How St. Nick and his posse made me an irredeemable fibber

Last week I mentioned the fact that we need to deal with the whole Santa Claus/Easter Bunny/Tooth Fairy issue and the way in which it turns parents into rotten stinking liars.

Right? I mean, no matter whether you're someone who celebrates Christmas, Easter and edentulism, the fact is that if you encourage a belief in these beloved characters among your children, you're deceiving them.

And please understand, I don't see anything wrong with it. I've done it myself with my own kids. I grew up enjoying presents from Santa, candy from the Bunny, and cash dough from the Fairy.

It's just, you know, you tell your kids not to lie and then you...lie.

Well, you don't "lie" really, in the sense of a malicious attempt to distort the truth. But I don't think "deceive" is too strong a word to use here.

Though it still has a pretty negative connotation. Can we say you "deceive with positive intent?"

Sure. But you still deceive.

As much as I love Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, the only way they work is if you distract your child from what is a pretty obvious reality. For their own good, I agree, but there's still a little sleight of hand at work here.

In a nutshell, here are the main factors in deciding whether to do S.E.B.T.F. (Santa-Easter Bunny-Tooth Fairy) with your offspring:

PROS

• It's fun! I love the looks on the kids' faces when they come down on Christmas or Easter morning, or when they proudly show off the quarters the Tooth Fairy brought them (and their newly formed gap-tooth smile).
• You did it yourself when you were a kid, and you want your own children to have that same joy.
• All the other parents pretty much do it and, let's be honest here, who wants to be the freak who doesn't? (The answer, by the way, is "plenty of people." I know several of them.)

CONS

• Did we mention you're a rotten stinking liar?
• It's also expensive. Seriously, there's money to be shelled out in every instance.
• L-I-A-R!

I honestly can't say I'm in any way morally conflicted by this. I just think it's funny how we all collectively have decided that this particular lie is OK.

I always enjoy when the kids get older and you can see they just can't bring themselves to believe in S.E.B.T.F. anymore (and of course once you figure out that one is fake, the other two dominoes fall pretty quickly). In many cases, though, they don't tell you they've caught on because they're afraid the present/money train will pull away, never to be seen again.

Which is really only true of the Tooth Fairy, I guess. Once they know what's going on there, we stop giving our kids money for lost teeth. But even if you get past Santa and the Easter Bunny, you still get presents on Christmas and chocolate on Easter.

At least that's what I've always promised my kids I would do. I hope they still believe me after I've lied to them for so many years.

The Tooth Fairy must have won the lottery

According to a study that was (for reasons that elude me) conducted by the people at Visa, the Tooth Fairy is becoming increasingly generous.

Kids nowadays are apparently getting an average of $3.70 per tooth lost, the study says. And that's just the average. The suggestion is that some kids are getting way more than that, which is mind blowing to me.

My kids have always gotten a quarter per year of age. So if they lost a tooth at 5 years old, they would get five quarters, which for the math-impaired is $1.25.

In order for my children to reap even the average award in the Visa study, they would have to be losing teeth well into their teens. And, as my dad no doubt would have said, they actually may start losing those teeth as teenagers if they complain about the amount of cash they used to get from the Tooth Fairy and I have to smack them in the mouth.

Before we get into this issue of how much Ms. Fairy gives out, let's return briefly to the question of Visa conducting this study. Why do it exactly, unless it's just simply an interesting little bid for positive PR and press exposure? Is there anything in this for Visa? Are they envisioning a time when 6-year-olds have Tooth Fairy debit cards you can simply reload every time an incisor falls out?

(Actually, I sort of like the idea of little kids having one of those old-time credit card swiping machines under their pillows. A tooth falls out, you give 'em your Visa card, they write you out an invoice for 5 bucks and swipe it, and everyone's happy.)

Anyway, back to this business of giving out nearly 4 bucks a tooth. I can see this maybe for the first tooth they lose. That's kind of a momentous occasion and all, and it's a fun way to celebrate the milestone.

But after that, I'm sorry, the negotiated rate has to go down.

Plus, as I said, Terry and I like to do this in quarters. And the more quarters you're putting under their pillows when they're asleep, the harder it is to get in and out of their rooms quietly without waking the little cash hounds.

This has always been my job, by the way. For whatever reason, it usually falls to me to wait until after the kid is asleep to creep quietly up the stairs, open the door as silently as possible, tiptoe to the head of their bed, and try to slip the change under their pillow without the coins clinking together.

Through nearly two decades of parenthood and five kids, I've never had anyone wake up on me, but I've come close. Lots of near-misses.

Of course, we've also completely forgotten about it a couple of times. The kids loses the tooth at school, brings it home, we all look at it and admire the newly created gap is his/her mouth, and then we forget about it.

The last time this happened with Jack, Terry and I panicked when he came downstairs in the morning with a sad look on his face and informed us that the Tooth Fairy had apparently neglected him on her nightly rounds.

So I quickly rounded up the requisite number of quarters, told Jack that maybe he just didn't look hard enough, and went upstairs with him to check again.

I made a point of going first, hurrying into his room and shoving the change under his pillow before he could see me. By the time he got to his top bunk bed and lifted up the pillow, the quarters were there waiting. His face lit up. Crisis averted.

This is of course why, biologically speaking, God sets it up so that it's generally younger people who parent young kids. We middle-aged folks forget stuff like this and traumatize our children, so God makes them grow up before we get old and senile (most of the time).

At some point we here at Blog Central need to deal with this whole question of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, etc. and how we, willingly and collectively, lie to our children about a range of things in the name of holiday fun.

But for now I'm sticking to my guns...I'm not shelling out 5 bucks for a rotting old baby tooth.