Santa, Lance Armstrong, and the Christmas Eve Doldrums

Introduction

Please don’t read this aloud to a small child. And now that you’ve stopped reading aloud, I can tell you why: I don’t want to spoil anybody’s belief in Santa. In this post I describe the Christmas Eve doldrums, a way I tried to deal with them, and my heart-to-heart with my teenage daughters about the Santa myth.

Christmas Eve doldrums

I mean doldrums in both senses: the general idea of stagnation & depression, and also the equatorial region of the Atlantic Ocean with calms, sudden storms, and light unpredictable winds. What I mean is that the holiday season is kind of like monsoon season, or what we might now call hurricane season. Going shopping for presents is, to me, like deliberately heading into a storm. And though I enjoy the slowdown at work that comes with the holidays, I also find myself feeling overwhelmed by the socializing, the music, and (above all else) the retail cyclone we get whirled into.

Of course Christmas Eve night is the hardest of all ... it’s when I have to wrap the rest of the presents, including each and every item that goes into each kid’s stocking. My wife thought I was crazy to do this when we started doing Christmas stockings for our kids. My rationale was that my parents always wrapped each stocking item, so I ought to continue the tradition. I now realize that my wife was right: I am crazy, and so were my parents. But I’m kind of stuck with the tradition.

Perhaps it was in anticipation of this onslaught that one year my mom went off by herself on Christmas Eve and watched Billy the Kid, the 1938 ballet written by Aaron Copeland, on TV. (This was our piece-of-crap black-and-white Panasonic.) To me this seemed an incomprehensible act. I was like, What does Billy the Kid have to do with Christmas? And moreover, what does watching TV have to do with us kids, on the night before Christmas? I interrogated my mom about this and she replied, “Sssh—just watch.” So I watched for like twenty minutes, half-expecting Santa to burst out on the scene, and when it became apparent he wasn’t going to show, I got bored and wandered off. Now I can relate to my mom’s desire to do something normal, non-child-centric, and non-holiday-themed with her Christmas Eve, before all the tumult of Christmas Day.

Our escape

My wife and I are similarly stalling this evening. I’m blogging, obviously, but even before that we were AWOL from holiday activities. My wife sought the sanctuary of our bedroom (which, as a Christmas gift staging area, is off limits to the kids this weekend) to read a P.G. Wodehouse novel. I took to my home office to research a mystery that arrived in my e-mail earlier in the evening. The mystery is: what is the meaning of this painting?

My friend’s e-mail read, “We’re stranded at a holiday inn in silverthorne, co, because i70 is closed. This painting is in the lobby.”

Now, in case you don’t follow cycling, this painting has a very strange characteristic: it features two (possibly three) Tour de France champions in head-to-head competition despite the fact that they raced during different eras. Bernard Hinault, the second rider from the left, raced his last Tour in 1986. The rider in the lead, Lance Armstrong, didn’t wear the yellow leader’s jersey (featured here) until 1999.

Clearly, the artist combined two photos from the Tour de France: one from 1984 or 1985, and the other from 1999. Here they are.

The artist has replaced Fernando Escartin with Hinault, and took that dude in the red jersey and white cap along with him. And he swapped out Laurent Fignon for Miguel Indurain. (At least, I think the rider on the far right in the painting is Indurain. This would still be anachronistic; Indurain did overlap with Hinault by a couple of years, but didn’t finish either of those Tours and certainly wouldn’t have been near the front during a mountain stage. It’s also possible this rider is Alex Zülle, who made the podium with Lance in 1999. The painting isn’t good enough to know for sure.)

Why would the artist juxtapose Lance with Hinault? Was he or she making a statement about these being champions of similar caliber?

It could be. On the other hand, maybe this artist just had a couple (or a pile) of photos to work from, knew and cared little about who else (besides Lance) had raced a bike, and painted whatever he or she felt like. (It’s surprising to me how careless people can be. I saw a bike catalog once where the photographer had accidentally—or based on some aesthetic preference—flipped the photo so it was a mirror image, and the bike’s drivetrain was on the wrong side.)

It dawned on me that the artist might think he or she was being funny. “Wouldn’t that be great if, like, Lance and Bernie had raced at the same time?” This made me think of the silly painting—a takeoff on a more famous one,“Nighthawks”—featuring a similar character substitution.

