We made an explicit decision to not lie to our kids about Santa Claus or anything else. It was a good call.
I think telling my kids things for their enjoyment is ok. I don't believe me or my siblings were hurt by our parents given us the santa myth and I also feel it was an important life lesson to discover santa didn't exist.
How would you feel if you did have a suprise party? / No, but would you like me too? / No, but would that be ok for a future birthday?
What do you think I would tell you if you asked me that and I was planning a surprise party? Or if I wasn't?
You don't have to answer all their questions. Personally, I'd say, no, I don't like surprise parties, so I'm not going to plan one for someone, but for the sake of argument, I'll pretend I might.
The truth is that not every lie is a problem.
Where are these adults who never tried to lie?
For example, don't try to come up with explanations for inconsistencies or impossibilities, but just ask the kid what they think. Eventually it'll be like, "Well, obviously Santa can't actually come to all the houses, so I think the other Santas help him." "I know you and Mom put our presents under our tree, but I think Santa gives them to you." Etc. They basically explicitly tell you how much Santa they want to believe at any given point.
Once they directly ask you if Santa is real, you can ask them if they really want you to answer. (The first time mine quickly said, "No, I know he's real!" and then dropped it for a year. :D ) But if they persist, you can tell them a nice version of the truth, like that the idea of Santa is definitely real, because why else would kids get presents from Santa every year. As they guessed, you help out by actually getting the presents and putting them under the tree, but it's because of this great spirit of giving that so many people feel around Christmas that we have this tradition.
If you don't make a big deal about Santa, it won't be a big deal to them, and when they ask about him, you can say 'some people believe Santa is a nice guy that's totally not creepy and somehow delivers presents to all the children' or whatever. And you may likely have already had similar conversations about religion and how it's respectful to let people believe what they want about things like that.
Of course, if you push Santa hard, and they're a fact oriented kid, when they find out the facts, it's going to be a big deal, and they're going to want to tell their friends about it. You won't know if they're fact oriented before you decide to push Santa though.
So we do Santa with our son and daughter and there was never a discussion not to do it.