At what age should the secret behind Christmas be revealed? You know, the part about Santa, and the fact that while his spirit is alive in all of our hearts, he actually needs some help from Mom and Dad to accomplish his momentous task — at least once kids reach a certain age.
But at what age does this happen?
I’d been struggling with this recently. I have a tween who is not yet ready to leave childhood behind — she may never be. She still loves her American Girl dolls, still plays with Barbies on occasion and only reluctantly let go of her Polly Pocket collection this fall. While her twin brother and older sister have been in on the secret for a couple of years now, she’s been avoiding the topic, leaving me to wonder what’s going on inside her head.
Part of me figured it was fine to follow her lead. To go along with the secret as long as she wanted to, but then I heard a story from a friend that gave me pause. Her oldest was sitting in class as a high school freshman when the teacher made an analogy about the “truth” to the secret. Caught off guard, she looked around and realized that everyone in the class was in the know but her. It was not a pleasant realization.
So last weekend while out shopping with my 12-year-old, I skirted around the issue. I needed to pick up some stocking stuffers and wasn’t going to have the chance to get back to the store, so I said to her, “Mom and Dad sometimes help out in this department.”
She smiled at me knowingly. At least I think she did.
So in the car later, I asked if she still believed in the secret.
“Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t,” she said.
Like maybe not so much at school when everyone else is talking about it, but maybe just a little when it’s time to make the list and put out the cookies. I get it. It’s much more fun to pretend and to keep the magic alive as long as you can. And my tween, who’s not quite ready to be a teen, is still pretty good at pretending. And that’s ok with me.
FranklyStein is a blog by Chesapeake Family Magazine editor Betsy Stein who lives in Catonsville with her husband, Chris, and four children, Maggie, 13, Lilly, 12, Adam, 12, and Jonah, 8.
