You've all been very naughty

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I first learned that there was no Santa Claus by watching the Marx Brothers in A Night at the Opera at the tender age of six -- possibly I'm a late developer, but I'd never given the existence of Kris Kringle much thought anyway. Bishop Nikolaos of Myra was probably real enough and died around 343 CE, but his transglobal, free-gift distribution network has only ever existed by proxy.

http://www.myspace.com/video/chris/marx-brothers-sanity-clause/10404341

By extension, I immediately thought what else have I been told that's a crock. I'm not going there...for now.

Anyway, how old were you when your illusions were shattered about KK or anything else, and how did you find out? Pray tell.

 

[Jadzia]

We had this thread three months ago.

Cutting and pasting,

I found out at infant school. I must have been 5 going on 6.

It was during lunchtime the day we went back to school at the beginning of January. We were sat around eating our dinners, and one child in my class was boasting about what he had seen. He said he saw his parents carrying presents downstairs to put under the tree at midnight, and when he confronted them they told him the truth.

He was quite the iconoclast, making an effort to ensure that everybody in the dining hall knew the truth!

I wasn't sure what to think at first, so that evening I told my parents what happened at school and they confirmed the story. I was a bit saddened to hear that it was all made up because I wanted "father christmas" to be real. I was also little annoyed that I had been misled, and I couldn't help but wonder "what else might I be being misled about?"

For christmases upto about the age of 9 or 10, I told my mum that I still wanted to receive presents from father christmas, and she made sure I did.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

We had this thread three months ago.

Any illusion - not just Sanity Clause - it can be anything that you believed to be true and were shocked, surprised, or upset to find out wasn't the case.

 

[thestrangequark]

Alright, this is a bit embarrassing, especially as I consider myself an intelligent young woman -- but it goes to show what we are willing to accept when we don't bother thinking about it: When I was very young I had a tuxedo cat named Edwin Miece (after a Washington State official who was involved in some scandal in the mid 1980's; I must have heard his name on the news and liked it.) Edwin and I had a very special relationship. He followed me around, slept in my bed, and only let me pet him. I loved that cat dearly. When I was 5 he went missing. I made posters and even a tee shirt out of Puff-Paint that I wore every day for weeks with his picture on it. He wasn't just any tuxedo cat -- he had a white tip on his tail and a white cross on his back, he could open and close doors by himself, and he loved to drink coffee!

Anyway, the effort was futile, and to help console me my mother brought home a little tuxedo kitten. She said the kitten was named Minnie Miece and that she was Edwin's own baby. She said Edwin was sorry he had to go, but he wanted me to take care of his kitten. I was five, so I certainly believed her, and I think it was a really lovely story for her to tell me. The thing was, I accepted it so readily that I never thought about it at all. Not for years. Then, when I was 19 we were talking about the cats, and the story came up. I realized suddenly and with a pang of sadness that Minnie wasn't really Edwin's kitten. Now, I'm sure if I had thought about the story even once after the age of 8 or 9 I'd have realized it was false, but I just hadn't, so the realization didn't come until adulthood!

 

[Itisnotlogical]

^^

That's sad (tragedy sad, not pitiable sad). I'm a kitten lover too.

I guess I always subliminally knew that the holiday spirits and suchlike were false, but I never really thought about them so the question of belief never really came up.