believed in Santa Claus — yet suspicion was bubbling. When my brother and I awoke that Christmas Sunday to no presents under the tree, my parents didn’t seem half as bothered as we did. They had contacted the North Pole ahead of time, they intoned, to let Santa and his helpers know that since we had plans to attend church in the morning and wouldn’t be opening gifts until after, he could make our house one of his last stops. He probably just hasn’t gotten here yet, they said.

So we gussied up ourselves — probably in whatever red tartan get-ups my mother had waiting for us — and hauled off to church. I don’t remember anything in particular about that service, except that my father must have been out in the foyer fulfilling ushering responsibilities, as was routine. But when we returned home, an assortment of festive packages filled our stockings and spilled out from under the tree. Our belief in jolly old St. Nick was restored.

I later learned my father had, of course, raced home after finishing his ushering duties to arrange the gifts — pretty sneaky, that one!

That was probably also about the time I began realizing that not only did some of my little friends never believe in Santa, but their parents were also a bit hostile to the whole enterprise — and perhaps even to my parents for participating in the ruse. One of their top arguments for shunning the magical fat man went: When your kids learn you lied to them about Santa, they’ll doubt everything you’ve ever told them about Jesus.

The ‘Santa Myth’ Myth

That’s a nice thought, and the former fundamentalist in me can appreciate the rigid adherence to principled puritanism. But at the center of my parents’ dedication to the Santa deception, as evidenced by that Christmas Sunday, was the clear message that the reason for the season wasn’t some white-bearded omniscient resident of a faraway land somehow colder than Wisconsin. Priority was remembering and worshipping the Christ Child with fellow believers.

Secondarily — though not unimportantly — was indulging our youthful imaginations with covert shopping and gift-wrapping, the excited watching of the NORAD Santa tracker, and the stealthy arranging of parcels beneath the tree while we kids were sound asleep. Like anticipating the tooth fairy or tick-or-treating on Halloween, there’s a way to cultivate simple yet unforgettable childhood joys that embrace creativity and good, clean fun.

Of course, there’s a wrong way to do Santa. The secular extreme is to minimize Baby Jesus while essentially worshipping Kris Kringle or leaning too heavily into the parental bribery and conditional love of the naughty and nice lists. It’s wrong to take God lightly and Santa seriously, though it should go without saying that’s not exactly a