So what if you were one of those people who does the Santa myth with your kids. Not to the extreme point where you buy separate wrapping paper to wrap the “Santa” gifts (shut up, I’ve known people who did this) or would keep lying about it long past when it seemed reasonable to do so. But you might have told your kids the Santa story and read books about Santa and seen Santa in the mall. And occasionally your five year old might have had a question or two about how the whole Santa thing works but they were always easily laid to rest without any hassle.

But what if one day the easy answers are no longer enough and you know that Santa is on thin ice that is about to crack? 

What if you’d had several long discussions with a good friend who deliberately chooses not to tell her kids about Santa for various reasons and you had had a friendly debate on the merits of telling versus not telling your kids about Santa. And at the end of that discussion you agreed to disagree without judgment and you were all “Psssh! It’s NO BIG DEAL. When she figures it out, that’s that. It’s not going to be traumatic. She won’t be upset that we lied told her a story. It’ll be part of the fun! I’m certainly not going to go out of my way to keep the myth alive.” 

You might have said that. You might even have believed it. Except when that moment came when her little five year old mind seemed to be making leaps in logic it was previously not capable of, you panicked and scrambled to patch up the holes she punched in the story and breathed a sigh of relief when she backed off. And then it happened again the next week. And one more time a few days later.

At that point you might have started to realize her Santa days were numbered. And you might have questioned why you are feeling so damn anxious and sad and more than a little compelled to make icing sugar footprints on the kitchen floor. You might wonder why you are clinging with such tenacity to such a ridiculous symbol of her childhood that’s based on a lie story, despite your many protests and assurances to your friend that all would be well.

You might finally realize that your daughter would not be traumatized by discovering there is no Santa. She is just doing what she is supposed to; growing, learning, thinking, puzzling, concluding. In reality, the one who will be emotionally damaged when the facade is over is YOU.

Not that it happened to me. I’m just saying.