Reply #3: My wife and I are perplexed about how to handle "Santa" with our 2 year old.

[cleanhippie]

We plan to let "Santa" visit and bring a few small gifts, but we will not lie to her and TELL her that Santa is real. When she does start to ask, we plan to ask her questions like "What do you think?" and "Does that make sense to you?", etc. We probably won't have to deal with that until next year, but in the meantime, we plan to refer to the Santa in the mall as "Mall Santa", the Salvation Army Santa in front of the grocery as "Salvation Army Santa", etc. Hopefully she will quickly grasp the concept and "get it" sooner than later.

Its gonna be tough, but we will never lie to her and tell her Santa is "real" or threaten her with "you better be good or Santa won't bring you presents!" Honesty is the best policy, IMO.