The Matt Walsh Show - Daily Wire Backstage： The 2020 Season Finale

00:00:00.080 Hey guys, it's Matt. Look, be honest with me, you didn't watch Daily Wire backstage, the 2020 season finale, did you? You didn't watch it.

00:00:07.640 It's okay, I'm just, I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed in you.

00:00:12.140 If you want to make it up to me, go ahead and take a listen to it now.

00:00:14.820 Myself, Jeremy Boring, Ben Shapiro, Michael Knowles, get you ready for Christmas, and there's a few surprises thrown in. Take a listen.

00:00:21.140 Hey everyone, Candace Owens here, and today I will be reading to you all from Luke chapter 2, beginning at verse 8.

00:00:30.000 And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid.

00:00:39.540 And the angel said unto them, Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

00:00:49.100 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord, and this will be a sign for you.

00:00:56.720 You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.

00:01:02.820 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,

00:01:09.640 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

00:01:15.640 Praise God, praise the Lord, and Merry Christmas from all of us at The Daily Wire.

00:01:26.720 Hey. Merry Christmas, you guys.

00:01:45.020 Annual holiday celebrated by literally billions of Christians worldwide commemorating the birth of Jesus.

00:01:51.060 Kwanzaa.

00:01:51.380 No. No. You never get anything right.

00:01:54.820 Good to be with you, happy to be with you, and so happy that it's Christmas time.

00:01:58.460 I am your hostess with the mostest, Jeremy the God King Boring, joined, as always, by Ben Shapiro, by Michael Knowles, and by Andrew Klavan,

00:02:06.940 and also by the beautiful, the talented, the lovely Elisha Krause.

00:02:10.940 Elisha, how's it going out there in California?

00:02:13.280 Pretty good. Still warm. Don't be too jealous.

00:02:15.520 But also, I thought I was the hostess with the mostest, so when did I get demoted?

00:02:19.660 But I will be here taking all of the member questions, as always, and only our backstage or Daily Wire members get to ask the questions.

00:02:28.240 So be sure to go to the show page at the top of dailywire.com.

00:02:32.200 Once you click on backstage, then you can go down to the chat box and ask the questions,

00:02:35.900 and my lovely producer Savannah and I will be pulling those questions throughout the show.

00:02:40.200 Also, we have a lot of awesome content that the guys have been talking about for a while now.

00:02:44.460 One of the contents that's now available for you to not only listen to, but watch, is Apollo 11, What We Saw.

00:02:51.600 Everyone should be sure to check it out.

00:02:52.880 And it's now exclusively available at Daily Wire on Apple and Spotify.

00:02:57.280 You can also watch it via the Daily Wire Apple TV or Roku app, which is pretty cool.

00:03:02.620 So now you can get Daily Wire content on Apple TV or Roku.

00:03:06.140 The series is just one of the new content pieces that, of course, is available here at the Daily Wire

00:03:10.880 that's coming down the pipeline, including the lovely Candace Owens, who we just saw, 1.00

00:03:15.520 the Prager U Library in its entirety, and a new entertainment channel,

00:03:19.740 along with a lot of investigative journalists.

00:03:21.700 If you are like me and you are last-minute Christmas shopping, do not be afraid.

00:03:26.760 You know, for Lowe, he is with you always.

00:03:28.620 But also, because we have a special Daily Wire discount for you, 20% off.

00:03:33.300 So head on over to dailywire.com, because then you can become an all-access number

00:03:37.380 and get those not one, but two tumblers.

00:03:40.040 And just print out a certificate, send the email to a friend, and be like,

00:03:42.960 look at how much I love you.

00:03:44.080 Or give it to the liberal in their life and collect the leftist tears at their annoyance.

00:03:47.940 So head on over to dailywire.com for those two leftist tears tumblers

00:03:51.320 and become a Daily Wire insider for that 20% off.

00:03:55.440 Use the code WATCH, that's W-A-T-C-H, at dailywire.com.

00:04:01.140 Was Elisha ever the hostess with the mostest? 0.73

00:04:04.320 I don't know.

