Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and God

It was a big freethought day for Cat. First, she watched Bill Nye in class, which is unrelated to the theme of this post, but is cool.

Then evidently she got into a discussion with a classmate about Santa. She won't admit that she told them Santa isn't real - she says she can't remember how it came up - but I have my suspicions. The thing she wanted to tell me was that someone said, "If you don't believe in Santa, you don't believe in God."

I asked what she thought about that, and she paused and said, "I think if you don't believe in Godmother you don't believe in God." "Who is Godmother?" I asked. She said, "I think it must be God's wife." "That makes sense," I responded. Hey, it makes as much sense as Jesus, right?

So finally, she lost a tooth today. So I was jokingly talking about how the tooth fairy couldn't leave her any money until the lights were out and stuff. And then she brought up everything all balled up together in a knot of anxious confusion: "I just hate all made up things!" She said she didn't like made up things that aren't real, and that people write books about them to make people think they're real (I had to agree), and she knows that Santa and the Tooth Fairy and "all the other made up things" (*coughGodcough*) are NOT real, and she doesn't like reading books about made up things.

So I said, "Like Junie B. Jones?" And she had to admit that she liked Junie B. a lot, even though she is made up. Pretty soon we were laughing about how fun it is to pretend Santa is real and wrap up presents for Daddy with a tag that says, "From Santa." And along the way I assured her that she can change her mind about these kinds of things as often as she wants, and it's good to think about them and look at the evidence and try to come to your own conclusions. (Thank you, Dale McGowan!)

I feel glad and proud and anxious and concerned, but most of all I feel ever so grateful that I started researching this freethought parenting thing when I did!