Christmas poll

[slemslempike]

I hope that you all had nice Christmases if you do Christmas. I quite enjoyed myself. I got to play my new version of Trivial Pursuit (deluxe, where you have an "abbot" that goes round the edge and gets you new skills, and different levels of difficulty for each question), and Bananagrams, which rocks. I am now back in Lancaster being a bit ill and enjoying my Christmas presents. Also I bought a hat.

For people who also do Christmas in the present getting sense:

[Poll #1113612]

I do realise that this poll doesn't allow for people not having had stockings. This is as it should be. I don't want to know of such deprivations.

Comments

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

I can't actually remember when I stopped believing in Father Christmas. How odd.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I remember being about 9, and someone quite a bit older, probably early teens, being nasty to me about being so young, and saying "you probably still believe in Father Christmas", to which I obviously replied "don't be stupid, of course I don't", and died inside.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

I think I just gently eased from believing to pretending I believed for the sake of my brothers. I can remember telling Seb quite firmly that God didn't exist when he was about four, but evidently I regarded Father Christmas as rather more benign.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Being a step-parent I inherited the 'all the presents' situation in your second question. It's not what I'd have gone for if it hadn't been a given by the time I arrived on the scene.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Does all the presents include those from people like Grandparents? I have always not understood how it might work when it s all the presents.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

No, not all all. Just the ones from the parents - which made us look strangely ungenerous compared to the other adults. But your poll is too sensible to allow for this (to my mind bizarre) option.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Oh, that makes more sense than absolutely everything. One of my friends got a present from Rudolph as well as her stocking from Father Christmas when we were little, and that made me a bit cross because he didn't bring me anything.

[whatho.livejournal.com]

I think I was five when I was cruelly deprived of the fib that was Father Christmas, so I fall between your options. But possibly I was six. Maybe six actually because I do remember being at primary school and having discussions with disbelievers. And I was cross with my parents for telling me the truth, not for pretending in the first place.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

When I was little Carla tried to tell me that he wasn't real, and then I got a (pre-printed) Christmas card from Father Christmas HIMSELF, so that showed her.

[unhobbityhobbit.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I ever really, truly believed. At least, when I caught my mum putting the stocking at the bottom of my bed in the night (I'd woken up and looked everywhere for it and then Mum came in so I asked her where it was and she pulled it out from behind her back and said something like "Oh look! I found it!") I asked her the next morning if she was, in fact, Father Christmas and was far more proud of myself for outsmarting my parents than I was sad that there wasn't a magical guy who could force his way down a blocked chimney and leave no evidence of it.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

We still have stockings, but they are now outside the door rather than on the bed, as Father Christmas keeps earlier hours than we do!

[simply-fly-away.livejournal.com]

I can't remember at what point exactly I stopped believing, but I must have been quite young. I do remember hating the way my aunt would say "of course he exists!" when I knew the truth.

I do the stockings for my girls now though and all of the presents from me are marked "Father Christmas," but those from their grandparents are from their grandparents, if you know what I mean. I was explaining to the eldest (she's six) a couple of weeks ago that Father Christmas doesn't bring me presents because I'm too old. Walking through Tesco on Christmas Eve she turned to me and said "I love you anyway." To my "Weh?" she explained "even though you're not nice, 'cause Father Christmas doesn't bring you anything, I love you anyway." Which is nice to know, I suppose, and serves me right for the "if you're not good girls, Father Christmas might remove your names from the Nice list!" I used to get through December.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

That's quite sweet of her! We were told that Father Christmas doesn't bring stockings to people who don't believe in him, so we kept up a merry charade for aaaaages. This year for the first time we all contributed to each other's stockings, which was really quite nice.

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

Ooh, same for us with the unbelief thing, so we had a charade about it forever - we were never actually allowed to say we didn't believe in front of Mum.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Even now this year we've started contributing to all the stockings, my sister and I maintain a polite "we will give these to mum to give to Father Christmas to put in the stockings" fiction. It's more fun!

Do your two like the stockings? Is Sam old enough to open his on his own, or does he have kind sisterly help?

[nerdcakes.livejournal.com]

I can't actually remember properly believing in father christmas. I didn't sleep well when I was a kid -especially at christmas - and my mummy used to somehow manage to sneak stockings to the end of my bed while, at the same time, saying reassuring things like, "Sarah, if you don't go to sleep then Father Christmas won't come!"