00:04:05.340 Did we actually hold, like, a competition?

00:04:07.500 Well, I just mean, I would have thrown my name in the hopper

00:04:10.660 if I'd known that there was a competition, at least.

00:04:13.580 Elisha, thank you.

00:04:14.400 We're going to be checking in with Elisha throughout the night

00:04:16.340 to bring us your questions.

00:04:18.140 We want to hear from you here at what is the last backstage of 2020.

00:04:23.760 We're going to be talking mostly about Christmas, mostly about the season,

00:04:28.480 mostly reflecting on the year that has just gone by

00:04:31.880 and mostly looking forward to the new year.

00:04:33.520 Not talking so much politics.

00:04:35.140 The reason is, like, Christmas is in just a couple of days.

00:04:37.880 You can't just talk about politics.

00:04:39.880 You guys talk about politics all day long.

00:04:42.520 But there is the marriage of Christmas and politics,

00:04:46.100 I do think is fair ground for a conversation tonight.

00:04:49.260 Christmas, one of my things that I always love to talk about with Christmas

00:04:52.140 is that, you know, like, people always say,

00:04:54.020 oh, there's a war on Christmas.

00:04:55.500 These radical leftists and their war on Christmas.

00:04:58.100 And then you sort of look at the history of America,

00:04:59.920 and America has always been in a war over Christmas.

00:05:02.560 It was founded on a war on Christmas.

00:05:04.220 It was founded on a war over Christmas.

00:05:05.460 Yes.

00:05:05.940 So I think that it's perfectly appropriate for us to deal with,

00:05:09.240 you know, politics of the 16th century or 17th century.

00:05:12.220 Before we do that, I do want to talk about

00:05:15.580 the most recent political Christmas event that's taken place,

00:05:19.740 and that is that apparently Santa has gone completely woke.

00:05:22.920 Yes.

00:05:23.220 I know you all talked about this on your shows,

00:05:25.240 but Santa, in the day and age in which we live,

00:05:28.360 will no longer get you your Red Ryder BB gun.

00:05:32.660 Do we have the clip of woke Santa?

00:05:39.000 No, no guns.

00:05:41.360 Nerf guns.

00:05:42.540 No, not even a Nerf gun.

00:05:45.720 No, if your dad wants to get it for you, that's fine,

00:05:49.340 but I can't bring it to you.

00:05:50.520 But what else would you like?

00:05:52.380 Lots of other toys.

00:05:53.620 There's Legos.

00:05:54.800 There's bicycles.

00:05:56.400 There's cars and trucks.

00:05:58.780 What do you think?

00:06:03.220 What do you think?

00:06:07.360 It's okay.

00:06:08.360 Your dad?

00:06:08.860 That kid is within his rights to beat the living hell out of Santa.

00:06:14.620 Is he not?

00:06:15.920 Santa can't tell you no unless you have been naughty.

00:06:20.560 That's the whole point.

00:06:21.200 In fairness, don't you think that that kid will shoot his eye out?

00:06:24.580 In his defense, in Santa's defense, that kid's going to shoot his eye out.

00:06:27.660 Andrew, what do you think?

00:06:28.460 I got a promotion.

00:06:30.900 I'm Andrew Clavin.

00:06:32.280 Wait a minute.

00:06:33.220 Where did you grow a beard?

00:06:35.220 Although, how am I the most festively dressed person around here?

00:06:39.320 Because Andrew Clavin loves Santa.

00:06:40.980 Because he loves Christmas.

00:06:41.660 He does love Christmas more than anybody I've ever met.

00:06:44.200 And so do I.

00:06:44.760 So do I.

00:06:45.100 The one thing about that clip, though, that gets me is all the parents just sitting around,

00:06:50.660 not saying anything, not speaking up for this kid.

00:06:53.780 I mean, you only have so many opportunities in life where you can actually yell at Santa

00:06:57.440 and be in the right.

00:06:58.300 Yeah.

00:06:58.960 And here's an opportunity.

