I was just re reading the pole options and remembered a strange situation that happened to a friend of mine and his children. He and the childs mother decided to never take part in the legend of Santa, started raising their children with we give each other presents and never told the children about Santa. flash forwards to when the first of 4 entered kindergarten. with the christmas season in mind the teacher handed out coloring papers that had different pictures in one sheet. one of the pictures was Santa by the christmas tree and a little girl peaking around the corner. pretty harmless right. Wrong. the teacher was going through each of the 4 pictures on the paper and was explaining the story each picture on the paper represented. Teacher and school thought this was a harmless way to let the children know that people celebrate in different ways and beliefs. Teacher gets to the last one and this little girl bursts into tears, why? she was afraid some stranger in a red suit was going to jump down her fireplace. Another child in the room had no idea about santa and was afraid this stranger was going to get in the fire place fire.

Teacher ended up calling all the parents, explaining the situation and having the parents come in to the school for a meeting about how public school system handles holidays and what the children will need to know about the various holidays/ special days through out the year that is dealt with in school so that for example when the class is discussing memorial day, veterans day, easter, thanksgiving and others this situation of children not being told about things does not leave them in a highly triggering situation of being blind sided by it in school.

my wife and I decided to educate our children not only because of this but also we have a TV, computers, cell phones, tablets, in today's world with all that we have that children now have access to there's no way to keep them from knowing about santa. let alone going shopping and theres Salvation army person dressed up like santa, theres store employees dressed up like santa. everywhere you look theres santa sometimes as early as October and november. trying to keep our children clueless about santa would have been like keeping them clueless on the fact that they have two mommies that are married to each other, or that box over there in the corner of the room is a tv and this is a computer. and the guy down the street with a sign doesnt have a home.

There's only so much we parents can protect our children from, Santa is one of those things that children are going to know about if not from us their parents then from their school friends, children on the local playground, the church they attend, the school they attend or just going shopping or out for a walk. Santa isnt this "behind closed bedroom doors" situation. its out there and our children were going to know about this dude called santa. All my wife and I could control was how we wanted to deal with this. let them get blind sided and fearful or hey guys look at santa, do you remember when we read that book about the very first santa....