I was in Kindergarten the first time someone tried to tell me that there was no Santa Clause. I remember sitting on the far corner of the alphabet carpet, minding my own business, when she approached. I don’t recall her name—she moved away shortly after—but I’ll always remember that scrunched up little face of hers as she Grinchily told me how she had seen her mother buy a gift that later turned up under the tree, tagged “from Santa.” Perhaps I was just an oblivious child, but looking back, that must have been one sharp four-year-old. While I remember her story, right down to the plastic pearl necklace that spilled the beans, I never did believe her. My desire to believe in a fat jolly man, with a sack full of presents, prevailed over this bitter little girl’s confession.

It’s hard to say when I officially stopped believing. There’s always that grey area when children are old enough to kind of figure it out, but feel guilty not to play along. You talk about it with your little cronies, weighing the odds of Santa’s existence, exchanging stories, trying to fill in the holes. But at what point does it become cruel to lead your kids on? At what point do the parents become the culprits in this Grinch scenario? I remember this one kid in my 5th grade class that still insisted there was a Santa. The rest of us all kind of looked at each other, grinning nervously. We were all pretty sensitive subject; and as malicious as kids can be, I don’t think anyone ever broke the news to him.

If you ask my mother, she’ll tell you I believed right up to fourteen. This is clearly a fabrication. I was maybe nine, at most. Every year in the middle of Christmas dinner, my mother whips out this little “fact.” And every year, I get a little older. Two years ago it went something like this: “Charlee believed in Santa until she was twelve!” Then she would sneer, not unlike the Grinch, and I would think back to that alphabet carpet, and wonder what ever happened to that girl and her plastic pearl necklace.