00:06:59.720 But they all just sit around and let this kid be picked on by Santa Claus.

00:07:04.960 Yeah.

00:07:05.120 I think the one place where the left sometimes wins in these moments is because people have

00:07:09.260 like an inherent decency in them.

00:07:11.160 And you don't know that you're about to get.

00:07:14.140 Yeah.

00:07:14.580 That you're about to step into a situation like this.

00:07:16.160 You're not prepared.

00:07:17.160 And then it starts to happen.

00:07:18.300 You actually don't know what the appropriate response is.

00:07:21.460 And I don't mean to tie this to a broader political point, but this is a broader political

00:07:24.520 point that I've been thinking about, especially considering that we're about to enter

00:07:27.340 the culture wars.

00:07:28.220 And I think that so much of what we've been living through is this three-step process that

00:07:32.700 folks on the left have been able to effectuate in virtually every institution of our society

00:07:37.280 up to, and including religious institutions and cultural institutions.

00:07:41.380 And that is they pick on the fact that conservatives tend to be nice people who want to be inoffensive.

00:07:45.500 And then they identify being inoffensive with shutting up about your values.

00:07:49.920 If you don't want to offend anybody, then never talk about your values ever.

00:07:52.580 Matt gets this all the time, right?

00:07:53.660 Why are you even talking about this issue?

00:07:55.240 Sure, we made this the top trending topic on Twitter.

00:07:57.100 But Matt, how dare you sound off on it because now you're not a nice person.

00:08:00.140 Now, we all know you're not a nice person, but that has nothing to do with you sounding

00:08:02.900 off on the values issue.

00:08:04.260 So they start off with step number one is you guys are really, we know that you're nice

00:08:08.080 and so we're going to take advantage of your niceness to tell you to shut up. 0.90

00:08:11.340 Then you're supposed to shut up.

00:08:13.180 You're never supposed to comment on it at all.

00:08:14.840 The only way to be safe is for you to just be quiet.

00:08:16.580 And then finally, silence is violence.

00:08:18.520 So if you actually stay silent, that is not enough.

00:08:20.640 You actually have to start echoing the message.

00:08:22.380 They take advantage of the fact that we're sort of nice people by nature and that we will

00:08:27.380 kind of let these things go.

00:08:28.720 And it is a case for never letting this sort of stuff go and just telling Santa to head

00:08:32.420 in.

00:08:32.640 I mean, I do it every year, basically.

00:08:34.160 But I mean, not for nachos.

00:08:35.380 Well, I don't know if you guys saw my favorite response to this.

00:08:39.760 There were many good ones.

00:08:40.600 Each of the three of you had a good response.

00:08:42.880 But our friend Stephen Crowder, purveyor of fine ashtrays, I think had the absolute

00:08:48.640 best response, which is he had the little boy onto his show and gave him a second chance

00:08:54.000 to interact with Santa Claus.

00:08:55.100 I think I hate I hate to promote Stephen Crowder, but I thought we would enjoy this clip

00:08:59.720 together.

00:09:01.120 Oh, oh, oh, oh.

00:09:05.380 There's little Michael.

00:09:07.380 Little Michael, do you know who this is making a call just for you?

00:09:13.960 Who is that?

00:09:15.100 Santa.

00:09:16.020 This is Santa.

00:09:17.280 That's right.

00:09:18.280 And I understand that you're a fan of me, Santa.

00:09:21.340 And you had a little bit of a run in with one of those helpers at the mall who hadn't

00:09:26.380 been vetted properly yesterday.

00:09:27.980 Is that right?

00:09:29.840 What do you call him?

00:09:32.340 Um, Dad Santa.

00:09:34.580 That's right.

00:09:36.320 Bad Santa who didn't pass the chemical test beforehand.

00:09:40.740 But we've taken care of that.

00:09:45.740 Honestly, some of Crowder's best work ever.

00:09:48.780 I want to talk about our friends before we keep going over at Ring.

00:09:52.020 Ring keeps you safe.

00:09:53.980 And we've all recently made major moves.

