Every year, well-meaning – and I say this with a wink, because it is, after all, the pass that trumps almost anything parenting-related – parents invest an astonishing amount of energy into keeping a collective secret alive.

In my family, it was my mother more than my father who carried this secret. She wrote postcards. She staged evidence. She proved, in every possible way, what the Santa Claus myth was really about: an all-knowing, omnipresent authority who was not shy about using his powers. Even though we swore we would catch him in the act, we always fell asleep. In the morning, there were traces. Proof.

All of this effort went into preserving what is usually framed as something harmless, even loving: the magic of Christmas.

As an adult, I find myself circling one question.

If I had children, would I tell them the Santa lie?
And if I did – why would I be so attached to lying to them about it?

“The World Is Harsh. Let Children Have Magic.”

This is the justification I hear most often. The world is hard, so let children have magic. Without Santa, something essential would be lost.

But when I look at my own childhood, this argument does not hold.

I was not short on magic. Children rarely are.

A cardboard box became a post office. Mattresses turned into labyrinths. A summer could stretch into eternity. Wonder did not have to be imported into my world. It arose on its own.

What adults called “magic” felt different. It was choreography. Planning. Control. An experience curated from above.

And that difference mattered.

The Hidden Cost of the Lie

I could still defend the Christmas lie, even now. Everyone does it. It’s culture. You don’t want to be the weird parent. And in the end, children find out and laugh about it.

But that is not what happened to me.

I remember being scared of Santa Claus.

I grew up in Indonesia, a former Dutch colony. The version of the Christmas myth that reached us was shaped by colonial transmission. With Sinterklaas came Zwarte Piet (Black Pete): an often black-faced man as his punitive companion.

As a child, this was not symbolic. It was an embodiment of judgment and punishment. Someone who watches. Someone who keeps score. Someone who decides whether you are good or bad.

Santa’s authority was such that it was never to be doubted.

Looking back, I can see what was implanted was not wonder, but surveillance.

The Santa myth, in my experience, was not only about gifts. It was a tool of discipline. A way to align behavior. To make children obey. Be good, or else.

The reward-and-punishment logic entered early, long before I could question it.

And it felt cruel.

Because alongside the lie itself, a rigid duality took root: good versus bad. Worthy versus unworthy. Obedient versus punishable.

This was not abstract. It became the internal architecture of my conscience. I learned to watch myself being watched. To police my impulses. To split myself into acceptable and unacceptable parts.

What began as external authority slowly moved inside. Shame replaced supervision. Self-policing replaced presence. Moral rigidity replaced curiosity.

And most often, this split does not dissolve when the myth collapses.

When I eventually discovered that the adults I trusted most had coordinated an elaborate deception, it landed as a deep shock. Not because Santa mattered so much, but because trust did.

I felt belittled. Ashamed. Exploited.

It was not the first betrayal, but it was one of the first moments in which I realized: the people I trusted most were not to be trusted.

The betrayal felt ground-shattering, as if the floor of my reality gave way.

I could no longer fully trust the ground.

On its own, this might sound small. But it was cumulative.

A Pattern, Not an Isolated Event

With distance, I can see that the Christmas lie was not an exception in my childhood. It sat alongside many other moments in which my perceptions were corrected, dismissed, or overwritten by  narratives “for my own good.”

Over time, this created distance.

Years later, when I watched the familiar rift open up between parents and teenagers, I recognized the pattern. Withdrawal. Guardedness. Irony. Defiance.

We like to blame hormones, peer pressure, attitude.

But some of that distance was rehearsed much earlier, in small betrayals that were never named as such.

What If We Trusted Children Instead?

This leaves me with a different question.

What if children can handle reality without losing wonder?

What if Christmas could be magical without deception?

From where I stand now, magic does not disappear when Santa does. It changes shape. It becomes shared rather than imposed. A story consciously played with, not secretly enforced.

Children, I believe, are capable of imagination without being lied to. They are capable of joy without being misled. And they are capable of trust when they are treated as participants rather than props.

Choosing Connection Over Performance

This is not, for me, an argument against Santa.

It is an argument against confusing performance with care.

Trust is not built through enchantment that depends on deception. It is built through coherence. Through reality that holds. Through adults who do not ask children to surrender their perception in exchange for belonging.

When the ground breaks once, it may look small. But the body remembers. The nervous system remembers. The mind learns that reality is negotiable when it serves authority.

Later, when parents wonder why their teenagers no longer trust them, no longer confide, no longer take words at face value, I hear an echo.

Because for some of us, the lasting lesson was not magic.
It was that reality can be staged.

I learned to stand on what is.

Parents often remain inside the parent role forever.
The child stays frozen as “child,” regardless of age.
That freezing is where objectification begins, and where abuse can quietly persist.

It feels right to ask parents to see their children as human beings — eye to eye, without hierarchy.
Parents, on the other hand, rarely ask to be seen outside their role.

And my insight was this: the leverage is on the child’s side.
It meant something unexpected: letting my parents step out of their role.

When a child stops relating to their parents as parents, the entire authority structure loosens.
Not by rebellion.
But by meeting them outside the role.

Without the role, there is no script to obey.
Only then is there room to meet outside the frame: seeing them not as “my parents,” but as human beings — without concepts, expectations or fantasies.