Santa... and your kids...

No, but kids don't know that.

 

Exactly. Kids think that if they believe in Santa that Mom and Dad will keep shelling out the big bucks. In the latter days it's socks and underwear and bad cologne.

 

I don't remember ever believing in Santa or the Tooth Fairy or any of it. I distinctly remember pre-Kindergarten understanding that it was a game with my parents we understood but wouldn't acknowledge. Wink wink, yeah we all believe in Santa. I told my wife this a couple years ago and she thought it was crazy. I assumed it was probably that way at least 70 percent of kids and she said no, she believed until at least first or second grade. I was floored.

 

Truth be told? I believed until late in elementary school.
It didn't help that when I got close to not believing, my parents had my dad's cousin walk from behind the house dressed up as Santa and they kept me up late so I could "catch" Santa leaving our place when I was like 7 or 8. That kept me going well int 5th grade! Thanks Mom and Dad!!! Grrrr

 

I don't recall the exact year I quit believing in Santa. Since my brother is four years younger, I know I kept it going so I didn't ruin his Christmas experiences. So I guess whatever age he stopped minus four.

My wife's nephew found out the hard way that it pays to fake his belief in Santa. I think he was 10 when that first Santa-less Christmas happened. One year, he gets a lot of cool toys on his wish list. The next, he gets cheap KMart socks and khaki pants from his mom's wish list. He was visibly upset every time he opened a present and saw socks or plain white undershirts. He was grounded for being ungrateful.

I don't blame the kid. Shitty thing to do. I remember my wife saying, "Samantha said Jordan really wanted these pants." I said, "Hon, no 10-year-old boy wants pants for Christmas. Trust me. That's your sister using her family to buy everyday shit she doesn't want to buy for her kids. This is a back-to-school clothing list. Get him a toy."

 

I think that's kind of awful if that's how parents handle it. Hell, my parents still freaking stuff a stocking for me. Just because your beliefs change, I don't think how you handle Christmas should. Make it special for everyone.

 

That sucks. Another reason why kids shoot up high schools or fuck their teachers.

 

Yeah, I always feel bad for young kids who get mostly clothes for Christmas.

I found out, or figured it out, when I was 8, which coincided with my parents splitting up. We had the same difference in Christmases where we would get cool stuff from my mom and then go to my dad's and get almost nothing that any normal kid wanted any part of.

 

That seems insane to me. Why would a kid get punished, in effect, for figuring out the truth.

The transition from toys to more practical gifts is a natural one driven by the child growing up, not as a repsonse to belief or lack of belief in Santa Claus. That is crazy.

An 8-year-old kid likes toys, whether or not he/she believes in Santa Claus.
An 11-year-old kid is starting to get a little old for a lot of toys and probably needs some more practical items mixed in.

 

Gifts should be more thoughtful, interesting (to the particular kid) and appropriate -- not less -- as he or she grows older, smarter and more perceptive.

 

My sister-in-law was in to the "he's too old for toys"/"he doesn't need anymore toys" mode because it gave her an excuse to be cheap. She was going to buy a growing kid clothes no matter what, but Christmas toys were a waste of money. Had she bought or told family to buy Boise State clothes, the boy would have flipped out with excitement without toys.

She's just cheap. My wife always bought her sister something nice and thoughtful. My wife would get something cheap in return. And the tacky kind of cheap, too. One year, it was a $3 tin of Christmas carmel corn. The price tag was still on it. And it's not like they were poor, they just chose to drink their discretionary money.

 

Deals like that in which you have different gift-giving ethics in a family can make for some very, very awkward scenarios. My wife's sister-in-law is one of those I-have-a-wishlist-down-to-the-SKU-number types, and of course my wife and her mother and her two sisters are/were of the everything-should-be-a-surprise club. This meant that the sister-in-law pretty much returned every gift ever given her by her husband's family, and her husband's family bitched about her constantly in the post-holiday briefings.

One year, my mother-in-law bought her daughters these nice sweaters from some up-market store, and she also gave the sister-in-law one that she found at another store. Of course, as it wasn't on the list, the sister-in-law took the sweater back, only to find that her's, even though it had a Gap tag on it, was a second and couldn't be returned. That made for some very chilly interaction over the leftovers that night.