And having been a Santa Claus true believer at one point, and having met more of them in my lifetime than I can count, I can tell you their utter conviction about him makes a mockery out of the faith of even the most fanatical Christians I've ever met.
Surely you're not implying that there's no Santa Claus.
"Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence.
My aunt told a great story at Thanksgiving about my 9-year-old cousin asking her about Santa. She confirmed his suspicions, but told him that now he has to join with the grownups in not ruining it for the little kids. It was really sweet.
There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence.
Romance? Have I been hearing about the wrong Santa?
I fail to get the point behind believing Santa's real, so don't leave your kids with me if you need them unabused. I'm likely to slip and hard.
I guess it's because I never believed that I can't imagine what believing could add.
Romance? Have I been hearing about the wrong Santa?
Haven't you heard about the one who's always kissing Mommy?
The year's best errors -- a roundup of newspaper and magazine errors and corrections from 2006.
From the Orange County Register:
Cannabis is a synonym for marijuana. Because of a reporter’s error, the word was misspelled in an article on Page 15 of the News section in the Sept. 22 edition of the Register.
As with many corrections, it’s all about what they’re not telling you. Here’s the original, offending sentence:
The pot growers had tapped into an irrigation line for landscaping around the gated community of Stoneridge, and had rigged up a network of white, 3/4-inch PVC piping to grow the cannibals.
Why do parent's make their kids believe in Santa Claus (and the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny)? Is it just because their parents made them believe?
I mean it's a decision we're going to have to make in regards to our child, and even though my parents had us kids believing, I'm not sure why I would want to intentionally decieve my own.
Why do parent's make their kids believe in Santa Claus?
So that they don't have to wrap presents?
My presents from Santa were always wrapped. As is the occasional gift from Satan, which started out as a genuine typo (write-o?) by my grandmother, but which was on a gift of underwear that got directed to the wrong person.
For me, it was a compromise. I'm very much of the ita school of thought, and probably for the same reasons. I believed when tiny, but had doubts for as long as I could remember. I just knew my parents had no money, so I couldn't work out who bought the presents, if there was no Santa.
I'll tell you though, kids want to believe in Santa. Ben figured it out when we forgot to leave tooth fairy money once, then got total amnesia about it. The amnesia was such that when his (3 years younger) sister asked me point blank about Santa (and I told her the truth), and then told him, he was utterly shocked. They both told Chris, at the time. Chris blocked it out. Julia has now blocked it out, even though she spent the better part of a day or two, in tears.
Chris asked me this week. I asked him if he really wanted to know the truth. He said he did. I asked him if he really wanted to know the truth, even if the answer was, "There is no Santa." He said he did. I told him there was no Santa. He asked where the presents came from. I told him that his dad and I bought them. He then started arguing with me, and didn't want to know, and said I was wrong and he didn't believe me. I told him that he didn't have to believe me, and he was free to believe whatever he wanted.
He has since totally wiped that from his memory. And of my three children, he's the least capable of maintaining a pretense about this sort of thing. He's flat out convinced himself I was teasing, even though I never said, indicated, or acted like I was.
My minister and his wife always presented Santa as a fairy tale that people very much liked to pretend was true. I wish I'd known/thought of that approach, when Soctt and I were negotiating over how to handle it.
