26thmas

The day after Christmas was always a lot of fun for us when we were kids.  The excitement had worn off from the day before and we had settled back in and slept of the sugar rush that the food in our stockings had produced.  We were back at home and free to roam around the neighborhood with the 7 other boys our age that lived there.

I call it 26thmas (which is the Christmas Hobbit equivalent of Second Breakfast or Elevensies) because on December 26th we went to all of our neighbors houses and saw what they got for Christmas and played with their toys since we were already bored of ours.  The best 26thmas was when our neighbors got a backyard trampoline and we jumped for hours, it was magical.

The biggest thing that the 26thmas Holiday brought to us was the confirmation that (Santa Spoiler ahead) Santa did not in fact exist and our Moms were in fact the fat bearded man who delivered presents on the night before.  We figured it out by simply getting the cards that Santa had left for us and comparing hand-writing.

Our first thought was to protect Santa saying things like, "He must carry different pens and disguise his hand-writing," or, "He must have his elves prewrite all of the cards and deliver them with our awesome presents."  We may have said this mostly out of terror that if we stopped believing Santa would forever black ball us to the naughty list but the hammer came down when we compared our mom's hand-writing to Santa's and it was an exact match.  We could have continued to fight it, but alas we gave in and Santa was no longer something to believe in.

When did you stop believing in Santa Claus?  Was it devastating or did you already have a hunch?  or tell me about your 26thmas.