I was the Editor-in-Chief of my high school yearbook. I know, über-nerdy right? I wasn't very good at it to be honest. The yearbook was a finalist for a prestigous national award, so it was designed well and the final product was nice (and late), but my overall ability to lead the staff was an utter failure. I made many, many mistakes.

But one thing we were good at: debating. Didn't matter the topic. I had a staff full of women - including one exgirlfriend and a few other very close friends of another exgirlfriend - and one very quiet man. Needless to say, many times it was me versus them all (with the man abstaining).

As Christmas approached, one day the topic of Santa Claus came up. I made the statement that I was not going to tell my kids there was a Santa Claus.

Ohhh....my....gosh! You would have thought I said I will let my kids spend the night with Michael Jackson and Christopher Walken.

I got accused of not fostering a creative environment for my kids.

I got accused of ruining Christmas for all my friends kids.

I got accused of not letting my kids enjoy being kids.

I know how the pictured Santa felt a bit.

But no, just a simple desire not to ever set a precedent of lying to my kids was my motive.

Now I will freely admit that this was right at the height of my extreme "conservative" stage - one many of my current friends won't believe I ever went through. But even with the loosening of my perspective on many things, I still feel I won't tell them there is a Santa.

I think there is already so much pressure from culture to redefine what Christmas is all about. It becomes about the presents, or about family, or about giving, or about joyfulness. And while none of those are per se bad, it isn't really what the season is about at its core.

But it goes beyond this. I know one of my greatest strengths, but also greatest weakness, is that I try to live be a mantra of honesty above all. And while that sometimes means I am not as compassionate and caring as I should be, I do believe that you can rarely go wrong with telling the truth.

I think this becomes all the more important with children. There is already such an innate skepticism with kids as they grow up towards their parents. Why feed into that? Not just with Santa, but in all areas of life.

Apparently I am not the only one. Carl Honoré wrote an article titled "Well, Virginia, It's a Longer Story..." about the "Great-Santa Debate" in a recent article in the Washington Post. But then of course, you have all those wonderful Macy's commercials with the comforting confirmation of Santa's existence from the likes of Martha Stewart and Donald Trump.

So what do you think? How were you raised? How are you raising (or planning on raising) your kids?