As I made my confession this christmas, it greatly relieved me of my doing as being 'Santa' all these years!!!
It all began with an innocent intent - the joy of seeing my kids lit up genuinely as they received a surprise gift from Santa. However, I foolishly stepped up my game by dropping a little gift in their santa socks daily in the month of December till Christmas eve and this tradition stuck for many many years. They started off believing in Santa and would wake up eager and chirpy in the morning shoving their hands into the socks and retrieved their finds. It was easy to get them little gifts as toddlers as little items would delight them. As they grow, they develop their likes and tastes, it became increasingly difficult to find economic buys that would truly delight them. This is the reality of growing up - kids appreciate less of simple joys as they grow into pre-teens. I had the chance to break the myth years ago when they first had their initial doubts about Santa as their friends claimed that Santa was not real but I remarked that "If they believe it is real, then Santa is real". They chose to believe as they loved to receive gifts.
This year prior to putting up the Christmas socks, my boy being the more logical brained had questioned me on the existence of Santa again but my girl, being more sentimental chose to believe Santa is real, and I reiterated the same line. They thus chucked their doubt aside and continued to receive little gifts from Santa. However, my job was made tougher with age - I would forget to slip in the gifts and jolt up awake in the middle of the night to drop the gifts into their socks and returned to bed, sleep interrupted!!! Furthermore, I observed that the gratitude gained from Santa is diminishing, which reduces the spirit of the intent. Hence I decided to stop torturing myself and confess to my kids yesterday morning. Since they already understood the true meaning of Christmas, we will scrape away the myth of Santa ;p
Nonetheless, we had our fair share of 'Santa' stories and memories to live with. After Santa, they started to question me about tooth fairy….
