Santa Claus is coming to town

[standing outside a jewellers discussing what to buy Chandler's girlfriend for her birthday]
Chandler: I want to get her something serious.
Joey: You want to get her something serious, get her one of those.. ah.. barium enemas. Those are dead serious, and you know she'll never get one for herself.
Chandler: Look, I'm going in here and you don't buy me anything ever.

It's almost Christmas time! It's Alex's first Christmas, although he did score a few presents in utero last year. We went to get Alex's picture taken with Santa last weekend, which involved waiting in line for an hour and a half for the following result.

It's so much more fun having Christmas with children around. I always felt when we were growing up that Christmas just wasn't as fun without my younger cousins around, showing us what Santa brought for them, and just generally bringing the joy that children do when they're excited and all hepped up on sugar.

While we are yet to put up the Christmas tree this year, I am getting much more in the spirit than I have in the last few years. We're heading out to the vineyards for their Carols in the Gardens this weekend, and I do have Alex's Santa outfit ready to go. I love taking Alex through the shopping centres and showing him all of the lights, and Santas, and the general Christmas-a-rama.

It does bring to mind, however, how we're going to treat the "Santa" going forward. John is all for being up-front and telling him that Santa isn't real. I can see his point, but on the other side, Santa is such a fun part of being a child. I had two big sisters, so I don't think I ever really believed Santa was real, but I still pretended I did. I wrote the letter to the North Pole, we left out the milk & cookies, and had a pillow-case full of presents next to my bed in the morning. In fact, Santa still left presents next to my bed until I was about 19 or 20, and even after that, he was polite enough to leave some under the Christmas tree.

I have read research that says the children whose parents keep up the Santa pretence often feel a sense of disillusionment and betrayal when they eventually find out. It also brings to mind an un-named, incredibly innocent and somewhat precious sister-in-law who found her parents putting her Santa presents out when she was young, so they told her that Santa had in fact died, so they were taking over his role for her. She was devastated, but never actually discovered Santa wasn't real.

Fast forward to her moving to Australia and car-pooling to work with her brother-in-law, my darling husband, who, after hearing her sadness that Santa died, proceeded to tell her that Santa had not died, he just didn't go to Korea because they don't keep the Sabbath holy. My sweet sister-in-law didn't pick up on John's sarcasm, and was so excited about Santa being real, that when she got home she rang her Mum in Korea to tell her how excited she was, and how she couldn't wait to have children so Santa would bring presents, especially now her English was good enough that she could speak to Santa when she met him. No one had to heart to tell her the truth for such a long time. There's nothing worse than finding out about Santa when you're 23.

So I'm sure there's a balance somewhere in between letting your children be children, but not letting them feel betrayed at the lies when they discover the truth. I'm not sure what we'll tell Alex, but we have a few years before he really "gets" Santa anyway, so I guess we'll work out a story before then.