In my house, Christmas Day looks very normal. My boys will wake me up at the crack of dawn then tumble downstairs, falling over each other, to find presents under the tree. As the tearing of wrapping paper cross-fades into screams of excitement, for a moment, everything feels exactly as it should. Except for one subtle difference: my children have never believed in Santa.
This isn’t the result of an “I don’t want to lie to my children” ideology or some Scroogist attempt to be different. It’s a deliberate choice I have made, one that is rooted in fear. Behind the fairy lights and goodwill of Christmas lurk financial demands that many families cannot meet. According to a YouGov poll for debt charity Step Change earlier this month, about one in three adults with children will struggle to afford Christmas this year. For many, the festive season brings anxiety, overdrafts and guilt rather than joy.
This is not an accidental or unfortunate side-effect of Christmas. It is what I call “the Santa debt trap”, whereby a cultural myth does not encourage generosity, it creates a moral economy in which parents feel judged by their ability to buy. Christmas becomes a test, and going into debt is how many people pass it.
Christmas is a weird time for me, as I grew up in children’s homes. It left a particular stain that no amount of therapy will erase. The feeling that I could lose everything at any minute has never quite left me. Security never feels entirely secure. It feels borrowed. Every year so far, despite being financially stable, I have lived with the quiet dread that this will be the year a crisis destroys everything.
I know where this fear comes from. Being a care leaver means living with the knowledge that if it all went wrong, there would be nowhere to go. No door to knock on, no kitchen floor to collapse on, no bed to sleep in. I have no place of last resort.
That fear sharpens the cruelty of the myth of Father Christmas. We all know the story: “He’s making a list, checking it twice; gonna find out who’s naughty or nice.” This isn’t harmless fun, this is moral messaging backed by money. It tells children that all they need do is be good and their every wish will be granted regardless of the cost, and it puts immense pressure on parents who feel that a failure to deliver will shatter their children’s self-esteem.
I decided early on that my children wouldn’t believe in St Nick because I didn’t want to hurt them. If money runs out, if a crisis hits, if Christmas isn’t affordable one year, what exactly am I supposed to say? Santa judged them naughty because of my lack of disposable income? No matter what explanation I give, that is what they’re going to believe. So I don’t blame the families who go into debt to avoid it.
So far, I’ve been lucky. I’ve made Christmas work. People tell me I shouldn’t let my insecurities shape my children’s lives. Maybe they’re right. What they’re really saying is that I should quietly participate so my children don’t ruin their children’s magic. But I’ve seen the devastation this kind of debt does to families. There is nothing magical about that.
Don’t get me wrong, Father Christmas still exists in my children’s minds because he’s unavoidable. He’s in school, in shop windows and on the lips of every adult they come across at this time of year. But we are truthful about who he is: he is part of a story people act out, no different from Halloween or fairytales. My children still feel the excitement. They get presents, but not too many. And crucially they know the truth: that their gifts come from their family, not a mythical old guy in a red coat with unlimited resources.
I work in recording studios, which means I’m sometimes away for long stretches. My children don’t fully understand why. But they need to know that my absence has value, that my labour matters and that sacrifice has meaning. If I hand the credit for that work to a fictional man with a white beard, what lesson does that teach? Not wonder, but entitlement. Not gratitude, but detachment from reality.
Christmas doesn’t need Santa to be joyful. What it needs is honesty. If a myth requires families to bankrupt themselves to sustain it, then it isn’t magic. It’s exploitation wrapped up as tradition. At a time when millions are struggling to survive, perhaps the most radical thing we could do this Christmas would be to stop pretending that poverty is a personal failing – and stop teaching our children that money falls down the chimney.