Bad Parent: The Grinch
Why I won't let my child believe in Santa.
by Sasha Brown-Worsham
December 17, 2007
But I am a woman who likes to give credit where credit is due. I send my thank-you notes to the right people, and I would like my daughter to do the same. I would like to thank my child directly for being good. And if I spend hours finding, wrapping and presenting a series of gifts to my child, then I would like her to know they are from me. We still have a tree and gifts and gingerbread. It doesn't make the season any less magical.
So what are these other parents afraid of? In our culture, it seems Santa (like the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy) has come to represent a time of innocence, a time when children still believe in fairy tales and magic — when the idea that a single man can travel hundreds of thousands of miles in one night, eat millions of cookies, drop off millions of gifts and still get back to the North Pole in time for Christmas breakfast with Mrs. Claus still seems possible.
Somehow being told "the truth," or discovering it on one's own, has become the great dividing line between childhood innocence and some kind of jaded pseudo-adulthood, as if the eight-year-old who sees behind Oz's curtain will immediately grab a bottle of Jack Daniels and some unfiltered Camels to ring in the new year.
For me, finding out at four that there was no Santa was no great loss. If anything, I was relieved. I could thank the right people for my gifts. There was no need to write letters to the North Pole or sit on some sweaty store-Santa's lap. Best of all, my parents had to come up with better means of discipline than "Santa is watching you." I neverI want my daughter to be a truth seeker, someone who questions what she is told. suffered from a lack of imagination. Until I was about ten, I truly believed that The Wizard of Oz was about me. I wore sparkly red flats and made everyone call me Dorothy.
Meanwhile, my friends who still believed were using their Santa-given Barbie dolls to act out the sex scenes from Dirty Dancing and The Big Easy. They watched George Michael scream "I Want Your Sex" on MTV and french-kissed boys on the playground. But still, deep down, we were all innocent.
Now it is my turn to decide what I want my daughter to believe. I know what my husband wants. He believed until he was eight and would like her to believe as well. Of course, I want my daughter to have a good childhood, one filled with dreams, imagination and creativity, but she doesn't need Santa to have that. And as much as I want her to be happy, I also want her to be a truth seeker, someone who questions what she is told and is always honest. I'm not sure that lying to her is the right way to meet that goal.
She can enjoy the spirit of the holidays, all of the giving, excitement and happiness, without believing in a myth — a myth that is weirdly used both to keep children in line and to symbolize enduring childhood wonderment. So I will tell my daughter the truth. I will sign our gifts, "Love, Mommy and Daddy." I want her to be innocent. I want her to have an active imagination. But I'm not going to lie to her. And if not lying also means we don't have to wait in a two-hour line to see a mall Santa, then all the better.
©2007 Sasha Brown-Worsham and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Sasha Brown-Worsham's writing has been published in Runner's World, Parents, Parenting and many more publications. She also writes a marathon blog for Fit Pregnancy. She lives and works in Boston, Mass., where she also tries to keep her pre-schooler from killing her infant. |
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