I remember when I was 11, it was Christmas Eve, and my sister and I were in the middle of our annual ritual. Looking out her window in our Christmas pajamas and waiting for Santa to come and drop our presents down the chimney. In between our whispers over what we were hoping to get, we heard the noise downstairs.

"It's Santa!", my sister proclaimed as quietly as she could as we barreled out her room and made our way to the top of the stairs. As we crept down the stairs, our excitement kept growing and growing, and as we reached the bottom of the stairs, we saw the jolly old man arranging the presents in the dark. My sister and I turned on the light to see Santa for ourselves... and saw our dad where Santa should have been. That's right... our Christmas dreams were squashed by a middle aged Greek man with a half a cookie in his mouth and milk dripping down his chin. I'm still heartbroken about that one Dad...

At 19 years old, it's not a surprise for me that Santa isn't real, neither are the tooth fairy or the Easter bunny, they're just stories parents tell their kids to spice up the holiday seasons or to make something scary seem fun. However, that's what made our childhood fun. Hiding Easter eggs for the bunny to find, putting teeth under the pillow and finding money under the pillow (as a broke college student, I really wish this was still a thing), and putting out the milk and cookies for my dad, I mean Santa. All of this really made a lasting impression on my childhood.

The new advances in technology are bringing so many new and exciting things to this world, but with those new advances, we are losing the blissful ignorance that makes childhood spectacular. We have all the information we want at our fingertips, and most children know how to work technology better than their parents. If they wanna know something, all they need to do is ask Siri and it's all there for them. Soon children will realize at a younger and younger age that Santa isn't a real being, and they'll spread it to each other. and the wonderful game will end.

Do you remember what life was like before we had our smartphones? We rode our bikes to our friends' houses rather than staying at home and talking on Snapchat. We played outside and invented our own games instead of being glued to a TV all day and night. And I'm painfully aware that I sound like everyone's cynical grandparents, but the best memories I have were with my neighbors, playing outside from morning til it was dark. I miss those days, and while I'd like to think that my kids will have these memories too, I have to accept that they may not.

Either way, I'll always cherish the good memories of my childhood, when things were easier and when innocence still existed.