He sees you when you're sleeping...

So I thought of another reason not to do Santa.

We tell kids that Santa's watching them and that they'd better be good or they'll get a lump of coal in their stockings. Okay, well, I don't tell my kids this. I just sneer and shrug my shoulders when they ask me about Santa. But that's the idea, right, that Santa's watching and keeps tabs on who's naughty and nice.

But how often do you suppose parents actually withhold the Santa present from their kids, no matter the behavior? I can tell you I'd have a hard time doing it. The whole reason I started thinking about this is that Olivier has been full of attitude and grumpiness lately, and I thought he probably deserves a lump of coal, but there's already a big fat present hiding in the basement for him to share with his baby brother, and he's getting it, crappy attitude or not.

What does this teach kids? We tell them there will be consequences if they're not good, and then those consequences never come. They act like little punks and still wake up on Christmas morning to gifts under the tree and overflowing stockings, which really just tells them that no one really cares about their behavior and that they can do what they want and still get what they want.

If you don't have kids, it's easy to say, "No, my kids won't get presents from Santa if they're bad." You can do the whole elf on the shelf thing and threaten threaten threaten. But following through is another matter. It is not easy at all. Little kids have a hard time understanding consequences like that, the kind that aren't immediate. So it's really hard to reinforce the things we try to teach them. But telling them to be good or else without following through seems to me like it might do more harm than anything.

Yet another reason this whole Santa thing is a bad idea.