The Santa Question: What should you tell your kids?

It's a question that some parents struggle with as we move through the season of Santa: Will their children harbor some kind of resentment or develop trust issues after learning the truth about Santa Claus?

Plenty of parents out there might scoff at the idea that they are altering their kids lives in some negative way when they promote Santa at Christmas. But a simple Google search reveals that it's on the minds of many parents, who really ponder this question and, in some cases, ultimately decide to tell their children that the story of Santa is just that - a story.

Either strategy is fine, said Bruce Henderson, a professor of psychology at Western Carolina University. But, Henderson said, parents really don't need to fret about whether they'll somehow turn their kids into resentful adults simply because they once believed in Santa.

"About 70 percent of them had pretty vivid memories and a lot of them had very vivid memories and a lot of affect attached to it," he said. "Do they hold a grudge when they found out? What we found out is that the vast majority of them do not."

Henderson has spent more of his professional career on the Santa question than he ever would have guessed when he first entered academia. Henderson's name turns up in countless articles on the topic. It all started years ago when Western Carolina's public relations department asked him to tackle the topic and offer some thoughts on how parents should respond.

"I'm a child psychologist. I gave them general principles that applied to this that parents should be concerned about and things that they definitely shouldn't be concerned about," he said.

His advice appeared in print all over the country, filling newspaper columns and shopper's magazines. From his Western Carolina office in Cullowhee, N.C., he fielded calls from New York to California on the topic. .

A few years later, Western Carolina's PR department asked him to do it again. But, now it was the "world of the internet," as Henderson said, and the thing went viral. Henderson was featured in a New York Times article about Santa in 2009.

"That has a domino effect," he said. "I did those things for years, and I was always feeling guilt because it wasn't data oriented. But this isn't something that's easy to do research on. You don't want to mess with parents and Santa Claus. You don't want to give anything away."

In other words, it would be tricky to launch a research project asking kids, who believe in Santa, some pretty pointed questions about the guy, his reindeer and all of those presents.

But Henderson came up with an alternative. He'd interview college students instead. Henderson's work focused on their "autobiographical memories," the memories that make up different experiences and periods of our lives.

"Kids who live in families where they do things like talk around the dinner table and talk about past experiences and have traditions - those kids tend to have better autobiographical memories and more vivid autobiographical memories. And one of the things kids talk about are holiday issues," he said. "We were interested in what kids remember and what their affect was like."

Henderson's study gathered the memories of 85 college students, which were then sorted for detail, affect and how they learned the truth. They answered questions about childhood memories of Santa, including whether they saw Santa at a department stores and how they got ready for the holiday. They also were asked who told them about Santa, at what age and how they felt about it.

The study found that about 45 of the college students had "fairly clear" memories about hearing the truth about Santa. For 14, it was "like yesterday," while 21 had a "fuzzy, vague" memory and 19 had a "very faint" memory. Kids knew the real deal between the ages of 7 and 8 - 7.9 years to be exact. And, the longer a child believed, the more likely they were to have happy memories about it.

"The later the child remembered finding out the truth, the more positive their memories were," Henderson said. "They looked back at it as a fun thing."

The study also rated the college students' answers to open-ended questions about their feelings on the topic. Of the 85 memories, 40 were coded as neutral, 39 were positive and just six were rated as negative. One student did call it a "slap in the face."

But, for the majority, there was no harm done: "It appears that when they grow up, most individuals will harbor positive memories of Santa Claus," the study says. "Many will remember details and few will hold a grudge against their parents or Santa Claus."

Why does Henderson think this is so?

"We tell kids all kinds of fiction, all kinds of stories and they love it," he said. "Kids love that stuff. I think that's why so many of the college students looked back at it as a positive thing - because it tended to be surrounded by an atmosphere of fun and generally loving and giving and all of those good things."

Henderson added: "Some parents need to relax a little bit more. Kids are much more resilient than people think they are."

So what should parents do? Henderson said that's up to them.

"When kids straight out ask you, you ought not to lie to them," he said, though he said "dancing around" the topic isn't going to hurt anybody. (Full disclosure: When one of my children asked me about Santa, I literally just pointed out the presents that were under the tree and her face lit up and she moved on. "I think that's dancing," Henderson said.)

"It's fine if you play it cool," Henderson said. "I would give this advice to almost everything about children: Read the child. Take your cues from the child. If the child is looking like they are giving up on Santa, that's fine. If the child wants to keep the thing going, read the child."

Parents often get themselves in trouble when they, themselves, aren't ready to let go of Santa.

"As kids get older, you have to be sensitive about what's happening with their peers," he said. "I would be worried about parents who are so dedicated to this part of their children's childhood that they get in trouble with their peers. They didn't want to lose this part of childhood so they stretch it out way too long. I don't think that's a good idea. If you're in the fourth grade and you're still telling kids that you believe in Santa Claus, that's not good for peer relationships."

Another thing that bothers Henderson: Those countless photos that are plastered across social media of young children on Santa's lap, sobbing and terrified by St. Nick.

"If you are reading the child, you don't say, 'we have to have a picture with Santa,'" he said. "You say, 'this kid doesn't want to have a picture with Santa' and walk away."

These days, after years of being a go-to expert on Santa, Henderson, a father of three and now a grandparent, is in an interesting position. His son and daughter-in-law don't want Santa in the picture for their own children.

"That has created problems for us as grandparents because we feel like we're walking on ice," he said. But, he added, "I think that their point of view is perfectly legitimate and it is our responsibility to honor that. I think that's perfectly OK to think that way. And I'm not going to suggest there is anything wrong with that."

Bottom line, parents: The kids will be all right.