“Wow, wouldn’t that be awesome for Bogie, Marilyn, Elvis, and James Dean to be, like, hanging out together?” Seems like a pretty thin idea to base a serious artwork on, but there you have it. I wonder: did this artist whose work graces the Holiday Inn in Silverthorne take himself or herself seriously? And did the manager of the Holiday Inn? And are these one and the same person?

Then I remembered this Miyata calendar I had back in like 1981 that featured paintings of riders on the Capri Sonne team, riding Team  Miyata bicycles. Each painting was taken from some cool old photo, with the focal point of the photo (usually somebody like Eddy Merckx) swapped out for a Capri Sonne rider. I started researching this calendar, which led to the kind of pointless time suck the Internet is famous for, and this dragged me ever farther in to the Christmas Eve doldrums. I couldn’t keep with it.

Besides, my kids were still up so I had to set a good example. Watching a classic opera on PBS is one thing, but browsing Internet photos is another entirely. So I decided to do something with my kids. We took a walk through the neighborhood to look at the candle-aria. At least, that’s what I thought it was called. My kids laughed in my face and corrected me: it’s luminaria. You know, the votives inside paper bags that line the sidewalks in some lucky neighborhoods (such as mine):

During the walk I decided, suddenly, it was time to have the uncomfortable conversation with my kids about Santa. “Alexa,” I said, “you do know there’s no Santa ... right?” She gasped in disbelief. “Dad!” she protested, “I’m sixteen years old!”

Ha! Once again my deadpan delivery fooled her. I love doing this with my kid. She falls for my facetiousness—hook, line, and sinker—every time. But I was curious to know: how long had she believed in Santa?

“Well, I guess until I was about eight,” she said. “It just seemed impossible to me that he could make it to every house in the world in so short a time. So I started comparing notes with my friends, and we all kind of concluded at the same time that Santa wasn’t real. Of course we played along to keep getting the presents.”

I asked my younger daughter. “Well, I’m not sure I ever really believed there was a Santa,” she said. “I guess I thought it went from person to person, that anybody could be Santa who wanted to give you gifts.”

I replied, “So when you and your sister left cookies for Santa, who did you think ate them? Me?” She said, “Well, no ... I guess I didn’t really think it through.” This is probably a good thing. It might have been troubling for her to think of some prowler sneaking into our home, eating these cookies, and leaving a bunch of presents.

I’ve written before, in my holiday newsletter and in these pages, about how if you spill the beans about Santa, then the Tooth Fairy myth is suddenly in great jeopardy, and we need that myth in order to keep our kids’ spirits up when it comes to losing a tooth, having blood in their mouths, and this weird tender hollow in their gums (often with a shred or two of loose flesh). I asked Alexa how long she had believed in the Tooth Fairy.

“I believed in the Tooth Fairy for about another year,” she admitted. “It just didn’t seem possible that you could get that tooth out from under my pillow without waking me. In fact, I did some tests where I put the tooth as far from the outer edge of my bed as possible, in a place you’d never be able to find, to see if I could catch you in the act.” I told her I remembered those times very well. It had been a pain in the ass. But I’m glad the seeming impossibility of my efforts extended the myth a bit longer.

(You may be wondering what Santa has to do with Lance Armstrong. Well, a friend of mine did a bike fitting for Robin Williams around the time Lance admitted to all his doping, and my friend asked Williams what he thought about it. Williams—who was a good friend of Lance’s—replied, “I was devastated. It was like when I was a kid and I learned there was no Santa.” This begs a question: did Williams really believe in Lance all that time, or was this a bit like Lindsay’s position on Santa: deciding not to think too hard about it? And how many others among us might have similarly suspended our skepticism?)

After the candle-aria—er, luminaria—walk, I felt the Christmas Eve doldrums lifting somewhat. I’d found this candid conversation with my kids heartening somehow; it’s nice to see that we can honor traditions like Christmas stockings while acknowledging the fiction involved and having a chuckle together. And it gives me hope that there will be a time, perhaps not too far from now, when I can slack off a bit on the stockings without ruining anybody’s childhood. But for now, I better post this little essay and get on with my night ... I have a lot of gift wrapping ahead of me.

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Santa Denial, and How Lance Armstrong Taught Me To Lie

Introduction

When Robin Williams, a longtime friend of Lance Armstrong, was asked how he took the news that Lance had been doping, and lying about it, all along, Williams replied, “It was like when I found out about Santa Claus.”  This makes sense.  The Lance myth is a lot like the Santa myth:  something that millions of people believed, in part because it’s such a sweet story, they wanted to believe it.

