I'm curious what people think is damaging about the Santa myth. Is it just the racial angle or something more? Our mall had a black santa last year....our 5 year old didn't notice or care. I don't know....I feel like we sometimes try to do too much about race with kids under 5. Obviously we talk about race with our 10 year old....but our 5 year old is pretty much oblivious about race. We wait until the child actually starts asking about it before we talk to them. I have a friend who is SO pro-active about race with his 3 year old and my SO and I kinda roll our eyes. I think it's silly of him to think that he's actually getting anything accomplished. And it really seems like a virtue-signalling thing....like he's doing it because it makes him LOOK like a good parent. He always kind of brags about it too....making sure everyone knows that he teaches his three year old to be woke. Toddlers simply don't care and we've agreed that we think my friend might be doing a disservice to his kid. It's just useless to try to 'build awareness' at that age. You're just gonna confuse them or worse, scare them. It's like teaching a toddler about the possibility of nuclear war. What benefit comes from that? They will learn about it when they need to....in the meantime...let them enjoy their innocence.

We don't really play up the Santa thing. The gifts just have names on them without a 'from'. But if our youngest mentions Santa then we just play along and kinda follow his lead. We don't present the myth to him or teach him who santa is....we just kinda go along with whatever he says or whatever impression he gets from the cartoons or his school friends. 'Did these presents come from Santa?'...yah sure they did. "Did he use magic?'....yah, I think he DID use magic.