About the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus
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photo source: Rise of the Guardians
While I think that I had a pretty good childhood, for one reason or another, I’ve chosen to do some things differently than my parents did. Oh, some things are the same: Sauerkraut and Pork, Ice Cubes and Christmas Trees, and Nanna’s Apple Pie.
Daughter of not one, but TWO public school teachers, I kinda jumped ship when I decided to teach my kids at home. And then there’s that whole thing about the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus.
We don’t do those here.
Please, please, PLEASE do not take offense. I don’t think it’s bad if you do. We just chose something different.
Worrying about the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus.
I did, however, stress about this major big time for the first seven years of parenting. STRESS. MAJOR. BIG. TIME.
I felt pressure from many different sides as I went back and forth in my thinking about the issue of Santa and his other mythological buddies. And a couple years ago, I even asked my eldest if he felt cheated that he’d never had an Easter basket. He just laughed.
Apparently not.
I bring this up NOT to convince anyone to my point of view or to justify my own position. I bring this up for several reasons:
- I know other young moms are like me 10 or 15 years ago, wondering what to do. (I’m guessing some folks have never thought to do otherwise than what they’ve always done.)
- I think we’re all big girls here and can share our reasons without getting in a cat fight. (Please don’t prove me wrong on that.)
- Folks still deciding can benefit from hearing a variety of perspectives in a non-confrontational way
Every December and March, I think about talking about this, but I know those months are too heated to have a discussion about it. But, July? Yeah, we can talk and share what we do, encourage someone else, and (hopefully) not feel judged that someone else does something different. Right?
So, I’ll tell my story and you can tell yours in the comments. 😉
Why we do what we do:
In a nutshell, here’s our basic reasons.
Santa: As a young Christian in my teens, I saw in my own thinking a confusion between God and Santa. God would only give me something I wanted if I was good enough. I know that’s not true, but I struggled for years with those assumptions. For me, it was better not to “play Santa” and to avoid any confusion between the myth and the Maker.
We do stockings and presents, but our kids know the presents are from us, purchased with funds that God gave us.
The Easter Bunny: I consider Easter to be the most important Christian holiday, representing Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross in payment of my sins. Yes, I know it falls on the pagan holiday honoring a fertility goddess, symbolized by a rabbit. I get that.
But again, to avoid confusion as to what we were celebrating, we opted out of “da Bunny”. We do eggs as a talking point about new life, and we do lots of things to prepare for Easter, but we don’t do Easter baskets.
The Tooth Fairy: I honestly have no idea why we never instituted the Tooth Fairy tradition. We jest about her. She’s a big spender at our house.
We are in the process of converting to Judaism, so we gave up the Christian holidays a few years ago. We never taught the children about santa, Easter bunny and stuff like that, but I have to confess it was hard giving up Christmas and all the the traditions that went with it. We are trying to make new traditions around the Jewish feasts and holidays, but it has proven very challenging. The public schools also make it difficult because they make the holidays all about these characters. I was at the dentist yesterday with my 6 year old and the dentist went on and on about his loose teeth and how the tooth fairy was going to be so happy because his teeth were so good, and he would have lots of visits from her soon. I did not say anything because I did not want to embarrass the dentist, but I know that it was confusing for my son.
Hi Tracy:
Mazel Tov and welcome! Please don’t get discouraged about all the changes – there are TONS of traditions, games and festivities – and great foods 🙂 It will take some time to develop new traditions – but they will come if you put out an effort.
Do some Internet searches on the holiday plus the word crafts or games – that should bring up a lot.
As for the schools and such – they are supposed to be exposing the kids to many traditions; if yours are not, you can talk to the teachers or guidance counselor. You may not feel comfortable yet to make presentations to the class – but unless you live in a one horse town, ask around and you will find someone to talk about Hannukah, etc. I have to admit – we did do the
Tooth Fairy – it’s certainly not a Christian or Jewish tradition 🙂
We don’t do Santa ( I didn’t either as a child, my mom always said that why should someone else get the credit for her gift, lol), we don’t do the Easter bunny although we do give the kids some candy and a small gift on Easter. Nobody’s lost any teeth yet, but our oldest is 5 so soon! I really don’t know what we’re going to do with that, but we’ll probably end up perpetuating the tooth fairy lie just because my parents did. When I was around 8, I remember telling my mom that I knew there wasn’t a tooth fairy and that it was her that was leaving the money. She said that if I didn’t believe in the tooth fairy, I wasn’t getting anything else. Kinda weird since she was so opposed to santa, the easter bunny, etc.
We are right there with you. We do not have a problem with the Christmas classics either, but our children knew they were make-believe. Our focus for both Christmas and Easter is on Christ. Now the tooth fairy….well, we gave small monetary rewards for the first few teeth, but the kids knew it was us. One even left us a reminder note after we forgot the night she lost the tooth. =)
Well, I was the 3 year old at some Christmas theme park somewhere in the northeast (which probably closed down years ago) telling the year-round Santa that he didn’t exist. Young as I was, I still remember his look of surprise and his next question: “Are you Jewish?” He was.