This past Christmas, when I was lying to my younger daughter about Santa, I was surprised how easy it was compared to past years.  Why should this be?  After much soul-searching, I realized that it’s because I paid such close attention this past year to the Lance saga, and how it was that he successfully lied for so long. 

In short, this post explains how Lance taught me to lie.

First, a disclaimer

I want to be very clear that I’m not in favor of lying, unless it’s to my kids about Santa or the Tooth Fairy.  That’s why, until I subconsciously absorbed some important lessons from Lance, I had so much trouble with these lies.  It just felt wrong trampling over my kids’ reasonable skepticism, which as a parent I normally like to instill.  So, even though my lying skills have improved, my moral compass has not strayed, and I’m not lulled into any “grey area” nonsense.  I offer up this essay to you not as a how-to guide, but as an intellectual investigation.  Who knows, perhaps a knowledge of lying technique can help us be more skeptical.  I sure wouldn’t want to be played like a sucker again, after defending Lance for years.

Interestingly, I’ve witnessed a similar evolution of the lying skills and techniques of Lance himself.  In the early days of his lying, he wasn’t so smooth.  In fact, it wasn’t until the accusations went from a trickle to a stream to a full inundation that he mastered his skills at deception.  For example, if you can find the video footage of his press conference regarding the Discovery sponsorship, you’ll see some awkward, inexpert evasion.  Nothing as clumsy as Floyd Landis’s first denial (i.e., when he was first asked point-blank if he doped, he said, “I’m gonna say no…”), but pretty clumsy.

Technique #1:  convince yourself first

It’s pretty clear from the Oprah interview and others that Lance doesn’t actually regret cheating at sport—he just regrets getting caught.  He doesn’t present his doping and his deception as particularly heinous or unique crimes; I think he found a way, very early on, to square all this internally.  He took moral comfort in having convinced himself (and his team) that everybody else was doping too; in having used his massive celebrity to give comfort to cancer survivors (whether or not he made any progress toward funding actual research); and in having generated a vast amount of wealth for the bicycle industry.  In light of all this good he was doing, he must have felt as though depriving some cheating European of those Tours de France was really no big deal. 

So it is with the Santa myth.  To witness the idealistic, innocent, and pure trust my child puts in me, and to take advantage of it with a bald-faced lie every year, requires similar rationalization.  So I remind myself that the truth would only hurt, and that my kid couldn’t be trusted to keep it to herself.  I think of all the kids on the playground whose holiday experience would be damaged by too early a revelation, and all those letters to Santa that wouldn’t be written, and so forth, and thus I rationalize my position.  This was easier this year after I read Lance’s (or was it Tyler Hamilton’s?) description of the vast number of team support people (mechanics, masseuses, coaches, doctors, PR folks, etc.) whose careers depended on his “discretion” (i.e., lies).

Technique #2:  make your lie big and bold

Remember all that mealy-mouthed stuff in “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus”?  The writer (i.e., liar) resorts to a sideways trick of turning Santa (the living, breathing man) into something abstract, with statements like “He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist” and by comparing him to fairies.  It’s easy to see why the writer would do this, but it’s amateurish.  When Lindsay asked me straight-out this year, “Daddy, are you and Mommy really Santa?” I knew this was no time for prevaricating.  So I snapped at her:  “Why do you love cancer so much?!”  No, of course I didn’t really say that.  That was Lance’s retort when the journalist Paul Kimmage accused him of doping.  It was big, bold, and (best of all) beside the point.  It’s the logical fallacy my older daughter once referred to as “red lobster.”

So what I really said to Lindsay was, “That’s crazy talk!  Of course we aren’t Santa!”  She looked so relieved.  This was the look of a kid who is all too happy to place her dad’s honesty and integrity above that of some stupid kid on the playground.  Once she had the answer that she wanted all along, her skepticism went right out the window.  Yes, I felt slightly bad about the power I had over her and how I was abusing it, but more than that I thought, “Wow, that was a way better response than I’d have made last year, which would have been the old answer-with-a-question dodge, like ‘What makes you ask that?’”

 Technique #3:  suspend disbelief by throwing a bone

Okay, so you’ve lied to yourself first, and then you’ve told the lie boldly and firmly, and your audience wants to believe you anyway.  That’s a good start.  But what about that niggling doubt that an intelligent person would naturally have?  If left alone, that doubt might start to fester, and end up being to Truth what a grain of sand is to a pearl.  Best to nip doubt in the bud, which can be accomplished easily with a few plausible explanations.

