Santa Claus

[Raven]

Let me guess. You never got that Red Rider BB Gun for Christmas as a kid and laid in wait one Christmas Eve to catch the fat fucker and make him pay. Only to discover your parents putting the presents under the tree.

Am I right, or amirite?

It seems like you're oddly passionate about this Santa thing.

My story is actually closely tied into how I eventually became an Atheist. I was raised in a Mormon family, but I was the first of my siblings to discover that Santa was not real. I was about seven years old at the time when I put the pieces together. This led to a series of questions that I asked my mom, "So is the Easter Bunny real? The Tooth Fairy?" and so on, until I asked, "Is Jesus real?" In a child's mind, finding out that the stories told to him/her are false, will also question other such "myths" as it would seem.

Even though she affirmed the Jesus myth, the damage was done, and I couldn't quite grasp how the story of Christ, as ridiculous as every facet of it seemed, could be more real than a fat guy dressed in red visiting every house in the world. How could the story of Noah's Ark be real, for that matter? How could a talking Snake be real??

I actually remained Mormon because, well, I was forced to be. I would be grounded if I didn't go to Church on Sunday, and my Bishops along the way definitely worked hard to keep me interested in the supposed story of the Book of Mormon. So much work was put to the task, that I even ended up serving a two-year mission to Poland when I was 19.

What I learned as a Missionary sealed the deal for me, and I left the church as soon as I was done with Poland. I couldn't live a lie any longer...in fact, I became very disenchanted with lies altogether.

So yes, it all begins with Santa

Well, I can see how that would happen. Makes sense to me. Someone else perhaps would not have had the same doubts when mom insisted that Jesus was real after negating all the other stories. But I am sure that you are not the only one who would have that reaction. Like I said, makes sense to me.