Easter Bunny, The Tooth Fairy and the Holy Grail of Parental Lies – Santa Claus.
I know, I know …. We tell our kids things that aren’t true.
But it’s out of love …
The Tooth Fairy, well, that’s just so children don’t get all weirded out when they lose a tooth.
After a failed attempt trying to retrieve the tooth after putting it under the pillow, I came up with the idea of taping the tooth to an index card and writing a small note to the tooth fairy; that way it was easier to find the tooth in the dark and trying to be quiet and leave money and/or prize for the tooth.
Let’s face it, what’s a 6 year old now-a-days going to do with a Dollar Bill – or a $5 or $10. So, I started leaving other things they’d enjoy having, with a return note from The Tooth Fairy.
Easter and the Easter Basket. In my mind, and the blog is BecauseJimSays, I like the idea of Easter Baskets to give a child a reason to be excited and happy about Easter. As they get older, then you can begin telling them about the real reason we celebrate Easter and maybe, just maybe, they’ve had such a happy memory core of past Easters they can begin to appreciate the Easter Season in their own way and put it all in perspective.
Santa Claus is a tough one and the biggest one. Team work is required – because we all know there’s that 1 kid that will stand up and tell the entire class that there is no Santa Claus.
Okay, what ever.
Our girls would come home from school and tell us all about what Little Johnny or Little Susie said, and we’d just have to brush it aside, “Well, you know exactly how Santa is gonna treat them this year.”
But Lisa had a brilliant idea and once the girls we old enough to understand logic and reason, she explained to them that sure, Santa brought the gifts and presents, but then he sent mom and dad the bill.
And that seems to appease them.
But that’s not the lies I want to write about.
I have one that’s a DOOZY.
One that even I had accepted.
And you know of which I speak.
So… About the Lies
At some point, every parent crosses a line.
Not a big line.
Not a criminal line.
More like… a festive little line with cookies on one side and moral ambiguity on the other.
And we step right over it.
Together.
As a team.
Because once you’ve committed to Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy…
you’re not just telling a story anymore.
You’re running a full-blown operation.
There’s planning.
There’s coordination.
There’s late-night logistics.
There are moments where you’re half-asleep, stuffing money under a pillow thinking,
“How did I become this person?”
And the answer is simple:
You became a parent.
And just when you think you’ve got your story straight…
someone comes along and says:
“Oh by the way… Humpty Dumpty wasn’t an egg.”
Excuse me?
Now we’re rewriting nursery rhymes too?
Apparently, he was a cannon.
Or a war machine.
Or a metaphor.
Or whatever version makes someone feel like they just cracked the Da Vinci Code of bedtime stories.
I read most recently that Humpty Dumpty was a cannon used during the English Civil War in 1648.
It was on a wall, but the wall was blown up and shattered into pieces.
But then I read this wasn’t true either, it was just a riddle.
A riddle created and the most logical explanation was that it was a egg.
MY GOD – just how gullible are we as kids.
Like generations and generations before me – lying to their children.
To intrigue them … Yes.
To entertain them … Absolutely
To start them on their journey of imagination and learning … 100%
To give them something to think about so they’ll stop bugging you …. Maybe
Now I am ‘that adult”
And I thought… of course.
Of course we’re doing this.
Because eventually, we take everything simple…
and we “fix” it.
We add history.
We add depth.
We add explanations nobody asked for.
We make the magic … and we add a footnote.
But here’s the part nobody really talks about:
Kids don’t feel lied to.
Not really.
They feel included… until they don’t.
And then one day, they realize.
And there’s this moment.
This quiet little shift where they go from
“believing the story”…
to “understanding the storyteller.”
And that’s when it hits.
It was never about a guy in a red suit.
Or a bunny with a delivery schedule.
Or a fairy with a questionable currency exchange rate.
It was about us.
Doing something a little ridiculous…
a little unnecessary…
a little over the top…
Just to make their world safer and feel bigger than it actually is.
So yeah… we lied.
We absolutely lied.
We ate the cookies.
We left the footprints.
We moved the evidence.
No jury in the world would acquit us.
The evidence is too damning.
We have no alibi.
But if I had to do it all over again?
I wouldn’t change a thing.
Because one day…
They’ll be the ones sneaking into a dark room at 2:00 in the morning, trying not to wake a kid, holding a dollar bill or a half-eaten cookie…
Realizing they’ve officially crossed the line too.
And they won’t call it lying.
They’ll call it something else.
Something a little harder to explain.
Something a lot more worth it.
But now I question the entire nursery rhyme industry.
My Take on Life and Events 