00:09:56.780 Each of the four of us has made a major move in our lives.

00:09:58.840 Matt, not a month ago, was a resident of the state of Pennsylvania.

00:10:04.820 The three of us in L.A. now making moves to Nashville and to South Florida.

00:10:10.460 Ring is what makes it possible.

00:10:12.200 Not just because it makes it possible to keep this house that you're in safe.

00:10:15.060 What I've discovered with Ring lately is that I'm trying to sell my house back in L.A.

00:10:19.020 And I like to be able to check in on the sort of, you know, sulfur raining down on L.A.,

00:10:24.400 all the brimstone.

00:10:26.560 That's for yourself.

00:10:27.420 You can do it like from afar.

00:10:28.240 That's right.

00:10:28.500 I can pull up my phone and look at my Ring doorbell camera and just see the chaos in the

00:10:32.980 streets.

00:10:33.520 And I have the security of knowing that, well, soon I will have sold that house.

00:10:36.920 I have the security of knowing that it has not yet burned to the ground.

00:10:39.500 That's because of our friends over at Ring.

00:10:41.720 It is doorbell season, the busiest time of the year for your front door.

00:10:44.420 And that's definitely true, well, at all of our homes as well.

00:10:48.780 You can keep an eye out on all of the hustle and bustle, no matter where you are, right

00:10:52.360 from your phone.

00:10:53.180 If someone stops by or something's going on, Ring lets you know, and you can see and speak

00:10:57.360 to whoever is there from anywhere.

00:10:59.500 This holiday season, it's not just the best time to get Ring.

00:11:02.780 It's the derndest time to get Ring.

00:11:05.000 That's not in the teleprompter.

00:11:06.080 I just made that up.

00:11:06.960 But the best time to give Ring as a gift is really what we're talking about today.

00:11:11.320 Ring makes the perfect holiday gift.

00:11:12.880 So this holiday season, give someone the gift of peace of mind.

00:11:16.360 Ring has security products for every corner of your home, inside and out.

00:11:20.020 Best of all, you can see it all in the Ring app.

00:11:22.740 Ring is everywhere you need to keep an eye on your home this holiday season and throughout

00:11:26.600 the year.

00:11:27.760 See and speak to whoever is at your door from anywhere with video doorbells.

00:11:31.380 Keep an eye on every corner of your house with easy-to-install indoor and outdoor cams

00:11:35.500 and help protect the whole home with the Ring alarm.

00:11:38.260 A powerful, affordable, whole-home security system you can easily install yourself.

00:11:42.860 So easy that Michael Knowles was able to do it.

00:11:45.280 Ben.

00:11:45.840 So, here's the deal.

00:11:47.180 Especially if you have kids.

00:11:48.180 Like, when you first get your Ring, you think that it's for the front door.

00:11:51.120 Then you realize that, especially if you have more children than you do parents, that this

00:11:55.140 is basically your eye in the sky on your kids.

00:11:57.480 So I have three under seven, and one of them is now crawling, which means she'll eat anything 1.00

00:12:00.540 there is to eat off the floor.

00:12:01.680 Like, anything.

00:12:02.720 Ring keeps her safe because I can see what she's about to do and race into the other room and 1.00

00:12:06.440 pick her up before she eats that thing. 1.00

00:12:08.200 You can do the same with Ring.

00:12:10.500 For a limited time, go to ring.com slash backstage for special holiday offers.

00:12:14.140 That is ring.com slash backstage to save your children.

00:12:18.220 And also keep yourself safe and all that sort of stuff.

00:12:20.040 So check them out, ring.com slash backstage.

00:12:22.840 So we talked about how there's a perpetual war on Christmas in this country.

00:12:26.620 You know, there's nothing more American than the war on Christmas.

00:12:29.820 You know, Christmas was illegal in some of the early colonies.

00:12:33.620 In the Mayflower, Plymouth.

00:12:35.480 It was completely illegal.

00:12:36.480 And the reason is because the early founders of the country were decidedly Protestant.

00:12:42.580 And I know we always like to talk about putting Christ back in Christmas.

