To lie or not to lie is an age-old question many parents ask themselves around this time of year. Children older than 2 or 3 start to wonder about Santa, and although they might still believe, their innocent questions put "honesty is the best policy" parents in a thither.

I'm thither-ing over this one right now. I love the spirit of Christmas, as well as all of its blinking, twinkling, bling-blinging trappings. One of the reasons I wanted to raise children was to celebrate the holidays with them, and to relive the Santa years.

I believed in Santa, really believed, until I was at least 7. But my boys, who are 5 and 4, are already starting to get skeptical. Mostly because they are seeing all different Santas around town: an African-American Santa at UW-Milwaukee's holiday party, a short-bearded one on television, etc.

So when Levi asks, "which Santa is the real Santa?" I find myself wanting to straight-up lie like Pinocchio, and tell him that the real Santa is busy cobbling trains and tops and iPods in the icy North Pole and these other yahoos are elves or helpers or temp employees.

I know I don't have to answer the question directly and could talk about it abstractly, saying stuff like "Santa's in our heart" or that he's a state of mind whatever, but I feel like anything less than a firm message of "Santa is real" will quicken the inevitable erosion of his precious belief system. And, I don't know about Levi, but I admit that I'm not ready to let go of this quite yet. So, I fib.