Did You Ever Believe in Santa Claus?

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My parents were part of the parental conspiracy to make their kids believe in Santa Claus but I never, ever thought that he could be real. When I talked to other kids about Santa Claus, they seriously believed. Is that an aspy trait, needing better convincing than just the parents' word for it?

I never believed, partly because they said he'd come down the non-existant chiminey. ^_^ I thought it was a game to catch mom and dad laying out the presents.

I believed till I was a little older than average
I also sincerely believed in the Easter Bunny for a while....

I don't remember ever really believing in Santa Claus. It may have been due to the fact my parents never made an effort to "decieve" my brother and me. We always understood that presents labeled "From: Santa" meant "extra" presents that my mom bought, because she always bought too many presents for us.

It is an AS trait for Aspie children to need logical reason or explanations to do certain things, especially social rituals. As kids, we don't normally accept something because someone says so or does it themselves - not because we're more logical aor "advanced" as children, but because of that autistic disconnect we have in learning social behavior by intuitively "mirroring" the behaviors of others. We don't learn social behavior the "normal" way, so our young brains have to fall back on what it can do, which is discerning cause and effect. For example, all children learn that if you put really hot food in you mouth, it hurts. Cause and effect - very simple. We all learn that way. Aspie kids will try to apply that way of learning to more complex social behaviors and rituals, and this means we subconsciously start dividing things into "proven" and "unproven" categories. And that from which we can't discern a believable effect-cause relationship of whatever reason, we often discount or distrust.

I remember being very dubious at the age of about 3. But then we were walking home from my grandparents on Christmas Eve night and I saw a shooting star and thought "Well, they can't have been lying to me because I've just seen him!" Admittedly, i was half asleep in the buggy at the time.
I remember discussing it with my sister and realising that "he has a magic key to open the door" and "we buy the presents, send them to him to wrap and then he delivers them" are too far-fetched.

Stopped believing in Santa at age 5.

There were a lot of things like that I missed out on. I pretended to still believe in imaginary things like Santa and the Easter Bunny long after I'd realized it wasn't real - because I enjoyed the idea and the ritual. I was about 6 when I knew for sure Santa didn't exist. My family was very good at keeping the idea alive, or I'm sure I would have lost belief much sooner. My dad remembers me asking way too many questions when I was only 4.

I guess deep down inside I knew they weren't real..but kept pretending....

I do recall waitng for the easter bunny in the back yard and thinking that when he emerged, he would be a giant cartoon character.

..and I don't even think it was easter.

I thought the alley beyond our backyard was some sort of wilderness..and I never went there.

I read that people who recognise reality too much are depressed. The general shrink consensus is that it's mentally healthier to fudge on reality and think optimistically whether or not there's any reason to be optimistic.

Maybe I was being too realistic. As a little kid, my depressed parents made sure that I knew that kids all over the world were starving. I thought that if someone as powerful as Santa existed, he would have solved that problem.

I DO remember seriously wondering about it. But it was always hard to imagine my parents going down SO early in the morning, yet not TOO early. they probably had like from 2am to 4am to do it. I had SERIOUS insomnia. My mother DID fess up though.

I saw my dad wandering around the house in his underwear, so I quickly realized there was no Santa.


Damn him.

i beleived in santa and the easter bunny until I was 10, some of the other neghboorhood kids beleived even at a later age and I tryed not to spoil it for them.

I don't remember ever believing in Santa. My parents would always leave presents "from Santa" for me, but I always knew it was them.

I was about 7 when I realized that Santa wasn't real, as I recognized the "from Santa" handwriting as my mom's. I pretended for a few years as my younger brother seriously believed in Santa, until he figured it out on his own.

When I was about six, I asked my parents how Santa knew whether we were being good or bad. As it turns out, Santa calls them up on the phone and asks (I wonder how big his long-distance bill was). I did not get that many presents that year.
That same year, I also noticed that Santa would make a trip or two before Christmas day to "start" putting presents under the tree and that he had the same sort of wrapping paper that my parents did. I believe I lost my faith the year after that, although I had to try and figure out which Santas were real and which were false (the one at the mall was probably real, but the one at Dad's office party was not because of the fake beard). As for the Easter Bunny, that's another story, although his handwriting was very similar to my mothers (my brother and I wrote a letter to him).
I believed in the tooth fairy until I was 6 or 7. I had trouble sleeping one night after my brother's tooth came out, and I was wondering if I would get to see her. My beliefs were shattered when my parents came into the room and exchanged the tooth for the money. I remember getting $5 for the first two teeth and only 50c for the third one.
My parents never really forced such beliefs on us anyway

Adults told me that when they found out that there wasn't a Santa they had feelings of anger and sadness so when I asked them if they would tell their kids that there was a Santa, they said, "of course." So it's okay to cause your kids anger and sadness? Sigh.... parenting is so confusing.

Btw, the only thing I ever told my kids about Santa was to not tell other kids that there wasn't a Santa. It was up to the parents to break the news. I guess it's like it's up to the parents to tell kids about sex, too but kids eventually find out about both on the playground.