I was as amazed as anybody when Lance went from being a one-day classics racer to a Grand Tour stage racer (by way of cancer).  I’ve seen classics racers evolve into stage racers over time, like Sean Kelly, but even Kelly never won the Tour de France.  So from the very first doping accusations against Lance, I had the beginnings of doubt.  But Lance, in one of his novels, explained that the cancer stripped off the unnecessary upper body muscle he’d had from his swimming days, reconfiguring him as a stage racer.  It didn’t matter that he hadn’t actually lost any weight; I wanted to believe, and that explanation was good enough.  Lance also mentioned his higher cadence as a major asset to his stage racing; it didn’t bother me that I myself get more power out of a lower cadence.  I only cared that his transformation was explained in some way.  (So it is with Chris Froome’s believers, who accept his silly explanation—finally getting over parasitic worms—for suddenly going from mediocre cyclist to the world’s best stage racer.)

The ability of an explanation—whether it’s solid or not—to help suspend disbelief is something Malcolm Gladwell has called “the Photocopier Effect,” after an experiment by a Harvard social scientist, Ellen Langer.  Langer had just a 60% success rate cutting in line to use a photocopier when she merely asked nicely.  But if she gave a reason, like “I’m in a rush,” her success rate went to 94%.  The crazy thing is that when Langer gave a pointless reason, like “because I need to make some copies,” her success rate was still 94%.  The point is, if you throw someone a bone, you’ll get somewhere, whether it’s a good bone or not.

Not that all explanations are created equal.  I never bought Alberto Contador’s “tainted Spanish beef” explanation for his positive clenbuterol test, and I don’t believe Michael Rogers’ “tainted Chinese beef” explanation for the same, and I don’t believe Jonathan Breyne’s “tainted Chinese beef” explanation either.  Tyler Hamilton’s “chimera” (i.e., prenatal evil twin) explanation for his blood doping positive would be laughable if it weren’t so sad. 

So when Lindsay questioned the authenticity of Santa Claus, I threw her the best bone I could.  After denying that my wife and I were actually Santa, I said, “That’s not to say that there aren’t people who impersonate Santa Claus.  Have you ever seen Santa in a mall?  Definitely a fake.”  See?  Now she had an explanation for the fact that somebody had (evidently) questioned Santa’s existence to begin with.  I went on to describe a fake mall Santa who made me cry because when I asked for a “bow and arrow” it sounded like “bone arrow” and I couldn’t make the fake Santa understand what I wanted.  Another red herring, right up there with Lance’s higher pedaling cadence!

Technique #4:  Embroil others in your lie

One reason I believed in Lance for so long was that no disgruntled former teammate ratted him out (until one finally did and all the others followed).  As we now know, Lance didn’t achieve this cooperation by sitting everybody down and formally conspiring in the way that a James Bond villain might.  No, it was all subtle:  if you want to be in the inner circle, you better ride well and show your allegiance, and if you do, you may get a white paper bag, and if you use the substances therein and benefit appropriately, you’re going to the Tour!  But by the way, now you can’t say anything, ever, because you’d have to come clean yourself.  It’s kind of like when my big brother would steal two cookies from the jar, stuff one in my mouth, and say, “You tell, I’ll tell.”  Except the gag order on the Postal team was implicit.

So it was when I brought my older daughter Alexa in on the Santa deception.  I knew she wouldn’t believe in Santa forever, and I dreaded the day when I’d have to come clean and admit I’d been lying all along.  It was just my luck that when that moment finally came, I’d recently read Tyler Hamilton’s book and had learned of the power Lance had through speaking softly and wielding financial repercussions. 

Predictably enough, the first domino to fall was the Tooth Fairy.  (I think that myth is more fragile because teeth are lost one at a time, so you don’t have the momentum of mass belief that the Christmas season entails.)  Of course once your kids know you’re capable of routinely lying to their faces about the Tooth Fairy, they figure out the Santa deception almost instantly.

Alexa was blunt:  “Okay, Dad, I know there’s no Tooth Fairy.”  I was equally blunt in my reply:  “You’re right.  There’s no Tooth Fairy.  And now that you know that, you won’t be surprised when you no longer get any money for losing a tooth.”  That was the extent of it.  Alexa, of course, is no fool:  she instantly grasped that if she later decried Santa as a fake, she could kiss her Christmas stocking—and all that candy—goodbye.

