BY CHARLIE JORDAN
By this time in their lives most high schoolers have found out the devastating news that the big burly man in a red suit with a white beard doesn’t actually exist; and if you have not found this news out I am sorry for ruining your childhood.
Whether it be hearing it from your best friend or staying up late with one eye open to see if Santa was real, everyone finds out the disappointing truth differently. The Warpath thought it would be interesting to find out the interesting stories from a variety of MHS students.
Junior Adam Jacobs remembers sitting in Mr. Zaya’s class in 5th grade with his classmates before holiday break and finding out the truth.
“My teacher was mad at us during the Christmas time and we asked him about Santa and he told us that he wasn’t real,” he said.
“I felt betrayed,” Jacobs says and explains that he was scared that Santa not being real meant that there would be no more presents so he continued to act like he did not know so he still received presents.
For senior Ellen Sayre she found out the upsetting reality way back in the 3rd grade.
“My family was going on vacation for Christmas so ‘Santa came early,’ is what my mom said, to bring us our new bikes, and I was really excited. So I went and woke up my brothers who were mad that I woke them up, and they told me that he wasn’t real,” she says.
She however doesn’t remember how she reacted to it but does remember her brothers feeling bad for breaking the news to their little sister.
The way sophomore Chloe Reavill found out was a little different than the norm.
The real way that she found out that the “Christmas magic” was just that (“magic”) was while hanging out with her friends when she was eleven, and the Elf on the Shelf came up in the conversation. The idea is if you touch the elf the magic is gone and he won’t change positions the next day. Being curious eleven year olds they touched the elf to see what would happen. The next day she woke up to find the elf moved. It was then that she became suspicious about the magic of Christmas.
“My parents didn’t straight up tell me they were Santa, but they tried to change their handwriting when writing “from Santa” and such. When I turned twelve I realized that it was my mom’s handwriting, but I wasn’t upset,” Reavill says.
Some of the more different stories were the stories of seniors Kenny Bottom and Lauren Robinson; their parents linked the birds-and-bees talk with Santa.
“My mom sat me down after I had already known and told me about both Santa and where babies came from,” said Robinson.
Bottom’s reaction was different from the norm, “I was very upset at first, but then I thought it was pretty neat how everyone was able to hide it from me.”
Senior Nina Morgan attended a Christian horse camp with her cousin over the summer going into 5th grade where one of their counselors explained to their cabin that no one could live forever. Her cousin raised her hand and told the counselor that she was wrong: Santa lived forever. “Our counselor then straight up told our entire cabin that Santa wasn’t real. The whole cabin was really silent and I think my cousin might have cried,” said Morgan.
She was not worried about finding out since she had younger siblings she still knew that the gifts from “Santa” would continue to show up under the tree.
Senior Madeline Falknor found out the news on a birthday trip that was supposed to be all fun. She explained that her parents took her on a special birthday vacation to New York when she turned ten.
“I remember it vividly; I was sitting on my hotel room bed when my mom told me, and afterwards I was very upset,” she said.
