Not true. For some children, like my Aspie husband, this can be a major issue. Until the time he forced his mother to admit the truth (by trying to get her to swear on a Bible), he’d believed everything his parents ever told him. As is not atypical for autistic children, he was very literal and his thinking very black and white.

Now, to be fair, your father’s honesty in that moment when you were the very tender age of 5 may have saved you from this fate. But his mother (and other family members) perpetuated the lie even after he’d caught on and asked if Santa was real.

My grandmother was the one who I finally asked. She gave me an out — a way to keep believing (or pretending to, if I wanted). In my many moments with her, it is one that shines because it was the perfect way to handle it (and one of the rare times she handled something with grace and honesty).

“If you ask me, I will tell you the truth.”

I thought about that. I was almost 11, so I had the ability to parse that sentence for its unsaid meaning, “no, he’s not real, but if you don’t want to accept that yet, I won’t force you to.”

I wanted the truth. I always did, even when it was painful.

So, I asked. And she told me.

I had a younger brother. She made me an “elf” and I got to wrap presents (something that was a lot of fun when I was 10) and stay up later and eat some of Santa’s cookies (since I was put on a super restrictive diet at 8, that was a big deal). I had something fun and positive to focus on that helped take some of the sting away.

But unlike my husband, I’d also (perhaps sadly) learned at a very, very young age that adults were not to be trusted. I’d been forgotten at Sunday School at the age of 5. I’d been taken away from mother (due to her alcohol addiction) at the age of 8. I was lied to repeatedly, my fragile trust broken over and over, long before that fateful moment near the hall stairs.

And that, I think, also makes a difference.