Tales of the tooth fairy, a tradition to treasure

Teeth are a vitally important part of us. They enable us to chew solid food and help to give form to our mouths. But we must lose our teeth, sometimes twice but always at least once in our lives. We first lose our teeth when we are children and the loss of something so significant and substantial could easily be frighteningly traumatic.

Enter the tooth fairy. The concept of the tooth fairy appears to have evolved as a way to change a potentially nasty experience into something to which a child can look forward since this mysterious but friendly creature will reward the child with a small gift in exchange for the detached baby tooth.

Both February 28 and August 22 have been designated National Tooth Fairy Day, making this a day to celebrate a charming custom.

How did this tradition originate? Many cultures mark the loss of baby teeth with rituals. According to “The Straight Dope,” those rituals vary from tossing the tooth up toward the sun, throwing it over the roof, feeding it to an animal, burying it, or burning it. The tooth fairy tradition is believed to owe much to folklore about helpful elves and (of course) fairies. “The Straight Dope” suggests that an 18th Century French tale, “La Bonne Petite Souris,” may be the genesis for the tooth fairy tradition. In “La Bonne Petite Souris,” a fairy turns into a mouse to defeat an evil king by knocking out his teeth. The tooth fairy ritual took hold in the United States during the early 1900s.

In modern America, a ritual is typically followed in which the child leaves the lost tooth under his or her pillow and a parent replaces the tooth with a small gift or coin. Some people put the tooth in a glass of water because they are less likely to wake the child than if it is under the pillow. However, it is probably a good idea to put the glass out of the child’s reach so the kid won’t absentmindedly drink it and swallow the tooth!

As a country and western song notes, “There’s two kinds of fairies.” Is the idea of the tooth fairy offensive to homosexuals? Correspondent Gene Stavis, a gay man, believes that the tooth fairy “can become camp. For instance, in Peter Pan when Peter asks the audience to ‘clap if you believe in fairies’ but it is certainly a harmless and charming modern-day pun.”

The tooth fairy tradition has its share of controversy. Some people feel that, like Santa Claus, presenting the tooth fairy to children as a real character is lying and itself causes trauma when the child learns the truth. Others believe it is helpful to children to be introduced to such make-believe characters and that their minds are stimulated through the process of playing detective when they determine the true identities of the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, and similar characters. Even when the child is alert to the charade, the tradition can be fun for both children and parents. Stephen DeLuca writes, “I guess because I wasn’t told that my step-dad wasn’t my real dad until I was 12, I couldn’t do the Santa or Tooth Fairy without a wink – we played the game, but I didn’t want them to feel the disappointment I felt about adults lying . . . a prize for a tooth is cool, even if dad says it was from the tooth fairy and winks.”

According to one of my correspondents, author Natty Bumppo, even the tooth fairy is subject to the laws of economics! “When I was a kid I got a nickel, if I recall correctly,” he wrote. “As a parent I gave a dime (inflation had reared its ugly head).”

One mother of seven who lives on a shoestring budget writes that when her kids were losing baby teeth, “I would purchase clearance games, toys, and cool clothes, and hold them, then I could put THOSE under the pillow.” Before bedtime, she informed her children, “If you wake up and let the fairy KNOW you are awake, she won’t come back for teeth.” Her children knew early on that the tooth fairy, like Santa, was make-believe, but she thinks the ritual helps “kids to not fear losing their teeth.”

An Arizona stay-at-home-dad named Mark, states, “I really believe that this is a good tradition for kids. It removes lots of the anxiety of losing teeth. Our kids look forward to losing them! I leave the tooth in an envelope under the pillow and replace it with three dollar coins.”

Fred Platt of Wayne, New Jersey, has fond memories of the tooth fairy ritual. “I remember getting a shiny new quarter for my teeth,” he says. “I seem to remember doing both the tooth under the pillow and the tooth in a glass of water.” His parents were apparently safety-conscious as he writes, “The glass of water was kept on the dresser away from the bed, perhaps so it could not be drunk. . . . I seem to remember awe each time I found the quarter.”

Platt sees the tooth fairy tradition as benign. “When a child matures and realizes that there is no tooth fairy, Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, and makes the connection that it is his [or her] parents who are actually doing it, it is anchoring him or her in reality and contributing to beneficial psychological development.”

When Platt and his wife had a child losing teeth in the early 1980s, they used a “tooth fairy box” and “tooth fairy purse” for the occasions. They normally gave quarters. However, when son Adam was about eight years old, he lost a molar and wrote a note that he placed in the tooth fairy box. Platt sent me a copy of the note that was written in script. “Since this tooth is bigger, it should be worth more in value,” the third-grader argued. “So I hope you will give me a dollar instead of a quarter.” The tooth fairy saw the logic and obliged. This was the last baby tooth lost so the Platt family did not have to fear bankruptcy.