One night this past October, I was doing my usual routine of saying goodnight to all my kids. My oldest, my ten-year-old son, was my final stop. I walked into his room ready to give him a big hug, a kiss, and a cheerful “sweet dreams.”
Instead, I found him sitting up in his bed with a horrible look on his face.
“Mom?” he asked tentatively. “Have you and dad been lying to me for my whole life?”
Cue my heart stopping. Panic. Uncertainty.
“Um, what?” I managed to respond. “Lying about what?”
“Santa Claus,” he said, his voice small. “You lied to me about Santa. He’s not real.”
And there it was—the moment I had been quietly dreading. My son had learned the truth from a book, of all things. My husband and I had promised each other we wouldn’t be the ones to start the conversation, but when our son looked us in the eye and asked outright… age ten just felt too old to keep the secret going.
I called an emergency meeting right there on the bedroom carpet– just me, my son, and my husband.
“Ok, buddy,” I said gently. “Ask away. We’ll answer any questions you have.”
And boy, did he have questions. So many questions. And I cried. I sat there, overthinking every second of this rite of passage. I thought we had one more year, but now our oldest no longer believed in Santa Claus. There was no going back.
The lyrics from “Toyland” looped through my mind like a sad little soundtrack:
‘Mystic merry Toyland,
Once you pass its borders,
You can never return again…’
Never. Return. Again.
I couldn’t stop crying.
My son? He handled it much better than I did.
He asked if he would still get “Santa presents” on Christmas morning. We assured him that as long as he kept the magic alive for his little sisters, he would still get Santa presents. He also asked if he could take some turns hiding our Elf on the Shelf, which was a very easy yes for my husband and me. We’re happy for the help, because there’s always at least one night we forget to move that little elf spy.
This will be our first Christmas with a child who no longer believes, and it does feel different. There’s a bittersweet shift in the air, like turning a page you weren’t quite ready to finish. But there’s also something quietly beautiful about entering this new phase. He is now part of the magic-making team, and I’m looking forward to sharing that part of the holidays with him.
