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.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this issue. We have made the same decisions for our little boy, for pretty much the same reasons as you. We have taken some flak for it, and my son’s been in trouble, for telling his friends the truth – we’ve actually been surprised at how tightly people hold onto this fantasy for their kids. I have nothing against pretend and make believe, but these same parents who “defend” Santa until their kids are 9, would never try as hard to convince their children that Goldilocks or Red Riding Hood were real … I’m curious why it’s such a big deal?
I was one of those kids who wanted to believe. I was 12 and I was devastated when my mom too-casually broke the news. I can understand their perspective, even though that’s not what we’ve chosen for us.
I was brought up to enjoy these things but my parents ALWAYS made sure we knew it was them and not a stranger doing them or a make believe character. We definitely were told about God being behind these holidays but the non-religious part was given too. My husband and I decided we would do the same with our kids. They both know it is mom and dad but enjoy the “fun” of santa, tooth fairy, and easter bunny. It really isn’t an issue for us. I get the why others don’t do these but also know we are all different and should respect others views. My sister does not allow these but we totally respect each others views.
I couldn’t agree more for the same reasons. 🙂
Not celebrating Santa, the Easter bunny, or the tooth fairy was no big deal in our family. However, when my mom found out we were planning to not celebrate Halloween , that was a problem for her. She then decided to make all the kids costumes, and did so for many years. The costumes all ended up at her house, and for many years all the grandchildren and their friends played dress up when they went to Grandmas.
Interesting post, and I’ve much enjoyed reading the comments as well. A few of you mentioned the whole confusing Santa not being real with God not being real. I had never really thought about that before my significant other told me the story of his sister finding out Santa isn’t real.. And that’s exactly what happened. It’s more so just a humerous story than anything, though. For me growing up, Santa was played out quite a lot. We read books, ALL my presents/stocking goods were from Santa, we left out cookies (and carrots for the reindeer). But for some reason, neither my brothers or I were ever really strong believers. I was eight when my mother told me that Santa wasn’t real. We were in Wal-mart a few weeks before Christmas and I was just telling my mom about how I really admired this purple boom-box. She stopped, held my arm, leaned into me, and whispered in a very serious manner, “Santa is not real.. you know?” I said “…Yeah” Then she put the boom-box in the cart and we moved along. In the car home she brought up EB/TF not being real either. No skin off my little nose. Except, because I was the last in the family “to know”, the holiday traditions we did faded along with the myths being all aired out. No more Easter egg hunts was probably the worst hit for me. I also quite enjoyed leaving out cookies and carrots.. But I don’t see how that one still could have been played out.
Which brings me to what I will do — as I am not a mother yet — with my family. No Santa. Mostly because we don’t plan on celebrating “Christmas”. I must find a way to leave out cookies and carrots for someone/something to eat, though ;). Tooth fairy is still a maybe. And the Easter bunny is a possibility although it will not be an “Easter” bunny.. “Spring” bunny or “Ostara” bunny maybe :P. But what’s most important to me, coming from my own childhood experience, is just keeping up our own traditions year after year — whether they involve made-up characters or not :).
We’ve always skipped Santa, EB, Tooth Fairy, and definitely Elf on the Shelf. There are reasons that play in (we’re Christian, not Santa-ian or Bunnerian; we don’t lie to our kids, I’m a big slacker, etc,) but we’ve never felt the lack of them, and the kids have learned to graciously respond to Santa-practicing relatives on my husband’s side.
We do hang stockings: the kids have always helped choose (yay, bulk food section!) and make (yay, cookies and brownies and granola!) tasty treats to pop inside (that’s our breakfast on Christmas Day), and they tend to use the stockings as a Tiny Present Stash Drop, adding little notes and drawings and other small things for their siblings or us through the whole season, which is quite a lot of fun.
Rather than talk about the spirit of Christmas, we talk about the Spirit of God, that inspires people to do kind things for others, and then we find ways to live that out; because we’re not overwhelmed with the secular sides of the seasons, we have more time and funds available to do cool things, and I love that.
Skipping Santa, in particular, seems to help curb some of the gift excess, though not entirely. My husband’s family are really good bargain hunters, and love the kids. But they’ve gotten better over the years… particularly once MIL visited us and took back confirmation of truly how TINY our home is. 🙂
I guess I’d say: if someone has qualms about using SC, EB, TF and the rest, give it a go without. It’s really liberating and fun!
It is so encouraging to know that there are multiple families out there that feel the same as we do. The lying and confusion of magical things with God. My husband struggled with the latter and I with the lying game my mom had to play to keep me believing longer. Thank you all so much for all your ideas and encouragement. Our kids are still young at 4 and 2.
We have never done the Easter bunny, Santa or the tooth fairy either. Mainly because I wanted to have our holidays center around the most important things. Christ, family and making memories. We do a small amount of presents to help celebrate Jesus’ birthday, we gather for a nice meal on Easter with our families and I didn’t want my children thinking someone was “magically” sneaking into their rooms at night to slip a few coins (or dollars now) under their pillows. They appreciate things more because they realize their Dad worked hard to give them even the smallest amount of gifts that they receive. We have no credit cards we are still trying to pay off in July from last Christmas. We do what we can when we can. Homeschooling helps because my children aren’t in a setting where they are the only ones Santa does not visit. But we still socialize and have friends with different traditions. Every family is different and I feel everyone should assess their beliefs and do what works well for their family.
We love all things Christmas and fully celebrate all holidays to their fullest with all the fun fairytales and nonsense. My boys go to a private Christian school and we fully participate in all religious aspects of all holidays that are religious in nature. We do, however, go all out for Christmas with Santa and gifts and stockings and cookies… and when it’s time… we share the “secret” and let our boys then bear the burden of keeping the secret alive for their younger siblings. My son, after he found out the secret, wasn’t sad — disappointed — mad or nor did he feel deceived or let down… he actually hugged me… told me I was a great mom. Thanked me for making his Christmases and holidays so special… and agreed to help shop for his younger brothers and to keep the secret alive. I have good friends that don’t participate in the idea of typical Christmastime fairytales either… but we still delight in sharing time together. Their kids have been told not to “spoil” it for anyone else… and never have said anything…
Our daughter is 8 months so we have barely started traditions. However, as a Catholic, I value how St. Nicholas’ legacy transitioned into Santa. That will always be a part of our teaching about the holiday. I like how other commenters have said Santa is like a fairy tale; I think that will be a good way to explain it once our child(ren) figures it out. I have a hard time with all the materialism surrounding Christmas but not the Santa part. I guess because my parents didn’t go overboard with any of the holidays I don’t see the harm. It didn’t affect my siblings’ or my faith negatively.
Also, Good Friday and even Holy Saturday are about the Cruxificion for us, but Easter Sunday is about the Resurrection for us. It’s the greatest feast for us and worthy of celebration. I could see leaving out the bunny but that and the eggs are a symbol of new life for us and that was Christ’s greatest gift for us: new life in heaven.
My biggest issue is my in-laws go OVER THE TOP with Christmas gifts. We live in a small condo and they have already told us they are getting our daughter a rocking horse for her first birthday and based on what they have given the other grand kids (think giant workbench and kitchen) I am afraid of what they will give her for Christmas. We will be grateful, nonetheless.
Consider being grateful and keeping the huge toy at Grandma’s… because it’s really not thoughtful of them to give huge gifts to those who live in compact spaces. And the little ones can have a load of fun with it when they visit the grandparents. 😀