When it's not so fun to lie to your children

Guest author tonight folks.  Let's all give a warm welcome to Kolby.

(This is actually my brother-in-law Don last Halloween.  But pretend it's Kolby since he wrote this post.)

The other night, we were talking about letting the girls have one of their “Peeps” from Easter. I told Maddie that Jami and I had already eaten all of their precious peeps. She protested that we would have to buy her some more then. To which I absentmindedly replied, “No problem, we already bought you those ones.”

Pause. “No, the Easter® Bunny™ brought those to us.”

Pause. “Right. That’s what I meant.”

Pause. “Is the Easter Bunny real?”

Now, Jami and I have never had to answer this question.

Nor the logical questions that followed:
"Is Santa Claus real? What about the Leprechauns? I want you to tell me the truth."
(Meanwhile, Amelia’s back there saying, “I know da eastow bunny’s rew!”)

Jami ushered Mia to the other room.

“Dad, is the Easter Bunny real? I want to know the truth.” She was dead serious and wouldn’t drop it. “What about Santa Claus?”
“Maddie, I thought we were talking about the Easter Bunny.”

“Okay, is the Easter Bunny real? You have to tell me the truth.”

As someone who never believed in Santa or the Easter Bunny, I’d always romanticized this moment of truth, but it sucked. My little girl was asking for “the truth.”

I shook my head, and said, “No honey the Easter Bunny isn’t real.”

Her face at that point is burned into my brain. She was so sad and let out this sad soft groan. Just as she was looking like she was going to cry, she asked the big one, “What about Santa Claus?”

I delayed and stumbled around trying to get the topic back to the Easter Bunny, but she was on a quest. I couldn’t handle it and I said that Santa was real. She was kind of relieved, but kept talking to me about how we all know that Santa is real. After each bit of proof she offered, she said, “Right dad? Cause Santa’s real, right?”

I finally couldn’t do it anymore. “No honey, Santa’s not real either.”

At this point, Maddie let out a similar soft, sad groan, walked into the other room, and started to sob. I went in with her. We sat on the couch and she begged me to tell her that I was just joking. She repeated this a couple of times-that she wanted me to say that I was just joking.

It was really awful. As she eventually grasped that this didn’t really change anything, we started talking about the kids who didn’t get Christmas every year, since there was no Santa Claus. This hit her pretty hard. She went to her piggy bank that she stores her, “Give Money” in. She found an envelope, and wrote on it, “Sub for Santa” and put all of her give money in it. And we talked about how we were going to bring Christmas to some kids who wouldn’t otherwise get it. She then put it in the freezer, since it would somewhat resemble the North Pole.

So I took her for ice cream. On the way, she was putting other pieces together. “So that’s why Santa is watching all the time, cause you and mom are watching all the time. Now I’m laughing thinking of you in an easter bunny costume every year, and dressed up like a Leprechaun.”

I added that I also put on wings and have a big bag of teeth and dimes so I can collect your teeth and leave money.

Pause.

“oh. So, uh, that’s not… hm.”