The Man with the white beard – fact or fiction by Jo

[advert:mpu]The lunch ladies are concocting theories that this suspicious behaviour could be down to some very worrying underhand work. They are considering contacting MI5 with suspicions that someone in Year One may have secret information leading to the whereabouts of the missing child benefit disks (apparently it was innocently confused for the latest Ben 10 game). Or perhaps they have been putting their pocket money away and offering it via the headmistress to the Labour Party.
Finally one of Barney’s classmates cracked – someone had told her that their mum had said that someone had told her that Father Christmas did not exist.
What a moral conundrum for the parents  – Is five years old too young to be told the truth? Surely it comes down to your lying capacity. After many years in advertising I feel that I have totted up enough experience to tell a great out-and-out lie without being detected. However I’m sure my husband, a lawyer, would take a more round about route , adding in numerous caveats, ensuring that all angles are covered and that suing for perverting the course of justice was not a possibility. I suppose it’s much like another question, “So Mummy, just how did that baby get in your tummy?”  which I answered in a round about way, a little element of truth with a lot of embellishment, catchy theme tune and a great strap -line. My husband on the other hand (a deadly combination of scientist and lawyer) was at pains to explain things in as much detail and as many sub-sections appropriate for a five and three-year-old. I just hope that when they go on Mastermind their chosen specialist subject is not the human reproductive system, unless they are doing it for comic relief!
All that aside I’m pleased at least to be out of the furore as we are Jewish. We have enough questions about the existence of G-d to deal with, let alone having to deal with existence of the other man with the white beard.

I have told my children that FC does not exist for Jewish Children, but does for other children. It’s a fine line I’m treading. I just hope that the boys keep their mouths shut, or I’m sure that some classmate will retort with quotations from Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion.” Well that’s one way of putting those Father Christmas bashers back in their place.