Santa Claus Myth

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Did you believe in Santa Claus? How did you learn the truth? Did you tell anyone else? How did it affect you?

When I learned to write, I tried mailing my letter to Santa myself, and mother got very weird about wanting to see it. It was still another year or so before I figured it out, and then I told a couple of Jewish boys whose parents were visiting. Then I saw that maintaining the illusion was a "grown up" responsibility I should share.

I didn’t grow up in Christmas-celebrating household, but I had some magical thinking and believed in fairies for awhile. I gradually just grew out of it although I came to believe that imagination was preferable to reality.

I heard about a very morose 12 year old girl who had been raised with no fairy tales by very logic-loving parents. Fantastic reading matter was prescribed, and she felt much better.
I never got confused by the magic in children's stories, but I think that thinking them over was important for developing an imagination. With magic allowed, we get that freedom from criticism prescribed for effective brainstorming sessions.

I decided that Santa couldn’t go down all those chimneys in one night.

Moreover, most houses and apartment houses in my area didn’t even have visible chimney-type things.

He would have had to break into about 50 apartments in my building.

I still sort of believed in him—just in case.

I believed both in Santa and the Easter Bunny for a bit longer than I should have. I found it difficult to believe adults initially when they were telling me they weren't real. I grew up slower in many ways.

Around high school age I became a fierce scientific agnostic about everything and haven't retreated from that position since. I grew up in a rural, low information religious environment, so it was actually rather serious to deviate.

As a tangent, I hate the presumption that you leave the myth behind because of negative social interactions. No...your metaphysical claims are unscientific. Why is it so hard for people to discuss that?

I stopped believing in Santa when I was 14-15 (I know, a teenager believing in Santa. Pretty silly, right? )

Anyway, I know someone who used to be in this website who claims to still believe in Santa (of course, that may be a term for getting a gift for having good behavior), but her family's definition of "being nice" is pretty....um, warped. One instance, they told her that if she wants to have any goodies for Christmas, she must NEVER tolerate any form of LGBT relationships and supporters. So, basically, being "nice" means being anti-gay? That seems like the stark opposite of "nice" to me!

I believed as a small child, but I don't remember exactly to what age... I was 6 or 7 when I first gave christmas presents, so I had stopped by then.

BTW, why does America have that "santa uses the chimney" -thing? What is it based on?

I believed in him until I was 9, when my older cousin told me that our parents bare the ones who bring us presents and that Santa isn't real. I wasn't bothered though. It suddenly all made sense to me.

Santa was presented in a way were it was obvious everyone was pretending he was real.

Like the invisible family dog named Sparky. My dad had a lot of fun with that. Here Sparky! Has anyone seen Sparky? Sparky no bad dog!

Of course there's always the possibility he actually was hallucinating.

Because Santa had to distribute his presents in secret. He couldn’t go through the front door. Or the back door. The only other option was the chimney.

It was probably difficult getting parking for his reindeer in the big city.

I had a period of joined belief in Santa and knowledge that people give presents to each other. I believed Santa makes sure no one is excluded or seriously disadvantaged in the process.

Recently, I decided I believe in Santa as a social construct: in my family, all Christmas presents are anonymous, secretly placed under the Christmas tree during a big gathering of the extended family. After the Christmas Eve, kids take them, read labels and give them to the right persons. No one knows which gift comes from who, they are all "from Santa". This way nobody can judge you by what you give - it makes the process much less stressful than in my husband's family where the giver and the gift can be remembered for decades.

So, I like the social construct of Santa

I heard the real Santa was beaten up, arrested for animal abuse by the LAPD and locked away. A jovial guy all dressed up in winter gear with reindeer driving a sled was not a good look in the middle of the Santa Monica Freeway.

I don't know the exact origin of the "down the chimney" version, but a lot of Christmas traditions are decided by advertisers. https://www.xkcd.com/988/ Maybe the chimney is used to get kids thinking their way off the gift list sooner, because apart from clearance issues, in winter chimneys led to an active fireplace, or just a furnace.
Did the revelation change your trust in adults? Did their benign intent make it OK to lie?

No, it was a soft transition from "helping Santa by giving each other presents" to helping Santa without the actual central figure of Santa. He remained as a metaphor, social construct, ensuring anonymity of Christmas gifts. He was also blended with the historical figure of st Nicolas, as the name in Polish is the same.
My parents never stressed material existence of obese guy in red outfit and we didn't have any chimney he could use so it was obvious that most of the Santa Claus myth was just a myth.

Oh, by the way, our Christmas music spans from medieval chants to current compositions, we don't have the peak shown in xkcd.

Sinterklaas, in the Netherlands, is a rather different figure than the usual Santa.

If you like "rather different figure than the usual Santa", I recommend you a Finnish movie Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1401143/