Whereas one year my Dad did it, noticed I was still awake and went, "Sarah! You're supposed to be asleep!" and generally was LESS SNEAKY about the whole business. But I remember being almost completely unsurprised that my Father was putting presents at the end of my bed, so I imagine that I was already suspicious about it.

I think it's the presence of Dudes Who Dress Up As Santa that made me never really believe in him. I mean, if he was really all special and magical then he wouldn't manage to look like Father White and Richard Cain's Dad depending on where you happened to be visiting him. I think that was my reasoning, though it sounds slightly unconvincing given my inability to differentiate betweeen men who AREN'T wearing fake beards and putting on a funny voice.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

How odd - your initial comment removes the poll from the entry, but the edited version includes it!

I can't remember what I thought about Dudes Who Dress Up As Santa - I think I knew that they were people kindly pretending to be him, that of course he was too busy at Christmas to come. Also he was magic.

[spiralsheep.livejournal.com]

The stocking presents when I was a kid supposedly came from Father Christmas but my brother and I never believed. It was traditional for us to build "Father Christmas traps", to try and catch our parents, by putting bubblewrap on the floor or attaching noisy items to our doors, heh. Then there was the year my very surprised parents woke up to discover that they both had pillow cases full of presents from Father Christmas. We were always a non-standard family.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

My parents do their stockings/pillowcases to each other, and always did when we were growing up as well, but I think I thought our stockings were properly from Father Christmas for quite some time.

[cellardor.livejournal.com]

Father Christmas brought presents on xmas day, but we had a family gathering on xmas eve where we opened presents from relatives. We didn't to stockings and I feel no loss for it. Don't overly understand the point. No memory of learning father xmas didn't exist, so can't have been traumatic.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I don't think Father Christmas made much difference overall to Christmas, but stockings are one of the major joys, and my favourite part of all!

[glitterboy1.livejournal.com]

I've been trying to remember what I was told! My parents are fairly pragmatic types, and I don't think that there was a huge pretence, but I do remember that Father Christmas figured early on. It was complicated by the fact that there were always at least three separate present-opening sessions, where the presents at relatives' houses were more clearly flagged as being from them.

We didn't have stockings! But there was usually a present left by my bed for the early morning - presumably an attempt by my parents to get a few more minutes' sleep...

I'm glad that you had a good time. Boo about being ill, though - I hope you're feeling better soon.

What sort of hat did you get? Now you can be seen in the street without it!

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I'm not too badly ill, nasty cough and bad cold mostly. Unfortunately now my sinuses are getting in on the act, but I'm hopeful that this is the beginning of the end for it.

I can! I got a grey felt sort of 20s ish looking hat from Tesco, mostly because my mother always wants to buy me hats because she thinks I look good in them, and it was only £3.50, so even if I never wear it (and I can't really think of a remotely appropriate occasion), I won't feel too guilty.

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

The family never forgot Christmas when I was 5. The key "stocking" present was a cuckoo clock. Because Father Christmas was going to bring it, although it was set and wound up when placed on the wall it hadn't been tested.

I was good. I was very, very good. I waited until it cuckooed seven times before I burst in on my parents shouting "Happy Christmas!"

It wasn't my fault that it was only 4 am.

When I was 7, at the French school in London, I was puzzled at first by the very different way Father Christmas manifested himself in France. The conclusion I came to was that it was what I would now call a franchise; after all, it wasn't logical that one person could deal with the whole world.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's great that you decided it must be a franchise! It makes perfect sense.

And you were very good, it's a shame about the clock.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

I can't remember when I stopped believing in Father Christmas. Possibly I'd spotted the signs of Grownups Telling Stories all along - there certainly wasn't a traumatic Death Of Santa. I know I knew he didn't exist when I was six, because I remember trying to work out whose handwriting it was on the letter I'd received 'From Father Christmas' with my presents. I guessed that it was my grandma with cunning disguised writing, but in fact it was our next-door neighbour. The following year I wrote the letter for my sister, which must have been a bit of a clue for her, unless she really thought that Father Christmas writes like a seven-year-old with particularly wobbly handwriting.

[the_antichris.livejournal.com]

I was pretty young, I think - once I noticed the striking similarity between Santa's handwriting and my mum's. I stopped believing in the Tooth Fairy early, too, which was lucky since I had to be her for my sister several times.