Growing Up Without Santa - A True Life Account of What Happens When You Don't Believe

"How old were you when you found out the truth about Santa?" My answer has shocked, outraged, or inspired pity in everyone who hears it. Many parents consider this event to be a cultural milestone poignantly marking the beginning of childhood's end. It's a big deal.

Like most of the world, I never believed. Despite being a member of a worldwide majority, I was very much a minority in the heartland of America where I grew up. It's not that we didn't celebrate Christmas, like my Jehovah's Witness friend Katrina. Nor were we Muslim, Jewish, or atheist. The reason that we didn't believe is more mundane than religion or culture - my Dad didn't want to lie to us. I was not yet a year old when the announcement was made, and though my sister was a toddler, she has no memory of the 'big event.'

At the same time the truth was revealed, it was explained that for many the Christmas myth is important and we should not say what we knew to other children. Neither my siblings nor I ever revealed the truth to our peers. And it was not from other children who eventually did know the truth that the most vehement reactions came. It's the adults who maintain that Christmas was a magical part of their youth and that Saint Nick's role is bound up in that magic. For them, to remove him from the equation is to unravel the entire event. Their reactions, surprisingly visceral, can be summed up thusly: that's just wrong.

They can no more imagine that a child's Christmas sans Claus is entirely magical than I can imagine that my childhood Christmases could have been improved by anything. They were wonderful, as wonderful as any Christmas movie ever made. Christmas was a time of mystery and surprise, of comfort and giving, and of slowing down enough to cherish the most important thing in life. Back then, Christmas songs were sung by Bing Crosby and Perry Como. There were more cookies than I could count for what seemed like months, and somehow my parents always managed to get us the most perfect and wonderful gifts ever known to a child.

So, besides perfect and wonderful, what was Christmas like for children who didn't believe? It might seem odd that we continued until adulthood to put out a plate of cookies, a carrot and a glass of milk before heading to bed. One of my parents, I'll never know which, always left one cookie with a bite missing on the plate. The gifts we got were, and still are, marked from Mom and Dad or from Santa. I have no idea how they made the determination which came from whom. On Christmas morning we ate sticky buns baked in the shape of an evergreen and sat around in our footie pajamas making a royal mess of paper and ribbons. Not a single Christmas could have been improved upon - even by believing in Santa.