So when Christmas rolled around, Alexa not only kept Mum about Santa, but—of her own volition—took an active role in perpetuating the myth.  Hours before Lindsay confronted me about Santa, Alexa (in Lindsay’s presence) threw me a perfect softball:  “Hey Dad, does Santa give lesser presents to kids in poor communities?”  I casually replied, “Well, yes, a really fancy gift in a poor community could cause a lot of envy and strife.  So Santa naturally scales it down.  Meanwhile, in very affluent communities he has to give fancier gifts because the kids are so jaded.”  For Lindsay to hear this intelligent discussion among older, more worldly people was a perfect ruse.  And when Lindsay later asked if my wife and I pretend to be Santa, Alexa said, with an exquisite facsimile of eye-rolling annoyance, “That’s what she keeps trying to get me to believe.”  I couldn’t ask for a better accomplice.

Should I be thanking Lance?

I suppose I could thank Lance for helping me learn how to lie.  But I’m not sure how much use I’ll have for this skill once Lindsay knows the truth about Santa.

That said, I suppose we could all thank Lance for all the stunning entertainment he’s given us over the years, from the seven Tour de France victories to the botched comeback and on to the thrilling scandal, which brought about a veritable orgy of self-righteous pontificating from so many journalists, bloggers, and Internet haters.  Meanwhile, Oakley and Trek could thank Lance for generating so many sales; after all, these companies get to keep all that money they made.

But before we start thanking the guy, we should remember that, unlike lying about Santa, Lance’s deception was not a victimless crime.  He robbed all the clean cyclists, and the clean would-be cyclists (who left the sport rather than doping), as well as the would-be clean cyclists (those lured into doping by the culture Lance so generously fueled).  Lance should get coal in his stocking.

2010 Holiday Newsletter

NOTE: This post is rated PG-13 for mild mature content.

Introduction

Every year I write a Holiday Newsletter and send it with my holiday cards. As newsletters go, mine isn’t very useful; it doesn’t, for example, describe the highlights of the year. It’s actually more likely to focus on a single low point of my year, just to counter-balance all the highlights you’ll read about in other people’s newsletters. Or it’s simply random—the “secret Santa” of holiday newsletters, you might say.

In keeping with the tradition I started last year, I’ve decided to extend my Holiday Newsletter to my extended blog “family.” Enjoy.

Note: please do NOT read this newsletter aloud to your kids!

Seasons Greetings!

Before I get to the standard good tidings, I’d like to make a humble request of all my friends and family: please don’t tell your kids that Santa doesn’t exist! This is the time of year when I get really nervous that somebody’s going to spill the beans. I was at the library with my kids recently and saw a book was on display titled The Truth About Santa Claus. Seeing this, I felt the same kind of panic as a teenager whose mom has walked into his room before he can hide his “Playboy” magazines. What if my kid saw that book? The title alone suggests treachery.

Why, you might ask, should we perpetuate this Santa myth? Well, for one thing, it is charming to watch our benighted children participate in it. I’ve loved reading Alexa’s letters to Santa over the years, asking for mundane or impossible things (a “new live rabbit” and “more aquafresh” one year; aquafresh and “miny piano” the next).

A couple of years ago on Christmas eve, right after her goodnight hug, Alexa suddenly assumed a panicked expression, like someone who just realized she left her purse in the train station, and said, “Wait! We have to put out some cookies for Santa!” Last year she left him meticulous instructions: “To tell the stockings apart, look at the license plates with our names on them in the loop on the top of our stocking.”

The myth is good for adults, too. It keeps us on our toes. For example, Alexa and Lindsay have somehow arranged with Erin and me that every year they get to sleep under the Christmas tree for the last three nights before Christmas. This makes it a bit tricky when it’s time to fill the stockings and deposit the presents. It’s fun going around like a cat burglar, stuffing a stocking right above their sleeping heads.

The whole Santa mythology also opens the door for useful discussions with our kids. I appreciate the chance to dispel my daughters’ natural skepticism even while encourage critical thinking. For example, they asked how a bunch of little elves could make enough toys for all the children in the world. “Oh, believe me, they don’t,” I replied. “How could they? Santa outsources most of his production, just like most corporations. I mean, think about it—would elves really make Aquafresh?”

When the kids asked about the whole “he knows when you’ve been bad or good” bit, I became indignant. “That’s just a myth that parents came up with to try to trick their kids into behaving. I won’t lie to you: Santa doesn’t know what you do and he doesn’t care. Every kid gets presents, even the ones who are little monsters all year. But you should be good for its own sake.” With this lecture I hoped to instill the impulse to question authority—but within bounds.

