While Christmas can be a magical time of year for many people, that tends to be especially true for the kids in our lives.
And as such, many parents out there will pull out all the stops to ensure their children’s Christmas is as wondrous as it can be. But in that rush to do so, it seems that some forget that there’s more than one path to doing the holidays right.
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That’s likely why one store employee called my mom a horrible mother for letting me pick out my gifts way ahead of schedule as a kid (even at age 12, I didn’t let him get away with that).
And it seems to be why one mom is getting flak within her family for an attitude to Santa that’s becoming increasingly popular among parents .
This year, the mom we’re about to hear from came up with a plan for how she would approach Christmas with her six-year-old son and four-year-old daughter.
And as she explained in a Reddit post , this plan involves only marking a couple of inexpensive gifts for each of them as originating from Santa’s workshop.
As she put it, “The rest of their gifts will be clearly marked as from me, my husband, and other family/friends.”
Her reasoning for this is that it isn’t lost on her how differently “Santa” appears to treat children in different financial situations.
She figured that acting like all of her kids’ presents came from Santa would only make other children wonder why Jolly Old Saint Nick didn’t like them as much and what they did wrong that year.
And since that difference only exists because their parents can’t afford to get them the big ticket items other parents splurged on, the mom didn’t think it was fair to do that.
But regardless of how noble her intentions were for doing this, the move led to a fight between the mom and her husband.
And others within their family seem to be taking the husband’s side, saying that giving Santa partial credit would be tantamount to ruining the magic of Christmas for these children. They also said that it doesn’t matter to them whether the kids knew they bought their presents or not.
In the mom’s words, “I’m not against them believing in Santa and having that childhood wonder, but I don’t agree with it being more than a few small gifts.”
That said, these conversations now have her worried that she will indeed ruin her kids’ Christmas.
But as far as the Reddit community she reached out to was concerned, the mom was doing the opposite of what she was being accused of.
As one user said , “This is a fantastic idea that more parents should absolutely follow. You’re not ‘ruining the magic,’ you’re preserving the magic for other children and your own as well.”
And many others spoke from personal experience when they said that disconnect between what “Santa” gave them and other kids did have a significant impact.
In the words of another person, “Take the majority of the credit. That way if your kids get more, bigger, better, whatever presents than their friends/classmates, etc, it is not because Santa loves them more.”
h/t: Reddit | snowballthrowaway01
