Keeping the Magic in Childhood OR Creating Psychosis?

When is it time to let the cat out of the bag about Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Toothfairy, Jack Frost, Leprechauns, and The Great Pumpkin?? My 10 year-old son (Fylee) thoroughly, without a doubt, still believes, and I think I, as well as a few of my friends, are partly to blame for this. In an attempt to induce a spirit of "let's not kill each other" between my oldest two kids (Fylee and Zaitlin), who are 2 and 1/2 years apart, I have "used" certain childhood mythical figures. Ok, who hasn't told their kids Santa is watching??! I guess I just took it a few steps further. Here is childhood at my house:  I found the Santa threat somewhat affective, but only during certain times of the year, you know, when the Christmas toy flyers start bulging my mailbox. I needed some assistance for compliance for the rest of the year. So,... did ya know that from Christmas to oh, the end of January, Jack Frost peaks in on kids and reports back to Santa?? Jack frost, though, isn't very sophisticated. A little scrolly writing on the inside frost of storm windows, and wallah!  He has visited! Now, this has invited Fylee to stare wonderously at the rest of the frost on the windows, and he actually convinces himself he sees certain pictures in the frost patterns.  - A parachuting cow, a kid with broccoli for hair... things like that. I don't see these things, but perhaps my artistic eye needs a corrective lens. 

Then, from February - March, Santa's elves' cousins, the Leprechauns, keep vigil at our windows. Sometimes, if there is too much fighting going on, they will break into our home while we are gone and will pull open every single drawer and cupboard in the house. Last year, they even left little, green footprints all over the countertops. This is an inconvenience to Fylee and Zaitlin because they have to clean up the mess. As the story goes, they do that as a warning to kids to behave. If you have been good, and they visit, they don't mess up your house.  Suffice it to say, our house is ALWAYS hit HARD by those little green minions! 

Various times throughout the year, as the kids lose teeth, I can cash in on the Tooth Fairy myth. Did you know that the Tooth Fairy only leaves coins for non-cavitied teeth? Cavitied teeth, however, are rewarded with an IOU made out to the Tooth Fairy, left under the kids' pillow. Just to sell them on the Tooth Fairy, I actually had to catch it on film, compliments of a digitial camera and the glittery mane of a My Little Pony figurine. If you snap a photo of that thrown into the air, it leaves an image wide open to interpretation. 

That, at least gets me to the summer months, when, if they are beating on each other too much, I can shove the food kids outdoors without the fear of "The Department" investigating me. Rainman doesn't get involved in this much, so I just park him in front of a tractor movie. 

Come September, I can start using The Great Pumpkin, who sends cards an stickers to the kids for Halloween. I happen to have a friend, who has a wonderful sense of creativity, and just as warped imagination as I do, who sends letters from The Great Pumpkin, and also publishes the North Pole Newsletter. SOMEHOW, little details about things the kids have done, or left undone, always manage to sneak into those letters. So, my kids are sold on all of this stuff. How else could all of these holiday characters know all these personal details about us??? 

Well, the reason I am considering letting Fylee out of the bag on this is that, it has started to infringe upon his life. Case in point, we returned home from somewhere, and there was a tiny pair of those huge-headed Bratz doll glasses lying on the livingroom floor. It was obvious to me that the cats had dragged them out of the toyroom, as the bows of the glasses were all chewed up and mangled. Fylee's interpreation was that these belonged to one of Santa's elves who was here doing a behavior check, and the cats must have eaten him! He was even palpating the cat's tummies to see if he could feel the poor little appetizer somehow still alive in there. He also would not leave my side, well, because frankly the idea of little people running amock in one's house is a little disturbing. 

So, this is my dilemma. Do I tell Fylee the truth and ruin the magic of childhood, plus give him ammo to use to destroy Zaitlin's childhood too? Or do I continue to allow the kid to build leprechaun protection fortresses in my diningroom, and pillow walls on his bed behind which he sleeps?

I'd appreciate professional, and not-so, professional opinions of this. Do I let him off the hook or not?