It turns out, how parents handle Santa is a rich area for honesty research. When Thalia Goldstein of George Mason University and Candice Mills of the University of Texas at Dallas asked parents to fill out December diaries and reflect on the conversations they had with their kids about Santa, they found that well over half of parents — 57 percent — said they felt some discomfort, negative feelings or tension, including the sense that they were outright lying. And 20 percent were specifically troubled by the conversations around the idea that being “naughty” meant disappointment on Christmas morning, whereas being “nice” meant lots of presents.

I distinctly remember feeling icky about that dynamic myself, and though I would laugh along with other parents when they talked about putting a piece of charcoal under the tree for a misbehaving child as a practical joke, it felt disingenuous. I’m glad to know now I wasn’t the only one feeling this way. I think if I had seen stats like these long ago, I would have taken a different approach.