Mom, dad, do Santa Claus and the Three Wise Men exist?

The Spanish novelist Carmen Riera wrote that thinking that the Kings existed was much more important in her childhood than the toys that could be brought to her.

“The first big disappointment of my life was to stop believing in them,” she said.

From the age of five or six, many families are faced with a question that shakes the foundations of the kingdom of Fantasia [

1979]: Do Santa Claus and the Magi exist?

Some come to it through its own course, as a revelation.

Others, through a friend or friend who has previously been through reality.

And there is no simple answer because, like an onion, what is answered will reveal a multitude of layers: personal experiences, beliefs, values, culture, or even one's own relationship with imagination or magic.

Lorena Bajatierra has two six-year-old daughters, Lola and Cande.

In her house they neither confirm nor deny that Santa Claus or the Three Wise Men leave their gifts under the tree.

“There are gifts that suddenly appear under the tree, but it doesn't come out of our mouths that they are from Santa Claus or the Three Wise Men.

It was something very talked about between us.

It wasn't easy for me to lie to them and we decided to respect that they believe in these characters and we didn't question it.

We even go to the parade, but we don't make statements like: 'What a cool gift Santa Claus brought you' or 'the camels of the Kings must have come'.

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A teacher tells the truth about Santa Claus to six-year-olds and loses her job

According to Beatriz Cazurro, psychologist and author of

there are many families who are reflecting on the traditions they lived and wonder if what is called magic could be received as a lie by their children: “The Families that decide not to continue with magic or that worry about the future reaction of their children are affected not only by their personal experience of discovering reality, but also by the general relationship of trust they had with their parents.

And she adds: "When we have not felt transparency in our childhood, or we have experienced confusion, we may give a greater importance to the fact of not saying anything that could resemble a lie."

Julie Boudet, mother of Rachel and María, three and six years old, decided with her partner not to keep the tradition of Santa Claus or the Three Wise Men at home.

She says that this has brought them some conflict at school, when her eldest daughter expressed in conversations with friends that Santa Claus does not exist: "My daughter has even come to confuse whether he really existed or not, it has generated a little of confusion.

I understand that there are families that she can upset, but those who keep the tradition must know that there will come a time when their children will find out and they must be prepared for it ”.

The perinatal psychologist Irene de la Cruz explains that with regard to evolutionary development, children up to the age of seven are in the stage that Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, defined as preoperational —they begin to develop the ability to think about absent objects, events, or people.

Until that age, magical thinking is more prevalent, they have a more egocentric and fantastic vision of the world.

Later, it is normal that they ask themselves these questions and that they need to explain reality in another way.

“There is no single way to understand it or to do it: there are children who discover it and feel disappointed, and there are those who don't, who discover it along the way and accept it as normal”, she explains.

Along the same lines, Cazurro recalls:

Magic and rites of passage in childhood

In the house of Pilar Cámara, mother of six-year-old Luna, the magic of the Three Wise Men is an institution.

In this, she believes that her own childhood has a lot to do with it, but also the way of understanding her love: “The happiest memories of my childhood are linked to the mornings of January 6.

Those that have already come from my father, the sofa full of gifts and the house smelling of the roscón that my parents finished making at dawn.

I want Luna to have happy memories, that she knows that magic exists, because that magic is nothing more than love and the desire to make others happy.

For Daniel Pérez del Pozo, father of Luz and Sara, three and six years old, Christmas is also synonymous with magic, from which they have also made their philosophy of family life.

“At home we believe in everything: in the Kings, in Santa Claus, in magic, in the Trasgu and in strength.

I like to make a more magical world for my daughters than it really is."

Elisa Martín Ortega writes in

that for the boy and the girl reality is that raw material that they transform into a toy.

They admire the world and interpret it from there: as a game in which fantasy is as real as reality itself.

This is exactly the claim of the poet and storyteller Mar Benegas, who has insisted on the importance of rites of passage in childhood.

In a recent talk, she alluded to how the excesses of plans and responsibilities in children's agendas, and the dangerous and easy access to information or adult things, reduce her ability to do children's things.

“The loss of innocence has to happen at a certain moment, when the necessary resources are already available, but part of this path is being lost and there are boys and girls who live a miniature adult life very prematurely.

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For Benegas, childhood experiences an excess of reality and there are fewer and fewer spaces in which to be with their peers and develop symbolic play, imagined worlds.

“There is an excess of literalness and screens.

This excess of reality has some very clear characteristics: creativity fails, diminishes the subjective and symbolic capacity and installs childhood in the territory of nothingness.

We should be concerned about this excess of reality because magical characters, such as Santa Claus or the Three Wise Men, are those turning points, those necessary bricks in the process of growing up”, he maintains.

How to face the question that advances nothing?

According to Benegas, when reality and logical thinking prevail, if you have the necessary resources and an honest and trusting relationship with the family, it is normal to experience it as a rite of passage and not as something traumatic: "If we talk to them of characters or we tell them stories, we are offering them a symbolic space that at a given moment will be occupied by logical thinking as a consequence of its own development.

I think honesty is the only way when this time comes.

If the boy or girl has a well-constructed symbolic world, they will know that what we tell them has to do with the same illusion that they find in stories and they will continue to enjoy these moments, even if it is in another way.

Like Bastian, we can continue to be part of history and who knows if we will save Fantasia.

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