I’ll never forget the year I “ruined Christmas.” I was in fifth grade and already knew for quite some time the secret about Santa, but continued to pretend because I thought I would get more presents that way. My family and I were at my grandma’s house and I opened the Nickelodeon Moonshoes I’d been asking for. My mom told me I could not use them in the house, but I proceeded to put them on and ended up jumping on my grandma’s foot that had just been operated on. Three generations of tears were shed and my mom told me, “You know what Jessica, there’s no such thing as Santa Claus- it’s me and your dad!” I cried in reply, “Does that mean there’s no Easter Bunny either?” But thinking back on that time in my life when I was hearing things at school about Santa being a phony, but still wanted to believe, I wondered how hard it must be to keep the secret alive when kids have regular internet access. So I did a google search: “Is Santa real?” to see what they might find and came across this awesome interactive advent calendar. [Read more...]