My toddler now knows about Father Christmas – and that’s a problem

Only days into December, the questions from my three-year-old, giddy with sugar-fuelled excitement, started.

“Do you think Father Christmas has his Christmas tree up yet?”; “Will Father Christmas still come if it’s rainy?”; “What do you think Father Christmas will get for Christmas?”

It’s a lot to think about, especially as I haven’t yet, got my story straight.

Perhaps my partner and I should have figured out our narrative, our interpretation of The Big Festive Lie, ahead of time – held a meeting in July, perhaps, to finesse the finer details – but we didn’t. And so we’re making it up on the fly. “Yes, I think he probably has a tree up all year round”; “Of course he’ll come if it rains, don’t worry”; “I don’t know, darling, maybe an air fryer?”

The pressure is immense. The story we tell him about Father Christmas this year will bury itself deep into his subconscious, form some of his earliest memories, and perhaps even influence the story he tells his own children, should he have them. And I’m meant to take on this responsibility alongside making sure he brushes his teeth, eats his vegetables, and doesn’t watch too much TV? That feels unreasonable.

This is the first year the lie has loomed so large. Last year, my son had just turned two, and although he enjoyed the festive lights, the homemade mince pies, and the fact everyone was at home with him, I didn’t get the sense he really got the notion of Father Christmas – the big, bearded man who would, apparently, fly through the sky on a sleigh pulled by reindeer to deliver him presents.

This year, inevitably, is different. In the 12 months since we last packed away the Christmas decorations, he has evolved from toddler to child. He’s become a big brother, got a haircut that makes him look like a teenager, and talks like a tiny adult. (The other day, when I jokingly asked if I could have a nap in the car, he looked at me sternly, shook his head slowly, and said, deadpan: “Does this look like ‘yes’, Mummy?”)

He picks up on everything his dad and I say, and it’s fascinating to watch him absorb the lexicon that makes up our daily lives. He interrogates everything. It’s why, I suspect, he has so many questions about a fantastical tale that, really, makes no sense at all.

I’m also aware, painfully so, of the need for his version of the story to match other people’s – or, at least, to not directly contradict them. What if his childminder tells him all his presents are from Father Christmas, but we decide only a couple are? What if his little friend Lucy’s mummy and daddy tell her the Father Christmas we all met in the garden centre that time is the real one, but we tell him he’s simply one of the big man’s representatives? What if Uncle Charlie confuses him with his magical but madcap tales of a man who squeezes himself down the chimney when we’ve told him Father Christmas will come through the front door because we’ve got a wood burner and no amount of magic will get a man through its skinny flue?

What if he, somehow, internalises the (truly horrible) notion of the “Good List”, which directly contradicts our gentle parenting approach, that there are no bad children, only “bad” – unwanted – behaviours? What if telling him Father Christmas is real flies in the face of my promise to always be honest with my children? What if I’m overthinking this?

I suspect, probably, I’m simply an exhausted mum, frustrated that spinning a story, woven carefully by generations of parents before me, is simply another thing to add to my festive mental load. Keeping track of all the fictional threads and making sure they don’t get knotted sometimes feels, to me, like yet another Christmas job, akin to making sure the Christmas food shop is done or checking we’ve got enough sherry in for Great Auntie Sheila.

So spare a thought, whenever you engage a child in a conversation about Father Christmas this festive season, for the parent hovering, harried-looking, behind them. Perhaps the real magic is not that a man can fly through the sky on a sleigh pulled by reindeer but that parents can keep such a far-fetched tale so vibrantly alive in the face of work Christmas parties, secret present-buying, festive family politics, winter vomiting bugs, elves on sodding shelves and – of course – curious, questioning children.