Look - I did this too, I breached trust. But think about it - you set him up for a fall. You lied, then he spotted it and you told him the truth. This is a l

Look - I did this too, I breached trust. But think about it - you set him up for a fall. You lied, then he spotted it and you told him the truth. This is a loss of trust - the child now knows that his parents lie to him. (Great that you admit it, after, of course.) Perhaps the lying is to some extent useful - such is the nature of this world and all that - but that whole charade could have been avoided without any deceit in the first place. But I really don't see how you can argue that its ok to lie 'in the right way' to naive, trusting children, for the sake of some cultural convention. And I'm not even broaching the pros (?) and cons of the cultural convention.... I'm sure no one wants to hear my thoughts on the 'most wonderful time of the year', lol.