Where is the North Pole?

The other day, my son and I were doing some (of his) homework, reading about the Arctic Circle.

We had just reached the end of the page looking at what and where the Arctic Circle is when my son took a closer look at the map. That can’t be right he said. I looked again.

Admittedly, it was a bad photocopy but everything seemed in roughly the right place even with my scratchy geography of the area.

He was adamant though that the map was wrong, the North Pole couldn’t be there because there was no land, so where would Santa live?

Ah.

I usually try to be as honest as possible with the kids but we do celebrate Christmas, get visits from the Easter Bunny, and have dental removals by the Tooth Fairy.

However, when put on the spot, I couldn’t face revealing the explosive truth (this is the boy who was heart broken when we removed a tree, and it wasn’t even a very nice tree, from the garden).

Instead, I seized on the fact located on page 5 (thank you Index) that there are parts of the North Pole that are covered in ice all year round. At least, for the moment… (I also decided it was not the time to get into global warming).

Luckily, this seemed to appease his concerns and there were no specific questions about Santa’s location.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should also reveal that the first page of the exercise (which he had ripped off) also explained that the entire thing was optional. A valuable lesson to always read the instructions!

How have you wriggled out of similar situations?