My father died when I was 12, too. I think your feelings about this are strongly linked to your feelings about that loss.

I can understand how your mother felt she was being kind to you by 'babying' you to comfort you over his death. It's a little off, but I can see how she thought she was helping.

You made a comment about 'why she trusted you to attend your father's funeral'. You're saying like she thought you were mature enough to handle that, but not the truth about Santa Clause. No, I don't think she saw it that way at all, and can you imagine if she didn't allow you to attend his funeral?

My mother did me a huge disservice in how she dealt with my father's death. He was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given a few weeks to live. She never told me he was dying! She never took me to see him in the hospital. And the thing that still stings me to this day is how she took me shopping and bought me a really cute, mature-looking black outfit. I loved it, it was a real treat because she never took me shopping and bought me anything like that before. Then my father dies. She tells me 'he's gone'. I asked 'where did he go?' Sure enough, I had that nice black outfit to wear to his funeral, where I sat in shock, never cried. I realized many years later that outfit was bought for me to wear to his funeral!

As for 'magical thinking', my family believes in all kinds of things like that, superstitions, curses, karma, etc... I didn't even know everybody didn't think like that until I read about it while trying to figure out if we have personality disorders.

Also, if it makes you feel any better... I slept with my baby blanket until I got married!