yay soz and 'let
we did the milk and cookies a few years and we always watch the NORAD Santa Tracking site on Christmas Eve. Noelle has said on occassion that she's seen santa putting things under the tree. In our house the bottom of the tree is slowly filled with gifts of a small nature, then the 24th the bulk of the gifts get put out with special printed tags to ____ from Santa.
i love that they believe in Santa. I too will follow their cues and when they choose to believe different, I'll let them.
That is so cute -I was going to post a similar thing. On Christmas eve, my nine year old wrote a letter to Santa and left it on the table next to the cookies with a blank piece of paper and a pen. It said something along the lines of this: Santa, my friends do not believe in you. They say that their parents buy them presents and put them under the tree. I say you are real, could you let me know what I should do? I love you.
It was so cute and broke my heart. I thought how can I approach this. I will not lie to her - then I thought of that story of "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus-" like Intrepid pointed out. I printed out the article and left this note - I often get asked that question from many children so what I do is leave this letter that a girl like you asked a newspaper a long time ago and this is what the newsman wrote. You can show it to your friends.
The first thing she did in the morning was to look for a letter from Santa. It seemed to satisfy her and when we went over my aunt's house for Christmas dinner, I over heard her discussing it with my aunt.
To be honest, I am not sure it is the best way to approach this - but you are only young once and to be able to believe in such wonderful things and to be so innocent is so precious. I figure when she wants to not believe, she will not. Right now, she really wants to believe in Santa so I figure she isn't ready.
Last year when my daughter asked this question, I turned it around and asked her - what she thought. She thought for a few minutes and said, "Well he has a real face and is a real person so he must be real." She was comparing him to costumed characters which she realized is not real, but since Santa was a real person, he had to be real.
I say let them believe as long as they want to believe. Everyone loses that innocence and magic soon enough.