My parents didn’t raise us to believe in Santa Claus – for the very reasons you mentioned, Jessica. However, that didn’t stop us from enjoying the Christmas classics every year on TV: Rudolph, Frosty, The Grinch, The Year Without Santa Claus, etc. We enjoyed them for what they were – fairytales, just like Cinderella. Gifts came from Dad and Mom.
Ditto with the Easter bunny. We dyed eyes, did egg hunts, and purchased candy because – hey, did we need a reason? But the only Easter basket I ever received was from an elderly neighbor. Easter was about the Cross.
Tooth Fairy – mmm… did that for a few years, until I figured out it, like everything else, was a fairytale and my brother paid out better than my parents when he played the tooth fairy. 10 cents from Mom, a whole dollar from my brother (16 years my senior). I was no dummy… 😉
We do all three but at a low key level. We make sure to talk about God, Christ, and The Bible as the only important thing at those holidays but we enjoy the fun of the fictional characters. We worry more about our children’s views about gifts than who they were from. We know people who go way overboard in comparison to our gift giving. We also give more then some people do, so we work hard to work on being gracious and appreciative of what you get and not being greedy or having an intitled mentality. To each his own, we talk about how others do different things but that we do our thing and don’t try to compete with others. God is not looking for who pulled off the best gifts.
We haven’t pursued those ideas with our children, either, though they were a part of my childhood. Like you, I wanted to focus more on the profoundness of the holidays. And completely forgetting about the tooth fairy, we just tape our lost teeth to the calendar to visualize again after the years have gone by. My kids don’t think that they’re missing anything important.
We do all of them.
Santa leaves a small gift for each of our 3 kids that is wrapped in different paper, but the larger more expensive gifts come from us.
The Easter Bunny only hides their baskets and they receive a chocolate bunny, jelly beans and another small candy. After visiting both grandparents houses my kids end up with a TON of candy and trinkets from egg hunts. I do appreciate that we get a family basket at my in laws and they usually stuff most of the eggs with loose change.
The Toothfairy at our house does not sneak into my kids rooms at night. Their lost teeth are placed in a tooth pillow I made that hangs on their doorknob. In the morning, the tooth is replaced by a dollar. I only have one child right now that is losing teeth. This one I think is the hardest for him to believe. He turns 8 next week and will be entering 3rd grade. He appears to be hanging on by a thread.
We do celebrate them in our home but I have always struggled with it because it is lying to my kids. Once they figure it out or you tell them how do you explain why you have been lying this whole time. That’s how I felt when I found out as a kid. Also, sometimes the trauma of finding out is a lot for kids. Wonder if it would be better to never start those traditions in the first place.
We do all of them but in small trinkets, like the stockings and baskets but it’s more Christ that anything. I also think it’s a way for kids to be creative since we use the time to draw funny pictures about what each make character is like. I get my kids to draw, write short stories and games. It builds their writing with school, builds imagination and let’s them be their selves without argument with other parents who don’t do this. It’s a good time for kids to spend more time with family just having fun
Our reasons and approaches are very much like yours, although I will say that the Santa decision for us was less about how our kids view God and more about the heartbreak I felt when I found out the truth accidentally at an older friend’s house. I’d been hearing the rumors from other kids already, but her *mom*, not realizing anyone still believed, made a joke about it, and I couldn’t say anything or ask my mom until I got home later that day. It was a very hard experience.
We still “do” Santa as a character, the same way we do Mickey Mouse or Dora, and reading Twas the Night Before Christmas is an annual tradition here on Christmas Eve, but we don’t set out cookies or sign any of the gifts as from Santa or anything like that.
I love that you’re talking about this in July! LOL!
Thank you for bringing this up for discussion! It is something I’ve struggled with. Our girls are 3 and 7 months. We spend Christmas with my in-laws every year and they are HUGE into Santa. Santa was big in their house when my husband was growing up, and is very much a part of his celebration of the Christmas season. My husband’s parents became Christians when he was in elementary school so I guess it was never something they worried about.
It’s honestly something I’d rather not do, for some of the same reasons you mentioned. But my husband does not feel it’s harmful to talk about Santa briefly once a year while we emphasize Jesus all year round. We try to stay away from the “be good, Santa’s watching” stuff. It’s something we had made our peace with, and now some other family members have recently broken the truth to their children (much to my in-laws’ disappointment), who are close to ours in age…not sure how that will play out this Christmas.
My husband’s family is huge on Santa, but we’ve never done it in our home. Since we’re not able to travel to be with his family at the holidays, it’s not been tremendously stressful. When the children were small. we just let them know which gifts were from Grandma; as they got bigger, they could see the same handwriting, and knew to thank Grandma for the “Santa” presents, too.
I really do think it’s fine to say, “I appreciate that you want to do delightful things for the kids; we don’t need a myth to make that happen. We love you.”