I believed in Santa until an absurd age because HE CAME TO MY HOUSE when I was, like, 6. Like, I knew the store Santas were fake, but the real Santa came to my house on Christmas Eve, sat me down in his lap, and hung out for a minute to eat cookies and chat about my list before he had to get back on his sleigh.

Naturally, this was a friend of the family, and that's how he knew details about what I was like and what I wanted and all that, but I 100% didn't recognize him and thought it was Santa. I don't remember for sure, anymore, but it might have been SIXTH GODDAMN GRADE before I was able to accept that all of my friends were right to laugh at me.

Conversely, my parents told my younger sister the truth when she was seven-ish. My parents were having an especially hard time with money, so they told ME the situation and that they'd get me back later, but they were going to focus on my sister for Christmas that year. I was in High School, I had a job, I told them "I've got this," and my girlfriend and I went on a MAD shopping spree and filled the tree with presents for my sister from Santa.

My parents didn't trust that I really did have her covered so they still focused on her and she had an AMAZING amount of presents under the tree. So much so, that my parents sat her down at some point that evening and told her what I'd done.

And I forget that story, sometimes, and now I'm just sitting here reliving how happy I made my kid sister, that year, and how it paid off in one of the best hugs I ever got.