Santa and God; Why parents should stop lying to their kids about Santa if they want them to have the capacity for Faith

I distinctly remember a time as a kid when I thought to myself that I was waiting for my parents, or other adults, or my friends to tell me that, like Santa, God wasn't real. And looking back on this view it certainly makes a lot of sense.
When you are little you are bombarded with stories, pictures, and television shows about stuff that isn't real...Fairy Tales anyone? It's a whole genre whose alternate title is "Lies to tell Small Children." As we grow up we slowly learn or are told explicitly that things like unicorns, fairies, monsters under our beds, the tooth fairy, and Santa Clause aren't real. We aren't told, "It's unlikely that they are real" or "There is no scientific proof of their existence but you can still believe in them if you want" we are told "ooh yeah all that was a lie... your parents are Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny. Oh and those bumps in the night aren't monsters in your closet it's your parents doing it." And with that our childhood dies.
And think of the arguments used when older kids are wrestling with their beliefs about Santa...
-Flying reindeer? That seems impossible...I've never seen a deer fly.
-The world is so big how could he possibly go to all the houses in one night.
-How does he know how we behave? Does he have spy cameras in every house...is the phone bugged? There is no way for him to just 'watch' us.

And parents expect their kids to be smart enough to reason like this and for their belief to slowly falter so that when they drop the No Santa bomb the impact is less severe. But at the same time Christian parents expect their kids to be able to have faith in God. Something that they learned about from their lying, untrustable parents. Something that they could easily could be questioned with the same arguments as Santa is..
-Flying angels? That seems impossible..
-The world is so big how does he hear all the prayers..
-Are we on candid God-camera?


To a child God and Santa also seem to serve very similar purposes which is to both scare and bribe them into being good and behaving for their parents. So it was only normal for me as a kid to question God as soon as I found out that I'd been tricked by my parents into behaving for Santa. I have to imagine other kids feel similarly, especially those like me who did not spend a lot of time at church. (We only went on Christmas for the most part, if at all, and I usually fell asleep).
My point is really that we teach kids not to have faith in anything that they want to believe in like fairies and unicorns or magic wizards so how can we expect them to have the capacity to use faith as the only basis of belief when it comes to God?

Now I don't mind that I questioned the existence of God because he seemed similar to Santa, I'm actually very glad that I reject the Judeo-Christian conception of God (and my parents never tried to make me believe in God and I don't think they'd see anything wrong with rejecting his existence on the same basis I rejected Santa's existence). I'm just saying it seems counter-productive and maybe even hypocritical for parents to break children's gleeful faith in magic and wonderment but then still expect them to believe in God. If you want your kids to be able to use faith as a basis for belief then let them believe in the possibilities of magic and fairies too, we don't all need to be so disillusioned with the possibilities of strange wonderful things (besides God) existing outside our realm of understanding. And as children grow up they can use their own reason to sort through their beliefs and decide what unknowable things they actually do have faith in and for what reasons.