My boys believe in Santa. They also know the real meaning of Christmas, but I don't see any harm in the magic of Santa when you're 3 and 5 years old. Since the Finnish Santa comes to the door at Christmas Eve to deliver his gifts, we have always had a Finnish-speaking Santa. When I asked the boys to have their pictures taken with Santa at Metrotown, Joonas asked, " does that Santa speak Finnish?". When I said "no", he answered, "then, I'm not going". Not even candy would change his mind...
Matias really wanted a tiger airplane for Christmas. It's what he asked for every time that I asked what he wanted. Unfortunately, by the time I started looking for it, I couldn't find one anywhere. I had to tell him one day that I didn't think that the airplane was coming since they seemed to be sold out everywhere. He said, "That's okay mom. Santa and his elves can make me one. That's what they DO!! "
So, Matias wrote a letter to Santa. He has gotten pretty good about sounding out words and writing them down. In his letter, he asked for the tiger airplane. Or, he thought he did. On the morning of Christmas Eve, he suddenly realized that he had forgotten the word airplane. "Oh no!!!! Mom, what if Santa brings me a REAL tiger because I forgot to say tiger AIRPLANE". I assured him that Santa probably knew (in his magical way) what Matias had meant. He was so happy (and relieved) when Santa gave him a tiger airplane and not a jungle cat.
This year, we needed a new Santa since my youngest brother Tim (our usual Santa) was in Finland. My dad agreed to step in. So, we snuck our Santa suit into the trunk of the car in a big garbage bag. After dinner, my dad went downstairs and put on the costume. The kids were busy playing and didn't notice, but came running when they heard him knocking. They all looked very serious, like what if they didn't get any gifts...Everyone got a gift and no one cried (bonus). Afterwards, my nephew Noah had said that Santa was grandpa. The other kids seemed to have thought Santa was the real thing. At home, however, Matias observed that Santa looked like grandpa, specifically, he had grandpa's hands and grandpa's rings. After questioning how grandpa would've known about the tiger plane, Matias said, "well, it WASN'T grandpa, it just looked like him". Ah, ok. Glad we cleared that up.
