It kills me that my daughter is such a smarty pants.

I’ve spent years using my best undercover secrets to keep the idea of Santa Claus sacred for my girls. I see the end of a belief in Santa as a sort of coming of age or loss of innocence. Over the years I’ve bought special wrapping paper, which I keep in a secured location, that only Santa would use. I’d stash gifts at other’s homes. I’d go to great lengths to elongate their childhood holiday fantasies.

But the day came, and it does for all parents, when one smarty pants asks one detailed question too many, and you can see in their eyes that they’re ready for the truth. My day came a few weeks ago when my oldest began asking questions that if answered would require responses that ranked high on the scale of gigantic whoppers vs. white lies.

It’s one thing to perpetuate the worldwide folklore that all parents, in all countries, pass down to their progenitors, but quite another to elaborate in great detail about the inner workings of the North Pole and Santa. Besides, she’s my overly logical child who can see through semi-complex plot twists in PG movies. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep up my game face so I asked her, “What do you think?”

To my deep disappointment she replied in a matter-of-fact jeopardy-like tone, “I think it’s you and Dad.” Ouch. Well there it was – the cat. It wasn’t just out of the bag it was snuggled up on the fireplace hearth after running around the room for a bit and dining on a five-course meal. I flatly said, “Yep,” and then threatened her with life if she told her younger sisters. As I looked at her ear-to-ear grin I realized she’d known the cold, hard facts about Santa for longer than I’d previously acknowledged and she was finally free to give up the act she’d been putting on for our sake.

I asked her if the kids at school spoiled the idea of Santa for her. “No,” she said. “It’s just pretty easy to figure out it’s you and Dad. I mean it’s pretty obvious.” Well, excuse me, Ms-I-Know-Everything-About- Life, I thought to myself. What other wonders were in the fantastic brain of hers? Then I decided that’s a can of worms I wasn’t ready for and put that can on the shelf in the back of the pantry for another day.

I appointed her my special elf and to my great surprise my disappointment quickly faded into enthusiasm and relief. I finally had a helper. I had an accomplice to my crimes of Christmas. My husband bless his heart is NOT a good Santa. He doesn’t shop, he isn’t jolly and fat, and he doesn’t even like cookies. (Gasp! Who doesn’t like cookies?) The other day I compared him to the grumpy elf from the Santa Clause triology who is lazy and just drinks hot cocoa. He really didn’t have much of a defense and owned up to the bad rap I was dishing out. He’s an excellent father but NOT a great Christmas elf. If it was up to him he’d follow my brother’s theory of gift wrap and cards which is that both of those are optional. (Naked presents! That’s blasphemous.)

So, it wasn’t long before my middle daughter started snooping around and found my super secret stash of gifts. (She’s my street smart child who has Go-Go-Gadget Gift Radar.) Since she’s only a year younger and because I don’t trust the two older girls not to talk I convinced my husband that we should break the news to her as well. She’d already seen the “Santa” gifts and I could just imagine her on Christmas morning in front of her younger sister saying something like, “These can’t be from Santa. I saw them in your room on the 12th of December at 3 p.m. when I said I was doing my homework at your desk.”

When the truth was told she looked puzzled, not relieved. She continued to ask me question after question about Santa, such as his whereabouts on Dec. 24,, 2008, and my associations with him. I felt like I was taking a polygraph under police interrogation as I continued to answer her in my broken record reply of, “He’s not real. I’m Santa.” I thought with time and perspective it would all add up and she’d draw the lines to connect the dots, but in her non-linear way of thinking she connected her dot-to-dot pattern which spelled out the word, “Believe.”

She not only didn’t believe me she continued to embellish in her beliefs about Santa. (I’m not sure what a therapist would say about my relationship with her. I’m sure in some psychology book this means I’m not grounding her to reality or that she doesn’t have faith in me.) As we looked for Santa in the skyline on Christmas Eve this year, she was every bit as enthusiastic and whimsical about the white bearded figment of our imaginations as she’s ever been. I guess passion wins over logic in her heart.

I always thought my brother was cruel for sharing “the truth” with me before I thought I was ready to hear it, but apparently we accept truth once we’re ready to let it penetrate us. Innocence isn’t really lost when we find truth, it’s just revealing something that was always there but we just weren’t ready to see.

Question: How old were you when you discovered the truth about Santa? How did you find out?