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 do Santa and the Easter Bunny, but we always throw it back to the kids…”What do you think?” My oldest (6.5 yo) will catch on this year.
The tooth fairy did come…and I used it to my advantage! The tooth fairy left a note explaining that she really had to hustle to get to all the other kids because she visited with too many of her stuffed animals – so please consider only sleeping with one! (Some times you need to use what you have!) She no longer sleeps with a blanket or 29 “special guest animals” 🙂
I have noticed the newest tradition…Elf on a shelf! I would expect some kids find that fun, yet others being totally freaked that EVERY night this little odd fellow flies around their house 🙂 I’ve wondered if it was more the adults trying to get in touch with their inner child or perhaps another marketing ploy that clicked.
I love Christmas. We believe in Santa at our house, but I am more along the lines of “The spirit of St. Nick” and having a generous heart. We each only get one present from Santa and it is not wrapped. When our children get older, we will explain about the spirit of Christmas and how it is good to be generous to others.
We do Easter baskets because I think they are a fun treat. It helps that my mother-in-law does Easter bags each year for everyone too, because it shows that Easter is a day to expect a little treat from family to celebrate spring, not so much about a big bunny bringing something to you. I make a specific point to remind me children that Easter is about Jesus and we go to church service, because that is the true reason for the day.
Tooth Fairy: I haven’t gotten there yet. I plan to give my children $2 bills because it is something you don’t get everyday and it will lend to a nice memory when they are older. I have a special tooth fairy pillow I bought because it was adorable, but, I am going to tell them that it is me that puts the money in the pillow. Just wearing another mommy hat: Chef hat, Teaching hat, Party Planner hat, tooth fairy hat…all in a day’s work right?
This is a real struggle for our extended family, especially in regards to Santa. Hubs and I made the decision very early on that Santa was not going to be a part of our Christmas tradition. It was never part of his growing up, and while it was part of mine, it was very low-key, kind of like yours. We did stockings and such, but we all knew it was from Mom and Dad. However, my sister-in-law (married to my husband’s brother) is into Santa in a huge way. Their son is now three, and that child has had more pictures with Santa than I care to think about. We’ve always been straight with our kids (Santa is just for pretend), and I’m pretty sure that they’re going to spill the beans to their cousin one of these years…I’m already anticipating the ensuing fight. Oy vey. 🙂 I know it’s a struggle for my in-laws, too, since it was never something that they raised their boys with. Oh well, I’m not going to change the way we do things to accommodate their traditions… 🙂
I wasn’t raised with any of them – because of the lying issue – so I’d always figured that’s what I’d do. My husband was raised with the myths and was terrified of them. The whole idea of strangers coming into his house at night – and especially the Tooth Fairy who was rooting under your pillow while you slept – totally Freaked. Him. Out. He was relieved that I wasn’t set on putting our kids through that. Our kids are still young so it hasn’t been much of an issue yet, we have talked about Santa a bit as something that other people do because you can’t really avoid exposure to him.
Funny, I was one of those people who just assumed I’d do Santa … until I married a Jew who said he didn’t want to lie to his kids. So we’ve never done Santa or the Bunny, although my children are so surrounded by Santa believers that when my oldest was in kinder, he was asked by someone (an adult) if Santa was going to visit and he said yes. (My husband and I had a good laugh about that, and just went with it until it became clear he didn’t really believe in Santa.)
We were doing the tooth fairy, but around the third tooth, my oldest said he knew that we were the tooth fairy, and listed the reasons why there really couldn’t be a tooth fairy.
We have emphasized to the kids that they must never belittle or discredit someone else’s beliefs. More than anything, I think that’s the most important component of these choices because, as you pointed out, Jessica, every family makes their own!
I LOVE this conversation! I have always loved the Santa myth but my problem has been how does it end, Without the kids being heart broken and confused. So a couple years ago I started talking to my kids about how Santa is everyplace (you see them all over and they ask… So it was a great time!) and this year I will give them this letter http://www.cozi.com/live-simply/truth-about-santa I am so very thankful to the mom who wrote it! My kids are 11&12, a bit old for still believing in Santa but I’ve started teaching them to believe in the magic of Santa and doing good for others. We went through a really rough time in our lives 2 Christmas’ ago and I was able to talk to them about how each of the people who helped us was a Santa. Doing good for someone else. So far this has worked for me, I’ll have to update when I give them the letter. It will be bitter sweet for me!
Oh, how I wish I had read something like this when DS14 was born. We do them all! (to some extent) Not that I mind having done them, but it’s the getting out of them that’s an issue! I will say that somehow we transitioned to the kids knowing we are the Easter Bunny, and they know that we hide the eggs and the basket is from us. It’s more about the hunt, although they know they have to get the same number of eggs, and the eggs are plastic and have candy. They also know the real reason for the holidays, and we celebrate that, too. But the Easter Bunny just sort of disappeared.
Santa has been a wonderful part of their childhood, but I’m at the point now where I’m REALLY wanting them to tell me they no longer believe. It’s getting harder to keep it going. I think DS14 knows, but I’m not sure about DD11. They have always known that Santa doesn’t bring big presents, we do, and there are certain things you don’t ask Santa for; I never wanted to put the mall Santas in that position, although I’m sure they had their standard lines when asked for laptops from 5 year olds! When DS14 got older, we had to get creative with stories about why the same presents he wanted/got were also in the store; we told him that Santa made some during the year and sold them to stores so that he had the money to give away at Christmastime.
The Tooth Fairy is the one I really wish we had not done. I can’t count the number of times “she” forgot to come. I always had to say that maybe she couldn’t find the box, etc. DS14 has lost all his baby teeth, so now it’s just DD11 to contend with. We’re almost there.
I’m happy we did the traditions, but I do wish we had thought it out a bit more before we got too far into it. But, I don’t regret it overall. 🙂
We did the traditions–but not the lies. For Christmas–we gave each child one present wrapped in different paper. On the tag–it said who the present was to, but left the from blank. Any other presents said from us.
For Easter–we put out baskets but never said where they came from.
As the kids got older and asked if Santa was real—we explained that Santa is a concept—and can be any person that does good things for others without asking anything in return. We also explained the traditions of Santa around the world—and that the traditions probably got started by a person going door to door during the holidays.
Our kids know about the story of Santa just as they have read stories of Elmo, buzz light year & the princesses. We feel we don’t have to make a bigger deal about him than other characters. While he doesn’t come to our house & we don’t lie to our kids pretending he does, we don’t want to over emphasize his falseness and then have our kids be the one who goes around telling kids who do Santa that he is not real. No one goes around saying, “Mickey Mouse is not real!”
Our family still will ask our kids “what did Santa bring you?” Even after 5 years of us reminding them he doesn’t come… And our kids just look at them like they are confused.
We committed to spend Christmas Eve at our house so we can wake up & have a birthday party for Jesus and not gifts from Santa.
We also do not do the Easter bunny but we do give our kids a basket (usually they have been given stuff from relatives) and we hide the basket. I like the Reese eggs to much to skip Easter candy. Lol.
My son list his first two teeth earlier than we were prepared for (I thought that happened at 6, not 5!) so we did give him money under his pillow in exchange for the teeth but we didn’t tell him it’s from the tooth fairy. We still need to talk this one out before the next loose tooth.