Sure, it's a family story they can chuckle about NOW. But Lisa Highfill wasn't laughing that December day almost 20 years ago.
She had just parked the car in the garage when her then-8-year-old son let loose with something he had found out while at school.
“My son looks at me, he goes, ‘There’s no Santa. You’ve been lying to me,'" recalls Highfill, 56, of Pleasanton, California. “He caught me red-handed, I didn’t know what to say.”
She's not alone in that. Welcome to the holiday season. It's that time of year filled with Christmas cheer, presents, and the ever-present parental question: Do we tell the kids the truth about Santa Claus? (And if you don't know what that truth is, you shouldn't be reading this story! Stop it! Stop it right now!)
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There's no getting away from Santa Claus, the jolly, bearded old man who's been celebrated for the better part of two centuries for bringing presents in a one-night, world-wide giving spree. He's been the subject of poems and stories, movies and songs, invoked as the judge of naughty or nice, the recipient of countless cookies and glasses of milk to sustain him on his journey.
Not bad for someone who doesn't actually, you know, exist.
(Too late for a spoiler alert?)
For a lot of parents and other adults, perpetuating that Santa Claus is real is a chance to give young children a bit of holiday magic, a brief, precious time before the realities of life sweep the illusions away. Others, though, are more skeptical, raising concerns about some of the messaging in Santa's story, such as the constant surveillance over behavior, and in an era where we're all worried about disinformation, misinformation and parents lying to children.
For David Kyle Johnson, a professor of philosophy at King's College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the concern is the lengths some parents go to in order to eke out the last bits of belief from their kids, such as denying their dawning suspicions as they get older over how Santa Claus could logically do what he's supposed to.
“Yeah, it’s Santa, it’s fun or whatever. But you’re teaching them lessons about how to think and how to evaluate evidence, right?,” Johnson says. “And how many people grow up then as adults who believe things just because they want to believe things, because it feels good — believe things because it confirms the world view that makes them feel good, right?”
For Tara Boyce, it's about being consistent about being factual and truthful with her two sons, 6 and 7, that she's always been Santa, and that Christmas doesn't need him to be magical. At the same time, she's told them that people in other homes do things differently, so it's not on her boys to try to disillusion their friends.
Her sons “love Christmas. They love the lights. They love the movies. They love the music. They love the cartoons. They love all the trappings," says Boyce, 46, of Livermore, California.
“They can’t miss what they never had, which is like the mystery of Santa, but they appreciate all the other things.”
An American creation amalgamated from a variety of European cultures and immigrant communities, Santa Claus emerged in the 19th century and was firmly entrenched in American culture by the early part of the 20th century.
He's unique among made-up characters like the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny because a whole story, a world, has been developed around him over the decades, says Thomas Ruys Smith, professor of American literature and culture at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom.
“Where does he live? Is he married? Who makes his toys? We could all give you answers to those questions based on pieces of popular culture," he says. “We feel we know Santa Claus.”
There's no empirical evidence whatsoever that shows any kind of definitive harm or good coming to children over a belief in Santa Claus. Candice Mills, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Dallas who has done a research study into how children felt about learning Santa isn't real, found that for most kids in the study, negative feelings over discovering the truth were usually short-lived.
“They look forward to new traditions. They get to celebrate with their siblings. They get to still enjoy getting presents from Santa Claus, even though they know it’s not real,” she says.
And when talking to parents, Mills' research found that many of those planned to or were incorporating a Santa tradition for their kids even as they recalled being upset at learning the truth as children themselves.
It was tradition that had Highfill and her husband bringing Santa Claus into their Christmas celebrations with their sons to begin with, echoing as parents what their parents had done for them.
She hadn't thought about how it would conflict with the parenting lessons they were trying to impart to the boys, that telling the truth was paramount. Those were lessons the boys had taken to heart, as the upset in the car made clear, she recalls with a laugh.
“I go inside, he won’t come out of the car. ... He’s in there screaming and crying. He’s very upset. I’ve deceived him. His life is a lie. `How could you have done this?'”
It was a big moment, but it didn't destroy her son's enjoyment of the holiday in the years afterward. If anything, Highfill says, it became a special thing he shared with his parents, especially when it came to keeping his younger brother from finding out.
“He wanted to keep it from his brother, which was kind of funny,” Highfill says. “He’s like ... we don’t want to spoil it for him because he’s really into it. He’s a 6-year-old.”
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