Christmas is a holiday that many families look forward to celebrating every year. When kids are young, they look forward to the night when Santa comes down the chimney, delivers their gifts, and eats cookies left out for him on a plate.
The idea of Santa Claus is something that so many kids hold near and dear to them from a very early age.
As they get older, many parents worry about their kids finding out the truth.
The whole “is Santa real” question is something that many people worry about. They want their kids to remain innocent and young, and also don’t want to ruin Christmas for them, either.
But, many kids will find out and tell your own children the truth about Santa and Christmas.
Many parents try to find a way to keep the Christmas magic alive for their kids even when they get older.
Trying to come up with the Christmas magic and how to keep it alive and well for older kids can be rather challenging for some parents, so people try to come up with new and innovative ways to explain Santa and the holidays to “pre-teens.”
One mom recently shared the way she keeps Santa alive for her own kids and it’s amazing.
“In our family, we have a special way of transitioning the kids from receiving from Santa, to becoming a Santa. This way, the Santa construct is not a lie that gets discovered, but an unfolding series of good deeds and Christmas spirit,” the mom said.
Usually, the mom said her kids are around 8 or 9 when they’re ready to know the truth.
She’ll take them out and they’ll sit down and they’ll have a conversation about what good things her kids have done that year and the “good deeds” they have done, specifically pointing out things they had done to be exact.
The mom then tells her kids they are “ready to be a Santa Claus.”
She says,
“In fact, your heart has grown so much that I think you are ready to become a Santa Claus. You probably have noticed that most of the Santas you see are people dressed up like him.
Some of your friends might have even told you that there is no Santa. A lot of children think that, because they aren’t ready to BE a Santa yet, but YOU ARE.”
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Essentially, Santa is not just a “person.”
The mom explains and teaches her kids that Santa isn’t just a person, but Santa “itself” is about being generous and giving.
So, she turns her children into their own version of “Santa” for someone else.
The child picks a person they know, maybe a neighbor.
“The child’s mission is to secretly, deviously, find out something that the person needs, and then provide it, wrap it, deliver it—and never, ever reveal to the target where it came from. Being a Santa isn’t about getting credit, you see. It’s about unselfish giving,” she says.
So, her oldest son decided to choose a lady who lived on the corner.
Her son noticed that every morning, the woman (who they deemed the “witch lady” because she was always yelling at kids) came to get her paper in the front of her house barefoot.
So, he decided that she needed some slippers.
He hid in the bushes to watch and determine her “foot size.”
When he decided she was a medium, they went out and got a warm pair of slippers.
Then, he wrapped up the gift and wrote, “Merry Christmas, Love Santa,” on the box and left it for her. The mom said he could “never tell” that it was him, or else he wouldn’t be “Santa.”
The next morning, as they drove off, there she was, wearing the slippers.
Her son was so excited that she liked and wore the gift, but, he never told her that they were from him. Over the years, they chose different people who they felt “were in need” of the Christmas spirit.
One year, he chose a daughter of family friends who was going through hard times, and her son polished up his old bike and gifted it to her from “Santa.”
Now, the “magic of being Santa” has become a family tradition.
Now that her other child is old enough, her son is helping to teach them how to become “Santa” to keep the magic alive. And, I’m sure these children will pass it along to their own children one day—keeping that giving magic of Christmas alive.
