Well, that was never a shock to me. If anything, I was the poor little kid who happened to blab that they didn't believe in Santa and start a huge argument about how they were wrong.
My life wasn't too awful knowing that there wasn't a Santa Claus. The toughest times were Christmastime at school. We were given assignments like "Write a letter to Santa telling him what you want for Christmas" or "Color this picture of Santa and leave it by the milk and cookies on Christmas Eve." These attempts of bringing cheer and the remembrance of Santa to the room worked quite the opposite. Instead of feeling happy that on Christmas Day I would have presents from a strange man in a red suit who knew if I was naughty or nice, I felt sad that I would have to tell my teacher that I didn't believe. And that was no simple task. My parents had always strongly cautioned my siblings and I to never ever say that Santa wasn't real, only to say that we "didn't believe." Because of this, I always made sure that I tried to whisper it to my teacher so that no one else would know. But someone always managed to hear me and declare it to the class, "Kiersten doesn't believe in Santa Claus?!" That would start a whole new round of teasing and a hundred questions on why I didn't believe. All I could reply while not flat out saying that he wasn't real was, "I just don't believe in Santa...No I don't get any presents from him...Yes I do get presents from my family, just none from Santa...No I'm not mad at my parents." I'm happy that I never told anyone that Santa wasn't real, because once everyone started to figure it out, Christmas seemed to lose its charm and no one got really excited anymore.
But honestly, besides the occasional teasing because I didn't believe, my life was never the worse because I didn't believe. I knew my parents loved me and they would buy me the most amazing surprises and that I would never be disappointed. And I'm kind of happy that I never believed because that means that my parents never lied to me and would never lie to me about anything ever. That was really important to them too because both had really bad experiences with finding out about Santa. And now, their relationships with their families aren't the best. So, maybe this means that before you lie about the little things, you should think about how it could effect the bigger things.
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