Santa Free Zen
Before our first Little Zen’s first Christmas, we had a meeting to discuss Santa. Neither of us had really fond memories of Santa magic from our own childhoods, we’re atheists so being too Christmassy felt weird, I wanted my kids to know that I left them every day to work to make money for things like presents, we weren’t super interested in perpetuating this particular myth just to deal with the aftermath of reality, and, frankly, we already knew we’d be kind of lazy parents when it came to stuff like this. So, we agreed – we wouldn’t do Santa. We also decided to control the gift giving with the “one thing they want, one they need, one to wear, one to read” strategy, but that’s another story for another time.
Avoiding Santa with the two and under set is actually pretty easy. They barely get what’s going on anyway, though that didn’t stop all adults everywhere asking each baby in turn what they wanted Santa to bring. We just quietly and patiently reiterated that Santa doesn’t come to our house, and that presents are for and from the people we love.
Last year, when our oldest was 5, he asked if Santa was real. I asked him if he believed he was, he said he did, and that made sense to me since he also believed in dragons and the possibility of meeting a dinosaur.
This year, he asked me to please tell Santa to bring him a Nile crocodile.
“Santa doesn’t bring us presents, remember?” I asked. “We get presents for each other.”
“Oh, right!” he said brightly, and left it at that.
The only difficulty was overcoming initial judgment from people close to us who thought we were denying our children a life of magic. Or, they at least stopped bringing it up. And, over the years we’ve come to learn that children don’t actually need adults for magic because it’s their nature. I’d argue that we need their magic much more than they do ours. Otherwise, it’s been a completely stress-free Santa-free life.
Our avoidance of “doing” Santa also led to a completely lovely unintentional consequence. It helped us make the season about more than just asking for and getting presents. Last year we started a tradition where each of the boys goes out shopping one time with me and one time with Daddy Zen. The kids chose gifts for the other parent and each other and for their grandparents. Our oldest wraps every present he selects himself. The boys decorate the tree. They watch Rudolph and The Grinch. This year, they insisted on listening to carols on the morning of the first snowfall. We bake cookies and spend time with each of our families and bask in the lights of the tree. Sure, we could do all those things and Santa too, but now we know that our family in particular doesn’t need to.
Not to mention, we’ve completely excused ourselves from the torture of the Mall Santa.
The Zen of making your own meaning.
