Santa Claus, Easter Bunny & Tooth Fairy for children - is there a 'best approach' with this topic....

Hey EA and tEAm,

I watched your recent interview with Danica Patrick and totally resonated with your views on the wanting to just be honest and truthful about Santa etc. We don't have kids at the moment, but are planning to in the near future. I shared your views with my partner, who is open minded to all of 'this', but he was not happy to learn I am not wanting to tell our children about Santa Claus, easter bunny and tooth fairy being real.

He claims that we should allow our children to just be kids and to experience the fun and joy of those holiday periods. He questioned what happens when we are with other friends and family and our kids tell other kids its not real, or have no presents to open from Santa, or have any of the memories that he had growing up - which were all beautiful and fun. He's worried that by telling them the truth, we're taking away from their childhood, we'll be shutting down their imagination, creativity and playfullness, or they'll be bullied/criticised by other kids and parents by knowing its not real. I tried explaining that we can just find a way to somehow meet in the middle, by telling them how others/our culture tends to celebrate these holidays, and look at finding ways to still allow their creativity, playfullness and imagination flourish whilst not lying to them, and maybe find a way to be like 'our family likes to celebrate these holidays like this (what 'this' ends up being...), meanwhile other families like to celebrate like that'.

He has such wonderful memories of Santa and what not, and we now have a niece and nephew who are experiencing this too on his family side. So I get, as for the most part i too had great memories, but I also remember the total devastation I felt as a kid (12 or so) when mum told me Santa wasn't real. I was just crushed, dramatically balling my eyes out on the bathroom floor.

I don't want to lie to my children, period. But I also don't want to stop them from having beautiful memories on the holidays our society celebrates as our children will be around 'normies' (need to come up with a better name than that). 

Does the GFL or yourself know how to approach this, or is this an independent/individual situation to handle on a case-by-case basis? 

Grateful to be have this conversation now before it's 'too late', so any advise or information would be helpful as I would like to find a happy medium without having to lie.