In our house Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny were always treated as fictions that were fun to pretend to believe in. On the other hand, influenced by various fantasy TV shows and movies, I maintained a belief for a very long time that Santa might really exist if you believed in him. I'm not sure that one has totally gone away. And I still have a fascination with depictions of Santa that deviate from the Coca-Cola standard, particularly the tall, thin St. Nick types.
I always believed stepping on cracks was bad luck, but didn't hear the common "...and break your mother's back" reason until I was 10 or so. When I asked my mother about it, she said she wasn't familiar with it, but grew up hearing "Step on a crack and you'll piss in bed." Here is Gahan Wilson's take on it from his "Strange Beliefs of Children" in an old
National Lampoon:
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I just remembered another belief of my childhood: The Memorial Day ceremonies I would attend typically would have 7 rifles fired three times as a tribute to the war dead, followed by the playing of "Taps". I thought the "Taps" was in tribute to anyone who was accidentally killed by the rifles that had just been fired.