Anyone else weirded out by telling kids to believe in Santa?

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I always found it weird that we have this cultural tradition of lying to small children about the existence of Santa, The Easter Bunny and others. First off I don't see the point. Kids are imaginative as it is without adults lying to them. The other thing is kids are often crushed when they learn the truth. Why do people do this?

I believe they mostly do it so kids will behave themselves--so they'll have a reason to be "good."

It would be interesting to have parents chime in on this.

I would bet that most "resort" to Santa Claus because an explanation why certain rules should be followed might be too difficult for a three-year-old to comprehend.

I believe, at times, parents resort to Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, etc. because they would be exasperated otherwise.

Yeah, I made a thread about this. The concept of these make-believe characters sickens me. Stop preying on the naïveté of young children.

Not really, it's just harmless folklore/culture. What I don't like is the heavy commercialization of holidays.

I'd say it is pretty harmless but personally I do see the value in not deluding your children and making it clear that it was your hard work that paid for those presents not some magical fat man, elves, and reindeer.

I really wish we could attract parents of young children to this thread.

I couldn't do it. And I was pissed off when I found out.

Also, I'd be interested to know if anyone would enforce the threat of no or less presents? This comes with numerous issues. How do you determine the standard? Then you have to be consistent. And if your child violates the standard early in a year, then they have no motivation to be good for the rest of it. And what about if they see someone worse than them get lavished with presents? That is a whole different and massive can of worms, the kind that puts families in debt. Because some little s**t gets a ton of stuff from their well off parents, what message does that send to your own child who behaved better when they don't do better? Unless you break the bank to change that. I could go on all day about Christmas, believe me. But to stay on topic, I would definitely have to tell any children of mine the truth, I feel that far, far outweighs the pitfalls of running with the lie. I'd also be interested to know if anyone did that or their parents did that with them.

This person's parents did it. From the thread I made:

Thanks.

I've pondered a lot in the past about the issue of the child/ren spilling the beans to others and getting me into ugly confrontations with other parents and I think I'd unfortunately have to try and get them not to tell. Which I don't know how I'd do, would they understand the truth at that age?

I would do it this way, on the extremely slim chance I ever have children: I would flat-out tell them as soon as they would be old enough to understand, and if they didn't believe me, that's fine. I wouldn't bring it up again, but I wouldn't start talking about Santa and acting like he's real, either. And if the child did believe me and told the kids at school, I wouldn't care. I'd be an adult; what consequences could I suffer from the staff at the school? I guess they could try to remove the child from the school, but I think that would be a bit too extreme.

I'm a parent and I do the Santa thing because I loved it when I was little. I loved listening out for bells and reindeer on the roof on Christmas Eve. I wanted to believe so much that even when my older sister and parents told me I still convinced myself it might be true. My kids are 5 and 8 and the 8 year old definitely knows the truth but just carries it on in a tongue-in-cheek way for her brother. I'm pretty sure he has his suspicions as well. I've never really used Santa watching them as an incentive/threat though. I don't really agree with that as 'Santa' would still be coming however they behaved.