Follow-up: For those with children, do you continue the ruse with your own children, or simply tell them it’s you who gives the gifts? Why or why not?
Six. My lone Jewish friend told me. It was a big old fucking bummer.
I was probably 7 or 8.
I lost a tooth and put it under my pillow without telling my parents. Toothfairy never came.
Didn’t believe in any of the mythical things after that.
Edit: Oh and we play along. He’s 14 and definitely knows but the wife enjoys it more than he does. So he’s milking it and I applaud him for it.
I was born low class family from Peru. Nobody has chimneys there, I knew the fucker was avoiding us.
I got visit from saint nicolas. And i knew the truth at about 8. We did not have a coca cola commercial to celebrate 25/12. So for that one i do not have a age .
Atm Some kids here know it in 1st year off school ( not kindergarden ) so about 6/7. They talk so when the next year is there : about 90 % knows it. And the year after that it is not more expected to have believers in the klas.
A bit before I started questioning religion. 9-10 years old?
Okay, asking somebody how long they believed in Santa Claus is so stupid, you can’t even consider the topic suitable for idle conversation. But if you still wanna know how long I believed in some old fat guy who wears a funky red suit, I can tell you this: I’ve never believed in him, ever. The Santa that showed up at my kindergarten Christmas festival, I knew he was fake. And I never saw mommy kissing Santa or anything. But I have to say, that even as a little kid, I knew better than to believe in some old man that only worked one day a year. Now, having said that, it wasn’t until I got older that I realized that aliens, time travelers, ghosts, monsters, espers, the evil syndicates and the anime/manga/fantasy flick heroes that fight said evil syndicates, were also fake. Okay, I guess I always knew those things were bogus, I just didn’t wanna admit it. All I ever wanted was for an alien, time traveler, ghost, monster, esper, evil syndicate, or the hero that fought them to just appear and say “Hey”. Unfortunately, reality is a hard road indeed. Yep, you gotta admit, the laws of physics definitely puts a damper on things.
Real ones know 😏
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Since I’m getting downvotes, let me clarify.
This is literally the first paragraph of a book, and is the first line of the first episode of the TV series based on the book.
Y’all arent the aforementioned “real ones” 😒
SOS brigade ✊I am shocked by how many people don’t know or don’t remember the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
Wait…what?!
Spoilers, sweetie ;)
How will he ever recover?
It was me who broke into your house. hehe
To answer OP’s question, I’m 37.
I think I was around 10 when I first realized it.
What clued me in was my dad, whose favorite meal was a tuna sandwich and a diet coke, insisting that Santa didn’t want milk & cookies, Santa wanted a tuna sandwich and diet coke.
When I was very little, and we put cookies out for Santa, my mom would always let me eat one because she “didn’t want Santa getting fat“.
My father happened to be on a diet at the same time. I figured it out when I was six.
From that point on, my “punishment” was to be the chief gift wrapper. I suppose the one good thing that came from that is, after many years of wrapping gifts for my whole family, I am now an expert at wrapping gifts.
Wow, six? Smart
Or maybe my parents were just bad at hiding it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What do you mean Santa isn’t real? 🥺
TIL
When I was 7. It was late one night and I was walking around (when I should have been asleep). I noticed my mother finishing wrapping a present and she asked me to place it under the Christmas tree. I think it just slipped her mind in the moment and she didn’t realize what she had done. I didn’t say anything, but I knew from then the presents from Santa were from my parents. I wasn’t sad, but instead felt like I was just let in on a big secret.
Maybe it slipped her mind. Or maybe she was being smart about the moment - including you in the moment rather than making it feel like something’s being hidden from you. Just a thought.
My six year old has begun to plaintively declare his belief in both magic and Santa, unprompted. I think he fears children who do not play along are not as well rewarded.
I’m the kind of parent who doesn’t tell their kids what to believe, but I also don’t bullshit him. “You believe in magic. So, you’ve seen magic?” I don’t know why he’d think he needs to pretend. Maybe it’s just that he isn’t ready to face facts. I don’t argue, I just try to make him think.
Congrats on teaching your kid critical thinking, but I must say, sometimes kids just want to pretend. It’s a thing they do, and I personally miss the freedom. I had to do that as a child. Let them dream.
At the same time, I think it sounds like you’re doing a good job of planting the seeds of reason and logic that will flourish later.
I’m not here to step on youthful wonder, it’s not my turf anymore…But I do feel a need to teach them that thinking involves more questions than proclamations.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
At that age; magic does exist.
We don’t lie, and talk about “who is going to be Santa this year”. Treat it like a game. I don’t think the youngest quite understands and we don’t purposely ruin it, but that the adults are Santa is openly talked about.
Recently one of my kid’s friends got an elf on the shelf, and my kid asked what it was. I think that if other parents lie to their kids that’s for them to sort out, we can’t be expected to lie to our kids to keep up another lie. So I straight out told them what it was and that some parents use it to try to trick their kids into being good. They replied “can I have one?”
What I wanna know is who are all these people claiming that Santa Claus is not fucking real!?
Of course he’s real.
Sorry mate, it was your parents who punched Arius in the face at the first council of Nicea in AD 325
I was a skeptical kid. A fat man making his way down every single chimney in the country in one night? No way. Never really bought into it.
Rational. But what if not all Santas are fat? And what if there are in fact many of them? Gets a whole lot more plausible.
I’m here for jacked, sexy Santa :P
Umm, yeah, that would be my man, Santa Jesse, not me so much. If you were searching, Triceratops Santa was me. I felt like I needed to up the ante, er weird the ante this year. One parent commented, “That’s the real OG Santa.”
Honestly I never really did. I asked some kid in 5th grade what Santa got him for Christmas and he scoffed at me for still believing. I went, “uhhhh yes… this is information I definitely already knew. Yesssssss…” and never really brought it up with anyone again. ¯\(ツ)/¯
