My parents told me that Santa was a fun pretend guy based on a real guy who lived a long time ago and gave presents to people. So it was OK to sing silly songs and pretend, but none of it was real. But they also made it clear that some families like to pretend harder than we do and it was NOT OK to tell the kids at school that Santa wasn't real. I think that's the best way to handle it--I still enjoyed Christmas as much as any kid, but I didn't have that moment of realizing that my parents had been lying to me. And the way they framed it didn't really make me see other parents as lying to their kids either, just that they were playing a game of pretend together in a different way than my family did.