MY FOUR-YEAR-OLD SON IS SKEPTICAL OF SANTA CLAUS.

Last year, when he was three, he asked me, “How can reindeer fly? And how can a sleigh fly? How can things fly that don’t really fly?”

I said, “Magic,” which has become my answer to all of these types of questions and seems to fill the same conversational role as “Because I said so.”

A few years ago, we got the Elf on the Shelf. This is a creepy story about an elf who watches children’s behavior during the day and then flies to the North Pole to tattle to Santa at night, arriving back the next morning to do it again. Snowden has issued several warnings about him. The book comes with an elf that “moves” to a different spot in the house each day to conduct his espionage work. A mother-daughter team have made millions off this. Parents across the U.S. are happy about it because they were really looking for one more thing to remember to do every night, especially during the mundane holiday season.

Last year, we had a lazy elf. We often woke to find him in the same spot, the bum. But this year, in light of Colin’s burgeoning skepticism, we’ve had a much more industrious elf.

Colin enjoys looking for the elf every day, but he is not a believer. This is what he said to me the first day he found the elf, perched on our oven handle:

Colin: How’d he get there?

Me: Don’t you remember what we read in the book? He flew.

Colin, looking at me like I’m crazy: Mommy, he’s not real.

I looked at the plastic elf doll, and I did feel silly then. He doesn’t look real. I didn’t want to give up, but I didn’t want to argue that a plastic doll can fly, either, so I started prefacing everything with “The elf said.” That made it OK because I was speaking for the elf, not myself.

Colin: You must have moved him there, Mommy.

Me: The elf said that he flew there.

Colin: Do you remember moving him?

Me: The elf said that he flew to the North Pole to talk to Santa, and then back here.

Colin: You shouldn’t have put him on the oven. You have to use the oven.

Me: The elf said I didn’t put him there!

Colin: Then how did he get there?

Me: MAGIC.

I told my husband about this conversation, and he said, “Of course Colin doesn’t believe that. It’s a doll. What kid believes that story?”

I would have. Possibly until I was sixteen.

I recently asked Colin what he thought about the elf after we’d been playing the game for several weeks. Did he think the elf was flying to different places in the house?

No, he still maintained that the elf wasn’t real.

But when I asked Colin how he thought the elf moved around, this time he said he didn’t know. Ha! I’m breaking him. I’ve turned him from an atheist to an agnostic. This makes me feel triumphant … and guilty. Should I be breaking him? Are Santa and the Elf on the Shelf part of the magic and fun of Christmas, or are they silly stories I’m pushing on my kid? Part of me thinks he has to believe! But then another part of me wants to say, “Fine. Just don’t tell your sister.”

Maybe it doesn’t matter what I say because there’s a greater truth chipping away at Colin’s disbelief: Santa brings presents. It’s to Colin’s advantage to believe, so he does. Or maybe it’s to his advantage to pretend to believe to humor his mother. I’m not sure who’s fooling who.

I blame Scooby Doo and the gang for my son’s skepticism. Colin used to be scared of things just like any other kid, but then we started reading the Scooby Doo books. In these books, Scooby and Shaggy constantly think that something supernatural is going on, but Fred, Daphne and Velma always uncover logical explanations. These books have resonated with Colin, and now it’s hard to spook him. If he hears a noise, and someone says, “Oh no! Was it a monster?” Colin will say, “No. It was probably the wind.”

That’s great. I’m glad he isn’t as fearful as I was as a kid. But it sure takes the magic out of Christmas. Now I can’t sell the Elf on the Shelf or Santa to him, and I think I could have gotten away with it if it weren’t for Scooby Doo and those meddling kids.

Kirstin Odegaard runs the Benicia Tutoring Center. Read and comment on her writings at www.kodegaard.com.