The days are getting shorter and colder. Soon St-Nicolas will be back in town and if you haven’t realized yet let me congratulate you on your ability to ignore the loads of toy-commercials we are being bombarded with. Are your kids taken by the magic of St-Nicolas? Or do you tell them straight away that the nice old guy is fantasy?
For me it’s the second option. Keeping up the lie just didn’t seem to fit with the way me and my wife want to raise our kids. Luckily we were both on the same page and so poor old St-Nicolas remains fantasy at our place. This approach seems to be somewhat exceptional tough based on the reactions I get around us when we share our view.
“But it’s about the magic of it all and why would you take that away for your kids?”
Truth is, I don’t see why you need the lie to get the magic. I don’t avoid St-Nicolas, I let our kids enjoy the celebrations as much as other kids do. Yet I am always clear about the fact that St-Nicolas is not a real St-Nicolas, but just a guy dressed up like the figure as part of the celebrations. I believe kids can enjoy fantasy just as much even when they know it’s not real.
In fact my kids love fantasy. Take for example role play. They play for hours pretending to cook and eat with their dolls and teddy bears and they would even come and offer me part of the “food”. Once I pretended to really want to eat one of the pieces of plastic – it was pizza I believe – they offered me, but i was immediately told off by my girl: “No daddy, it’s not real food, it’s just to play”!
Or I could tell you about the hours they spend hiding and running away from the crocodiles in the house. No, they don’t think that there are real crocodiles in the house. It’s all fantasy and it’s a lot of fun!
“But it’s about teaching good and bad!”
The St-Nicolas concept is obviously an easy tool to have your kids behave. If they don’t, Black Peter will put them in the bag. But wait … that seems to me like a leading by fear approach and that doesn’t fit the way we want to raise our kids either. I don’t feel comfortable to have my children’s motivation to behave depend on getting presents. And definitely not at specific moments in the year. What would the trick be then for the rest of the year?
So let’s try to teach them good and bad in a different way 🙂
“But your kids will spoil the fun for my kids …”
Maybe, tough I equally risk my kids to be the weird ones in class. Time will tell …
So that’s how we deal with St-Nicolas, what about you?
Independent from the approach, let’s try to do some St-Nikolas crafts in the coming weeks!
Victoria and Lukas enjoyed watching a St-Nikolas movie this morning and Victoria was very interested to see the old guy on his horse, walking on the roofs, which was not shown in the movie.
Afterwards she told me that St-Nicholas doesn’t exist and Lukas fully agreed with this.
But they had a lot of funN
I think it is perfectly fine to be truthful this way. A friend of mine told me her mom never celebrated Christmas because she felt her dad had deceived her by making it so real (he would put ‘santa’ foot prints on the carpet).
Being honest with your children is by far the way to go. It sets up a respectful relationship which is a solid basis for a lifetime of open communication.
Wow, santa footprints on the carpet! I guess he meant it well, but didn’t realize what impact it would have on his daughter.
I’m happy to see you feel the same way about this honesty approach and I can confirm that our kids are still enjoying as much the whole celebration stuff that is coming up now. Knowing that it is a pretend thing, rather than the real guy, doesn’t stop them from having fun and longing for the presents 🙂
I so agree with you! We’re in the neighbouring Netherlands where the tradition is pretty much the same, and we don’t avoid Sinterclaas (although we don’t actively go to see him, either), but I think the world is magical enough without some guy with beard who brings presents. We told them that the gifts are from us or the grandparents, not from some imaginary Sinterclaas. When they’re big enough, we’ll tell them the REAL story of a man called Nicholas who brought presents to children and didn’t want to be seen or celebrated. Great post!
Hey Olga, thanks for your message. I bet with the whole “zwarte piet” discussions that Sinterklaas is a hot topic in the Netherlands these days!
i so agree with telling the kids the truth,we are not celebrating saint nicolas but father christmas and from an early age my children knew that it was pretend,although even now my second who is still 8 as christmas approach still talk about father christmas coming to give him present,a way for him to make sure that there is something underneath the tree!but i always make sure to tell me to not ruin the fact that other children from our family or their friends believe that santa was real,