Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa clause.

It's that part of the unspoken contract between parents and kids that says there really is a jolly old fellow in a white beard and red suit who zips around on Christmas Eve delivering toys from a miniature sleigh pulled by eight tiny - but flight-capable - reindeer.

Anybody have a problem with that?

Well, yes. Despite Francis P. Church's famous 1897 New York Sun editorial to 8-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon that declared St. Nick to be as indisputably real as love, generosity and fairies, a debate has long raged about whether myth-mongering adults shouldn't just tell children the truth.

Two Canadian researchers, however, suggest there's really no rush.

Serge Larivee, a professor of psychology and education at the University of Montreal, and colleague Carole Senechal at the University of Ottawa say most children discover the truth about Santa soon enough. And most don't begrudge the deception.

Larivee and Senechal recently released findings from a comparison of two earlier Santa mythology studies, a kind of meta-analysis of past research viewed anew. The first Santa study was conducted in 1896 with 1,500 children ages 7 to 13; a second and similarly designed study was conducted in 1979.

In both studies, almost half of the children found out the truth on their own, the researchers said.

"The constant outcome of the two studies was that children generally discovered through their own observations and experiences that Santa doesn't exist. Their parents then confirmed their discovery," Larivee said.

"Children ask their parents, for example, how Santa gets in the house if there's no chimney. And even if the parents say they leave the door unlocked, the child will figure out that Santa can't be everywhere at the same time and that reindeer can't be that fast."

The two studies also measured children's reactions once they learned that Santa isn't real. More than 22 percent of the children in 1896 said they were disappointed, a figure that rose to 39 percent in the 1979 study. But just 2 percent and 6 percent, respectively, said they felt betrayed.

Cognitive scientists and psychologists say most children stop believing in Santa when they develop reasoning skills capable of differentiating between imagination and reality. A 1994 University of Texas study found that's usually around age 7.

For many parents, the bigger concern is whether encouraging a belief in Santa Claus is a mistake at any age. John D. Rich Jr., a professor of psychology at Delaware State University, thinks so. In a recent paper, he said parents promote Santa for all the wrong reasons:

Santa's a falsehood that will inevitably be found out.

He's frequently used as a threat against bad behavior, as "You better watch out . . . "

And "Santa is a bigot," dispensing his gifts unequally among wealthy and poor, promoting crass materialism and teaching "that there is a connection between possessions and happiness," Rich said.

Others don't take such a dark view.

For one thing, the Santa myth has been around a long time without apocalyptic consequences. His origins reportedly date to a fourth-century Greek Christian bishop named St. Nicholas of Myra - now part of Turkey - who was widely esteemed for his generosity and benevolence. Santa's name is a corruption of the Dutch words for St. Nicholas: "Sinter Niklaas."

And then there's the remarkable amount of scholarship inspired by a guy who doesn't exist.

For example, John W. Trinkaus, a professor emeritus at the Zicklin School of Business in New York City, has conducted three studies analyzing the faces of children and parents as they waited in line to visit Santa Claus. He said the evidence indicates children are largely indifferent to the experience, but parents seem to enjoy it.

Various physicists have tried over the years to explain how Santa might actually visit about 2.2 billion children in the world - minus the naughty ones - in a single night. Most explanations involve faster-than-light travel, teleportation and quantum mechanics.

And multiple psychology studies have probed the Santa-esque connection between abundant body mass and exuberant mental health. Their conclusions generally echo those reported by Robert E. Roberts of the University of Texas Health Science Center in a 2006 study: "In no case did we observe better mental health among the obese. In sum, the obese were not more jolly."

Not that children tend to worry much about such things - or even about the reality of Santa. Researchers Larivee and Senechal said most kids quickly get past the idea of a Santa-free world. Indeed, they become part of the act.

"When children stop believing, they become accomplices to their parents, (perpetuating the myth) with their little brothers and sisters," Senechal said.

She said they think of it as just a little white (Christmas) lie.