00:12:45.940 You know, you'll hear a bunch of our evangelical fans say, oh, we got to put Christ back in

00:12:50.140 Christmas.

00:12:50.760 And no one ever thinks, should we put mass back in Christmas?

00:12:54.100 But of course, Christmas is fundamentally a Catholic holiday before becoming an American

00:12:59.840 holiday.

00:13:00.640 And so Christmas didn't come in vogue in America for almost a century after the founding.

00:13:06.480 You had really the sort of religious Protestant version of Christmas start to take hold in

00:13:12.780 the South.

00:13:13.760 We talked about this last year, but famously, Lincoln had a picture made of himself with

00:13:20.160 Santa as an act of propaganda during the Civil War because he was taking something beloved in

00:13:25.740 the South and making it quintessentially American, not allowing them to have it because they use 0.99

00:13:31.440 Santa as a way of differentiating Southerners from Northerners.

00:13:37.280 And this brings us to the second complaint that you often hear from religious Americans, which 0.98

00:13:41.340 is they're trying to make Christmas a secular holiday.

00:13:44.560 The truth is, Christmas in America was always a secular holiday, right?

00:13:51.420 Essentially, war propaganda.

00:13:53.540 And then in the 1880s and through the early part of the 1900s, it was really Coca-Cola and

00:14:00.400 Montgomery Ward who just essentially, and greeting cards, essentially invented modern Christmas.

00:14:07.860 The earliest Christmas celebrations in America was 1621.

00:14:11.820 It was right after the Mayflower landed.

00:14:13.980 And William Bradford, the governor, writes about this with absolute contempt on Plymouth

00:14:19.060 Plantation.

00:14:19.800 And he says, you know, all the good Puritans go out and work the fields that day and everything.

00:14:23.880 But these sort of Anglican, just degenerate, debauched people, they decided they want to

00:14:30.000 stay home from the fields and celebrate Christmas.

00:14:31.780 So Bradford reluctantly agrees to do it and he hopes that they get corrected later on.

00:14:35.040 And he comes back, and do you know that the kids were sitting outside playing games in

00:14:41.580 the street?

00:14:42.580 They had toys and they were, you know, enjoying themselves.

00:14:45.400 Reminds you of Mencken's line that puritanism is the haunting fear that somewhere someone

00:14:49.120 is happy.

00:14:50.120 And so he comes, I kid you not, Bradford, he writes about this, he didn't miss it.

00:14:53.720 Bradford finds the kids playing games and he steals all their toys.

00:14:57.740 He goes around, he takes every one of their toys.

00:15:00.300 Man after my own heart.

00:15:01.140 That's right.

00:15:01.600 No, he was.

00:15:01.980 That kind of guy.

00:15:02.480 He sends them home, he says, if you want to sit on Christmas Day in quiet, solemn contemplation,

00:15:09.360 you may, otherwise get back to work.

00:15:11.120 Yeah.

00:15:11.420 It was a rowdy holiday, generally speaking.

00:15:13.720 The people who celebrated Christmas at that time generally were treated as a day of festivity

00:15:18.680 and drunkenness.

00:15:19.860 Yeah.

00:15:20.020 And the Puritans just absolutely despised it.

00:15:22.340 So you have a decidedly Catholic holiday that was rejected by a decidedly Protestant and

00:15:29.220 puritanical Protestant early settling.

00:15:31.700 Then you had a very commercial, secular holiday that formed up because the Coca-Cola company

00:15:38.560 decided we could all use some Santa Claus in our lives.

00:15:40.520 And then you had the sort of co-opting of that then to become a sort of decidedly American

00:15:47.340 amalgamation of Protestant religiosity and secularism already married to a holiday that

00:15:57.580 was fundamentally about the union of Catholic religiosity married to pagan ceremony.

00:16:03.900 And you really have, this is why I actually.

00:16:06.200 And all the good songs are written by the Jews. 1.00

00:16:07.460 And all the great songs are written by the Jews.

00:16:09.860 All the songs are written by the Jews.

