Follow-up: For those with children, do you continue the ruse with your own children, or simply tell them it’s you who gives the gifts? Why or why not?
Wait…what?!
Spoilers, sweetie ;)
To answer OP’s question, I’m 37.
I think I was around 10 when I first realized it.
What clued me in was my dad, whose favorite meal was a tuna sandwich and a diet coke, insisting that Santa didn’t want milk & cookies, Santa wanted a tuna sandwich and diet coke.
When I was very little, and we put cookies out for Santa, my mom would always let me eat one because she “didn’t want Santa getting fat“.
My father happened to be on a diet at the same time. I figured it out when I was six.
From that point on, my “punishment” was to be the chief gift wrapper. I suppose the one good thing that came from that is, after many years of wrapping gifts for my whole family, I am now an expert at wrapping gifts.
Wow, six? Smart
Or maybe my parents were just bad at hiding it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
My six year old has begun to plaintively declare his belief in both magic and Santa, unprompted. I think he fears children who do not play along are not as well rewarded.
I’m the kind of parent who doesn’t tell their kids what to believe, but I also don’t bullshit him. “You believe in magic. So, you’ve seen magic?” I don’t know why he’d think he needs to pretend. Maybe it’s just that he isn’t ready to face facts. I don’t argue, I just try to make him think.
Congrats on teaching your kid critical thinking, but I must say, sometimes kids just want to pretend. It’s a thing they do, and I personally miss the freedom. I had to do that as a child. Let them dream.
At the same time, I think it sounds like you’re doing a good job of planting the seeds of reason and logic that will flourish later.
I’m not here to step on youthful wonder, it’s not my turf anymore…But I do feel a need to teach them that thinking involves more questions than proclamations.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
At that age; magic does exist.
I stopped believing around 9 or 10 but started believing again when I became Santa for my family.
Aww!
I was a skeptical kid. A fat man making his way down every single chimney in the country in one night? No way. Never really bought into it.
What I wanna know is who are all these people claiming that Santa Claus is not fucking real!?
Of course he’s real.
Sorry mate, it was your parents who punched Arius in the face at the first council of Nicea in AD 325
Around 10, I think… My mother thought she’d tell me about Santa and sex all in one car journey. Thanks for ending my childhood in one fell swoop!
Our kids always knew it was pretend so we all pretend together and everyone has fun. They never say anything to the believers or even the adults because that would ruin the fun. We do cookies and everything.
I don’t remember how old I was when I figured it out, but I do remember being upset about being lied to about it. I’ve got 2 kids now, and whenever they would ask about Santa or the Tooth Fairy or anything like that, I would kind of turn the question around and ask how they thought it worked. Sometimes, I miss believing in that sort of magic, and I didn’t want to take that from them or lie to them, so that’s the balance I found. It seems to be working well. Our oldest had it pretty well figured out by around age 9…our youngest is almost 9 now, and she hasn’t straight up told me she knows it’s not real, but the kinds of questions she asks and how she reasons through her answers I think she’s figured it out mostly as well.
When I was 6 or 7, I realized the neighbors (who were absolutely AWFUL) received more presents than my family did and the only difference was that their family made more money.
I started thinking about all the kids in my class, and the ones that got the most presents weren’t the nicest kids, they were the ones with the richest parents. Then it clicked.
That’s a pretty depressing conclusion of your deductive reasoning for a six or seven year-old.
Do you celebrate Christmas now?
Lol, no.
My husband and I agree that it’s just a marketing ploy and don’t typically exchange high-cost gifts. We’ll make food and enjoy the lazy day with a new videogame or puzzle, but rarely anything more than that.
I was nine.
Also went a step further and realized ghosts, god, and in general things we’re told exist but can’t see are mostly fake too.
I don’t remember believing in Santa, so at the very least it wasn’t an important moment of my childhood. Writing letters isn’t a common thing where I live, instead we got a thick catalogue and circled everything we liked. I guess that made it pretty obvious from the very beginning.
Whether or not I’d lie to my hypothetical children… I don’t know. I guess I don’t care either way and would leave it up to my partner.
Around 6, when I noticed that my parents would always buy the same wrapping paper that Santa used…
When I was 7. It was late one night and I was walking around (when I should have been asleep). I noticed my mother finishing wrapping a present and she asked me to place it under the Christmas tree. I think it just slipped her mind in the moment and she didn’t realize what she had done. I didn’t say anything, but I knew from then the presents from Santa were from my parents. I wasn’t sad, but instead felt like I was just let in on a big secret.
Maybe it slipped her mind. Or maybe she was being smart about the moment - including you in the moment rather than making it feel like something’s being hidden from you. Just a thought.
The first time I heard of him was the time I got to know he is the Coca-Cola mascot.
I dont think I ever really believed. We lived in a trailer when I was a kid so there wasnt a chimney and Idk why but thats always what stood out to me as a kid. Also at that point there were so many christmas movies where the plot was people not believing and I think that also caused me to think there was a pretty valid reason behind that especially when they pointed out “how does he make it to all the kids houses around the world in one night.”
