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I am Jewish and my husband is not. We celebrate both Hannukah and Christmas. As a kid I knew Santa didn't visit my house but he did my best friend's house. I would look out mu window watching for him! Both my kids dd8 and ds6 (today!) still believe in Santa and the toothfairy. Neither has asked questions. They know that the Santa's they see at the mall are Santa helpers. I even set u videos last year and this year from Santa at this website http://www.portablenorthpole.tv/home .

Ds8 has said a few times that Santa isn't real- but he doesn't push the issue. I reply with a "Really?", and that's as far as it's gone so far. I think he likes to pretend that he believes, just to keep me happy

Wow. How timely. Just last night DD6 cornered me on the issue of the tooth fairy. She said, "Tell me the truth." She said her cousin had told her there was none and that his mom had shown him a booklet full of his old teeth (ratcheting up the SIL several levels of creepy). Honestly, I couldn't stop chuckling, so that might have been enough answer right there. But I asked her, "What do you think?", and she decided the tooth fairy was real. Then I changed the subject.

This came maybe a week after she had confronted me on Santa (but not with "Tell me the truth" earnestness), saying she'd heard it from her friends, one of whom is 10. On that occasion, I told her a bald-faced lie.

DW and I talked about it last night after the tooth fairy conversation, and we've decided to break the news to her. She looks to us as her reference for what's what, and I don't want to lose that trust. DW is also worried that she's having arguments with her friends about this stuff that will make her feel foolish later.

But I'm also confident that DD doesn't really want to know. I've always told her "There is no magic, only tricks." And time and again when she has questioned the nature of Santa, and I explained it away as magic, I could see her confronting the two conflicting pieces of information, and I was totally prepared to hear her blurt out her disbelief. But when that moment of decision arrived, after several minutes of Q&A, and the conflict was written on her face, she'd abruptly change the subject. She's perfectly happy to accept a little cognitive dissonance for the magic of Santa.

LOL- this IS timely!

Yesterday DS4 started in on doubting too- He said that Santa's sleigh couldn't really fly, that it must just run along the ground, as reindeer really couldn't fly, could they? He's also started saying that Santa couldn't really get down the chimney either,....he's not really denounced him yet, but I'm kind of expecting it...

FWIW, I was the horrible neighbor that told the other kids next door at age 5 that it really was your parents, not Santa. Uh oh.
I remember not feeling surprised when I figured it out, just more like I knew it was 'pretend' all along in the name of fun. Oopsie to ruining the neighbor's fun! urk.

When ds7 was around 4 or 5, he asked me outright if the Easter Bunny was real. I suspected that he knew the truth, but was simply looking for confirmation. I told him that I would always tell him the truth, and would about this too, but that he had to be absolutely sure he WANTED the truth before he asked questions like this. He said that he wanted the truth, so I told him that the Easter Bunny was not a real. He broke out with "I KNEW it", and never looked back.

I had two older brothers, one by four years, so I honestly don't remember a time when I believed in Santa. But I am the kid who sat down in Santa's lap at the kids' Christmas party at the local American Legion, and let out a loud and surprised, "HI, Uncle Kent!"

We've always told our kids the 'Santa' in the mall isn't the Real Santa. That the Santas in the malls are helpers, since the real Santa is very busy getting ready for Christmas.

I'm coming to the realization that we've setup Santa a little to realistically! DS7 is still 100% a believer. I am afraid this year I might have to tell him the truth. He's totally convinced he's going to get something rather expensive for Christmas, and I'm not sure how else to explain why $$ would matter to Santa.

The other day I sat down with my kid and said that adults have imaginary friends, too. That we get so excited about our imaginary friends that we work really hard to make it seem real. And he thought that was really neat (he loves his imaginary friends and was delighted to learn that we have them, too).

So then I asked, "What is more likely: that there is a man who never dies who lives at the North Pole, and who flies on a sleigh pulled by reindeer, and comes down one's chimney (without being burnt) and leaves gifts--or that it pretend?"

And he laughed, and said, "Obviously it's more likely to be REAL!"

So I did a quick recovery and laughed with him, and then told him about an imaginary friend we (his parents) have.

Guess he doesn't want to know, and so onward with the magic of pretending!

Just another point of view: "Why Yes, Kiddo, There Really Isn�t a Santa Claus"

http://parentingbeyondbelief.com/parents/?p=174

As a non-Christmas family, we don't have any attachment to Santa, but I'd like to believe that this is how I'd answer the question.

When DD8 asked at age 6, we told her that Santa was a special kind of thing and that he was real if you believed in him. We were trying to find a compromise between telling her the truth and letting her still believe if she wanted to.

Her response: Okay, then I don't believe in Santa but I AM going to believe in magic. (She was deep into Harry Potter at the time.)