WASHINGTON — Why do children believe a chubby guy in a flying sleigh can deliver joy across America? Because their parents do. A whopping 84 percent of grown-ups were once children who trusted in Santa’s magic, and lots cling to it still.

Things are changing fast these days, with toddlers wishing for iPads, grade schoolers e-mailing their Christmas lists and moms wrestling over bargain toys at midnight sales. Despite all the pressures on the rituals of the season, an AP-GfK poll confirms that families are sticking by old St. Nick.

“It’s important for kids to have something to believe in,” says great-grandmother Wanda Smith of Norman, Okla.

And so they do. Year after year, Santa Claus survives the scoffers and the Scrooges and the 6-year-old playground skeptics. He endures belittling commercials that portray him shopping at Target or taking directions from an iPhone. He shrugs off scolds who say his bagful of toys overshadows the reason for the season.

Two-thirds of parents with youths younger than 18 say Santa’s an important part of their celebrations this year. Moms, especially, have a soft spot for the man in red — 71 percent of them say he’s important, and that’s a big jump from 58 percent just five years ago.

In these bleaker times of homes lost to foreclosure and parents sweating out their next paychecks, the poll shows Santa riding high with families both wealthy and poor.

Maybe that’s because the big guy’s always known how to stretch a dollar to make a child smile.

Smith, whose childhood gifts were mostly handmade by her mother remembers that every year Santa Claus managed to put one present under the tree for her to share with her two brothers.

“One year it was a bicycle, one year we had a sled. We didn’t have a lot,” she said, “but we didn’t know it. Our mother and daddy made it a wonderful time for us.”