Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

Being a parent is hard enough with your kids occasionally comparing you to wonderfully indulgent relatives and inhumanly tireless and creative preschool teachers. 

And now this time of year, we also have to compete with someone else — someone who isn't even real.

I'm talking, of course, about Heidi Montag.

Just kidding. I'm referring to Santa Claus. You know, the guy who takes the credit for all the work we do, and exhausts us by requiring us to perpetuate the whole Santa myth.

My daughter is 5, so she definitely buys into the idea of Santa, though she has recently begun questioning the particulars with queries such as, "How does he get around the whole world in one night?" and, "How come the Santa at the store doesn't look like the Santa who visited my school?" and "How come Santa doesn't set off the house alarm when he comes down the chimney in the middle of the night like you and Dad do every single time you go out to get the newspaper?" I have to keep reverting to that annoying tactic of answering a question with a question by asking, "How do you think he does it?" followed by a, "Hmm … interesting theory" comment after she shares her ideas.

I figure a sin of omission is less egregious than overtly lying. And that is exactly what I plan to tell her therapist (and, quite possibly, mine) down the road.  

Worse than having to figure out how to navigate the whole Santa thing is the fact that I am terrible at keeping secrets. Even with the best possible intentions, I have come close to revealing the truth way too often. I can't help that the nanosecond someone tells me something is confidential, it imprints on my brain as, "Blurt this out immediately, and preferably at the worst possible time." Which is what happened one year when I went to visit Santa at the mall with my and her son.

He was only a few years old at the time, so my mom took him to walk around the mall while my sister and I held a place in the ridiculously long line. As we waited, surrounded by hordes of young children who were so excited to talk to Santa they could almost not contain themselves, we reminisced about the Christmases of our childhood. Our parents made sure Christmas was very special for us, and I got caught up in the memories. So much so I was not aware of my volume when I asked her, "Do you remember the year we found out that Santa Claus wasn't real?"

I'll tell you what, Santa may be make-believe, but the dirty look he shot me that day was the real thing.