Lies, Damned Lies

Me, parenting.

Shit on a stick, have you any idea how many lies I and Conjugal Kraken have told Kraken Junior this Crimbo? Seriously, if you put them in a pile they'd stand high enough to poke the flying reindeer in the frozen smalls. We have told porkies like they'd be our last ever taste of bacon and we've done it with the selfish desperation of any poor fucker corralling a three year old just as Santa raids Argos.
Thing is, most of the time we are straight with the infant beast. She wants to know why the moon shines, I blather on about bouncing sunshine and orbital patterns. She asks why grass is green, I bore her to tears about chlorophyll. Seriously, she asked me about periods last week (that's what happens when you never get to go to the bloody toilet on your own, pardon the pun) and I found myself describing menstrual patterns as if they were created by Michael Rosen. 
So what the fuck happened when Christmas came? Suddenly we're telling her that Santa's watching every move, like a peeping tom. As the kraken cave lacks a chimney we start carving stories about how he's going to sneak through the front door like a bauble-strewn Crimewatch re-enactment. Fuck knows what happened in the minutes before KJ went to bed on Crimbo Eve but I found myself telling her that she had to clean her teeth properly so that Santa could find her stocking by the glow of her fangs alone.
And now that it's all over I wonder what the fuck we've done. if she found out now that there's no such thing a Santa (sorry to spoil the surprise, kraken-fumblers) we'd never be safe in our beds again. She'd be distraught and we'd be in freshly dug graves by the morning. 
So we'll tone it down a bit next year. Perhaps drop the stories about rain being reindeer wee. Or forget to tell her that Santa'll commit suicide if we don't leave him a minced pie and a bottle of stout.
Then again, come next year when she's giving us her fifteenth rendition of Jingle Bells in the same one hour period for the tenth day in a row, I'll tell her any-fucking-thing I have to just to get her to shut the bugger up. So on second thoughts, perhaps this year we didn't tell her enough lies. At least I've got another 360-odd to think up a few more. Suggestions on a postcard please.