I told my 7-year-old the Christmas secret and loved her reply

‘Santa Claus isn’t real?’ My seven-year-old, Ada, glared at me, mouth agape.

‘But you emailed him last year and he sent you money to get presents,’ she added. ‘Was that a lie?’

I swallowed hard. This conversation, which took place just a few months ago, wasn’t as straightforward as I had anticipated.

Truth be told, I had assumed she had got the hint about Father Christmas, the Easter Bunny, and the like after a Tooth Fairy incident: she’d woken up one morning to no coins then caught me as I’d tried to surreptitiously slip money under her pillows while pretending to fluff them.

I turned to Ada (who is the youngest of my four kids, aged seven to 14), nodding apologetically. ‘It’s time you knew,’ I said, then confessed: ‘Mummy and Daddy are Santa Claus.’

Digesting this disclosure, Ada seemed to cycle through a range of emotions from shock to sadness, until finally, a large smile crossed her face.

She threw her arms around my neck and whispered, ‘Thank you’. 

This disclosure set the tone for a confessional evening, with my kids asking me all sorts of questions about my Christmases as a child. I told them that my single mother had immigrated from the former-USSR to New York City and used to shower me with presents. 

She didn’t believe some random pensioner in a red suit should get the credit, so would sign her cards along the lines of: ‘I hope you enjoy these handpicked Christmas gifts I bought you with my blood, sweat and tears’.

As a child, her candour could be overbearing but it never bothered me much that she was honest about Santa. Most of my friends celebrated Hanukkah instead of Christmas anyway.

Now, as an adult and parent myself, I have a deeper empathy with my mum’s refusal to buy into the Santa myth. 

It’s way too easy for parents, and especially mums, to erase themselves from the picture at Christmas and let someone else get the glory. Sadly, my mother died in 2005 when I was 23, long before I could tell her how much I admired her insistence on getting credit for everything she did for me.

When my eldest children were very small, and we lived in London where Father Christmas seemed to be an especially big deal, I did try to keep Santa alive for a few years: We’d leave milk and cookies out on Christmas Eve and I’d always address a few presents to my kids ‘From Santa’. 

Yet even at the time I remember rolling my eyes and thinking, ‘this is so not me’. I love make-believe games with the kids but I always felt like a fraud playing this particular role. 

My oldest two kids found out the truth about Santa the old-fashioned way: one was told by kids with older siblings at school when she was seven and decided to reveal the news to her sister, who was younger by two-and-a-half years, soon after.

The pandemic bought me a couple of years of grace to keep Santa going for my youngest kids, then five and three, as the man was the last thing on anybody’s minds.

But come Christmas, I always forgot which gifts were from ‘Santa’ and which ones I’d admitted to buying, and nearly slipped up dozens of times. So once my third child started junior school, I started dropping heavy hints until she figured it out. 

Finally telling Ada brought relief. I hated not being 100% honest with the kids; now I won’t have to lie again.

I’m a big believer in nurturing open channels of communication with all my kids, whether I’m telling them about Santa or talking to my teens about my humiliating dating experiences.

I think that by being honest and vulnerable myself I can help them foster a healthy attitude to discussing difficult topics. 

I don’t expect every parent to tell their kids that Santa isn’t real, either. At school, my younger two keep quiet so as not to spoil it for any other children (in much the same way I hope they don’t repeat swear words they’ve learned from their older siblings).

Yet after parenting for a decade-and-a-half, I’ve learned that I need to do what works for my family, and not worry if other people find it odd. 

I want my kids to know that ‘our’ way isn’t the only way (non-Christian kids aren’t taught to believe in Santa) and as we’ve spent the past few Christmases in the US, I wanted them to understand that their holiday is a significant part of their ‘present’ each year, which means there will be fewer gifts to unwrap under the proverbial tree. 

Besides, air travel with four kids is a feat unto itself; making room in my suitcase for a stash of secret presents from a fantastical being is not a parenting skill I possess. 

Overall, ditching the Santa myth has been beneficial for my family. 

There’s still plenty of magic in my home: we all love witches and vampires so we curl up on the sofa to watch Netflix’s Wednesday and Julie and the Phantoms.

And while I won’t pretend my kids are always models of gratitude, I swear they have been thanking me more often recently, appreciating little things I do for them. 

The other week I noticed my 14-year-old running around the house looking for new and unopened presents to make a hamper for a family in need. Sure, it could be because they’re getting older and more mature… but I like to think it’s because they know the truth now, too.