The day my Christmas innocence died

So it's that time of year again...the time of year when my friends with children of a 'certain age' are facing that seasonal dilemma regarding when to tell the kids the "truth" about Father Christmas.  It's a difficult dilemma, and one I'm glad I'll never have to confront...although I put my foot in it earlier this week when I was talking to a friend and I said to her "When did you stop believing in Father Christmas?" with her seven year-old daughter in earshot.  I changed the subject swiftly and calmly (the advantage of being the type of person who indulges in regular 'foot in mouth' behaviour is that you get pretty good at recognising it quickly enough to minimise the potential fallout) and I think I got away with it!

I can remember the exact moment I knew myself that Father Christmas wasn't real.  I'd been debating it in my confused little head for a while anyway...so many things didn't add up, most notably the fact that we didn't have a chimney (when I asked my Dad he said Father Christmas came in through the front door, but then I imagined him having to carry enough keys to get into everyone's houses and that just didn't sound very...practical).

But the fateful moment came not from either of my parents, but on a festive day at infants' school, on which our teacher excitedly told our class that Father Christmas had torn his coat while at her house...and she'd brought the piece of coat he'd left behind into school with her for us all to see!  We all clamoured round excitedly as she produced...a piece of red crepe paper with bits of cotton wool glued to the bottom.  Now even at the age of six, it was hard to imagine exactly how a giant piece of crepe paper, a packet of cotton wool balls and a tube of Pritt Stick would provide adequate protection from all that snow in the North Pole...let alone the durability required to go up and down all those pesky chimneys (and what about the pockets for all those keys?)

"That looks like crepe paper with cotton wool on it!" I said loudly and precociously (I didn't have many friends, for some reason), and everybody went quiet.  I looked at my teacher for blessed reassurance that I was wrong, but the slightly panicked look on her face said it all, and I went home feeling supremely disappointed.  I knew Christmas was never going to be quite as good ever again.

(Though I still went along with all the 'Father Christmas' stuff at home because I was a lovely and bountiful older sister who didn't want to ruin all the magic for the little ones, and...well, you got more and better presents if you still believed in Father Christmas!  I wasn't that stupid).