Santa: Legend or “Real” Poll

Last week’s Mayo or Miracle Whip poll was helped by a large number of voters who came in from Sunday’s article in the Pioneer Press but a large majority of people agreed with me that mayo rules and The Whip drools. I was actually impressed with the number of people who went with Miracle Whip as I was honestly thinking there would only be one or two. You have proved me wrong :) But as promised, I am back at it with another holiday themed poll about the whole Santa thing…

Growing up Santa was a big part of my Christmas experience. In fact, when I was four or five I was sleepwalking and saw Santa throwing presents under the tree. I reached out to shake his hand and heard something behind me. I turned to find my family behind me and when I turned back to Santa I saw that I was shaking the leaf of a large rubber tree plant we had in our home near the tree. This particular moment was one of my mother’s favorites and while we were discussing it the other day she said that it still brings a tear of joy to her eye nearly 25 years later.

Well a couple weeks ago I saw this post in Google Reader and clicked on through to read this blog post from the son of John Piper a local pastor of a multi-campus mega church here in the MSP metro. While growing up and even until I met Kim I didn’t realize that there were families that chose not to teach their children about Santa for one reason or another. I was actually shocked and dismayed when I learned that Kim didn’t have the same Christmas experience as I did growing up.

I talked to several other people about this topic, all of which are far more religious than I am. One said that he follows the example mentioned by Mr. Piper in the blog linked above, another said that he believes in enjoying the magic experienced when his child gets wide-eyed over the idea of Santa coming on Christmas morning, and yet another said that he was upset when his daughter just announced to him that Santa doesn’t exist and then proceeded to try and coerce money out of him for her lost tooth even though she knew that the tooth fairy didn’t exist either.

Christmas was far more special for me when I believed in Santa and something was definitely lost after I stopped “believing”. Many people have mentioned that they forever resented their parents for lying to them and that led to their questioning of everything thereafter.

So, my question for you is how do you choose to proceed with your teachings to your children on Santa? I’m going to give the options “Legend”, “Real”, and “N/A” which you can fill at your discretion. If you have any Santa stories (happy, sad, or that you now hate your parents for the lies they perpetrated for their own enjoyment) bring it on as this is a question I *really* want some discussion about. This is an important topic to me and one that I need to think about from many different angles. So please comment on, I want to know what you have to say.

As always, check out our expired polls in the archive or read through the previous posts about polls here.


Source: lazylightning.org