A Texas couple is furious that their 5-year-old daughter's after-school teacher openly debunked the greatest childhood myth of Christmas.
The teacher, identified as Mrs. Fuller, chastised an after-school class at Pease Elementary School in Austin for being shielded from reality, mother Susan Tietz Gammage told the Houston Press.
"She said, 'None of you believe in Santa do you?' and said that you and mommy buy all our presents and put them under the tree," Gammage's daughter, Aven, told her parents of the teacher's actions. "She said that you should tell us the truth."
Aven's parents say it wasn't the teacher's place to tell children that their "belief is not right." Gammage also told the Houston Press of another anti-Santa incident at the school. She claims that when a student drew a picture of Santa for an assignment on real and imaginary things, a different teacher corrected the child, saying Santa belonged in the fake category.
A similar incident in Nanuet, N.Y., last year also drew parents' ire. A teacher reportedly told her second graders that there is no Santa Claus during a geography lesson about the North Pole.
"It's outrageous that a teacher would strip a child of their innocence and try to demystify something," Margaret Fernandez, grandmother of a student at the school, told the New York Post at the time.
The teacher subsequently made individual phone calls to the students' families to apologize.