Santa

My wife and I talked about how we were going to talk to our children about Santa a few years ago. You see I have very distinct memories of some problems I had intellectually growing up. Church wasn't something we attended all the time, but rather in fits and starts. I remember thinking about Jesus and God and all after I learned that Santa was not real. I started to wonder in my mind if maybe all this God stuff fell into the same bucket as Santa. Since every adult I knew or came in contact with helped to perpetuate the false idea that Santa was alive, I wondered if they also went through all these steps to perpetuate the idea that Jesus was real. I struggled a lot with the idea of church. I wasn't sure all these adults would be willing to go to church and lose a couple of hours just to perpetuate a myth, but I just wasn't sure.
Couple that with my wife's concern that our children would not be able to tell the difference and we made a decision to let them know fairly young that Santa was for fun and Jesus was for real. We've worked to make sure the kids don't blurt stuff out at the mall or around their young family members who might still believe, but we decided to let them know there was a difference. In our minds Jesus is real and important and we want to get that across. They can still enjoy Santa but they know he is just made up for fun so he's okay to enjoy, but not in the same category as Jesus. How have you handled it?