Another reason I’m opposed to exposing the Santa myth is that, even if your kid is ready for the truth, his younger sibling probably isn’t, and there’s no chance of the older one keeping a secret. Decades ago when my older brothers learned the truth, they wasted no time in breaking the news to me. They couldn’t wait to watch me cry, and they weren’t disappointed. Meanwhile, once a younger sibling learns the awful truth, he tells everyone in his class. Some of those kids will tell their even younger siblings, and now you’ve just trashed the whole holiday. Meanwhile, we can’t really expose the Santa myth without giving up the Tooth Fairy too. After all, once our kids realize we’re capable of lying to them consistently and repeatedly, their skepticism will naturally increase.

Ah, now you want me to defend the Tooth Fairy myth! Fair enough. Frankly, the Santa legend is fun and all, but the Tooth Fairy is something we need. Why? Imagine the alternative, which is presenting the losing-teeth business straight: “Here’s the deal, kid. One by one your teeth will get loose. Your tongue will get tired as it pushes that tooth around, until the tooth is hanging on by one little strand, at which point you’ll taste blood. Eventually you’ll yank the tooth out, which will hurt, and then you’ll have this funny-looking gap in your mouth. The next tooth that comes in will be oversized and as this process repeats you’ll get uglier and uglier until you get braces, which are truly hideous, and which will hurt all the time. Sorry, but that’s just the way it goes. Life’s a bitch.”

Compared to that, giving up a few coins or bills each time to create goodwill is a great bargain. For trivial amounts of money these kids will actually look forward to all this unpleasantness. Almost four months before she lost her first tooth, Alexa said something so interesting I wrote it down: “I wish my teeth would fall out so I would get money from the tooth fairy and I wouldn’t have to earn it.” I asked her what she would buy with the money. She replied, “A gallon of milk for Lindsay.” That’s not even a real expenditure, since we’d buy milk anyway. It’s a zero-sum game that makes it fun to lose teeth!

Here is Alexa with her first lost tooth (July ’07):

Here is Lindsay with her first lost tooth (November ’09):

Awhile back we had a close call with the Tooth Fairy myth. I was loading groceries into the back of the car when Alexa suddenly asked me straight out if the Tooth Fairy really exists. It seems one of Alexa’s classmates was spreading the evil truth about this myth. “Don’t listen to kids, they make stuff up,” I told her. She said the kid’s mother had told it to him. Man. I’d love to get an audience with that mother and excoriate her for turning her kid into a merciless little killjoy, running around the playground sharing the bad news. I’d give that woman a taste of her own medicine: “Ah, so Truth is that important to you, eh? Well then you’ll be happy to know I just told the whole PTA how you paid for your Prius—that is, with a stock portfolio comprising equal parts Monsanto, Phillip-Morris, Halliburton, and bundled credit default swap instruments!”

We had another close call with Lindsay’s last lost tooth: I simply forgot to swap the tooth for the money during the night. I sneaked into the kids’ bedroom in the morning with a $5 bill (the smallest thing I could find), and climbed into Lindsay’s bed as if to snuggle. I reached under pillow, extracted the tooth from the special Tooth Fairy purse she’d put it in, palmed the tooth with two fingers while using other two to insert the bill in the purse, and pulled my arm out just as she woke up. She immediately checked the purse and found the money. It was unbelievably close, like the action movie cliché of people running and diving for cover mere seconds before something explodes. Which, in fact, Alexa did when she saw the five-spot. She found it totally unfair that she had never gotten that much. She was in tears. I had to scramble and explain that the Tooth Fairy pays a flat rate, based on the prime lending rate set by the government. I acknowledged that there are regional variances, of course; that in the Bay Area the tooth rate would be a bit higher than, say, a third world country. During the ensuing discussion Alexa seemed to forget all about the $5. These kinds of trial-under-fire give me some of my finest parenting moments.

So you may be wondering, when is it time to reveal the truth about Santa and the Tooth Fairy? The answer is: never. Let the kids find out on their own, or—and this is the best case scenario—let the truth dawn on them so gradually that they go from believing the myth to helping to perpetuate it without even realizing it. This will prepare them for adulthood, when they go along with the greatest mass-delusion of all: money.

Well, I was hoping to give you all kinds of updates about the Albert family, but I see I’m out of room. Have a great holiday!

Love,

dana albert blog