Believing in Santa **SPOILER ALERT**

[SalixIncendium]

If you still believed in Santa until you clicked the title, I apologize, but I did put a spoiler alert in the title.

For those of you that believed in Santa when you were a kid, what was the event that caused you to stop believing? How old were you at the time?


For me, it was the handwriting on the gift labels. I was 11 at the time.

 

[JustGeorge]

My mom told me.

 

[Quagmire]

The Mystical X-mas Monkey of Yore told me. Not sure how old I was.

Think I was in my 40s.

 

[SalixIncendium]

My mom told me.

How old were you when she did?

 

[Orbit]

If you still believed in Santa until you clicked the title, I apologize, but I did put a spoiler alert in the title.

For those of you that believed in Santa when you were a kid, what was the event that caused you to stop believing? How old were you at the time?


For me, it was the handwriting on the gift labels. I was 11 at the time.

I think I was about 8. I woke up and saw my dad putting together the bicycle from "Santa".

 

[JustGeorge]

How old were you when she did?

4th grade, I think. (Might have been the year before or after.)

 

[SalixIncendium]

I think I was about 8. I woke up and saw my dad putting together the bicycle from "Santa".

I would have told you that Santa was just being lazy that year and paid me to put it together.

 

[Quintessence]

Never stopped.

Because in spite of being an insufferable science nerd as a kid on occasion I managed to understand how to interpret mythology and folklore as it should be done. I wasn't able to figure that out for Christian mythology - which I crapped all over like an idiot for years - but I understood what the Santa mythology was. If I'd figured out how to apply the same sort of nuance and sense of understanding Santa to Christian mythology there's a small chance I wouldn't have bailed on Christianity before hitting two figures of age. But I didn't. Oh well.

 

[Eddi]

I weighed up the possibilities and decided it was more likely that he didn't exist

I did much the same with God before I did this with Santa

So there was a time in which I was an atheist who believed in Santa

 

[ChristineM]

I was 10, i woke up to dad putting some presents on the foot of my bed. But i had doubts before that

 

[Quintessence]

For some added context, here's what it can mean to "believe in" Santa:

• You believe in rewarding good behavior and not rewarding bad behavior
• You believe in being generous to your friends and your family
• You believe there are people out there somewhere that can make your wishes come true if you ask nicely

 

[Twilight Hue]

If you still believed in Santa until you clicked the title, I apologize, but I did put a spoiler alert in the title.

For those of you that believed in Santa when you were a kid, what was the event that caused you to stop believing? How old were you at the time?


For me, it was the handwriting on the gift labels. I was 11 at the time.

You mean.... Santa isn't real??????

 

[Eddi]

You mean.... Santa isn't real??????

Don't be silly, of course he is

 

[mangalavara]

For those of you that believed in Santa when you were a kid, what was the event that caused you to stop believing? How old were you at the time?

I think it was a combination of events that caused me to stop believing in Santa. First, a friend who was one or two years older than me told me that ‘Santa Claus is your parents.’ Second, I caught a glimpse of a toy fire truck for one or two seconds on the top shelf of my parents’ bedroom closet one night. When I said ‘A fire truck,’ my dad closed the closet door quickly and said that it was just a picture of one. I asked to see it (I was fascinated with fire trucks and firefighting back then), and he made some excuse for why he could not open the door. Being an agreeable person, I did not try to get him to open the closet door. Soon, when Christmas Day arrived, one of my presents was a toy fire truck. I think that was the year when I realized that Santa Claus is not a real person.