00:16:11.020 I actually think that Christmas as we understand it is the most definitively American holiday.

00:16:18.400 You know, in a way we're touching maybe Catholic traditions from Europe or Anglican traditions

00:16:24.480 from the UK.

00:16:26.700 But really American Christmas is American Christmas.

00:16:29.240 And this is why I, Ben and I have had this conversation many times over the years, but

00:16:32.860 I actually think that all the versions of American Christmas are good.

00:16:37.160 It's good that Catholics have mass on Christmas.

00:16:39.900 It's good that Protestants celebrate the birth of Christ.

00:16:42.440 It's even good that people who aren't religious in America have Santa Claus. 0.67

00:16:47.100 It's good that they have greeting cards.

00:16:49.380 It's good that they have.

00:16:50.660 Chinese food.

00:16:51.240 Chinese food.

00:16:51.580 Oh no, that's it.

00:16:52.240 No, it is.

00:16:53.340 It is this wonderful time of the year when we, the most wonderful time of the year, some

00:16:58.080 I say, it's this wonderful time of the year when we come together in sort of celebration

00:17:02.040 of these things that we do all have in common.

00:17:04.920 And I, this is why I always say, I actually think that the Jews should, American Jews should

00:17:10.180 celebrate Christmas, not perhaps the religious aspects of it, but the uniquely American aspects.

00:17:14.840 Well, I think that most Jews enjoy this time of year for sure.

00:17:17.540 Yeah.

00:17:17.760 And it's not just because of the Hanukkah.

00:17:19.040 I mean, it's, it's, it's very nice when they're all the lights out and I enjoy other

00:17:21.720 people.

00:17:22.360 Honestly, I think Jews have a lot to be grateful for, for being in the United States, the most tolerant

00:17:25.660 country in the history of the world toward Jews.

00:17:27.760 And I think a lot of that is tied into the uniquely American brand of Christianity.

00:17:31.140 So you tie that together and Jews ought to celebrate the fact that Americans are celebrating 0.98

00:17:35.400 Christmas.

00:17:36.000 And I think that that is, that is a good thing.

00:17:37.880 That's not, but it's, it's not really good though, that the, the actual story of Christmas,

00:17:41.740 the nativity story has receded entirely into the background.

00:17:43.920 And I mean, you talk to the average Christian, they don't even know the, the, the notion they

00:17:49.260 have of the nativity story is sort of an amalgamation of, of, well, they don't even

00:17:53.660 know which stories in the gospel, which, which gospel books actually have the nativity story,

00:17:57.060 but the story they have is one that's not even in the Bible itself.

00:18:00.240 And they probably couldn't tell you which one between Matthew and Luke tells which part

00:18:03.260 of the story.

00:18:04.260 And, uh, you know, that's, that's the part of it that I see is not good at all.

00:18:08.560 The fact that it sort of goes like this, right?

00:18:09.900 There's an illegal immigrant Palestinian and a single knocked up mother. 1.00

00:18:15.220 Right.

00:18:15.600 And then there are a bunch of intolerant bigots who show up.

00:18:17.520 Correct.

00:18:18.220 Yeah.

00:18:18.380 Correct.

00:18:18.560 I think that's the story.

00:18:19.500 Correct.

00:18:19.760 Am I getting that's what I saw on Twitter?

00:18:21.040 I did see that on Instagram, you know, it, there is, there's so much about Christmas.

00:18:26.000 Like I actually went down one of these rabbit holes a couple of weeks ago because there are

00:18:30.080 so many layers to it.

00:18:31.260 As you describe, even, I always thought my whole life that they picked the date because

00:18:35.980 of a pagan holidays.

00:18:37.960 Yeah.

00:18:38.440 And it actually seems more recent scholarship says it probably wasn't that there were some

00:18:42.800 pagan holidays a little earlier, but, and the, you know, also in December, but, uh, it,

00:18:47.300 the, the reason that the church fathers say that they picked the date is actually because

00:18:51.840 they believe that a divine life had to be a perfect length and they dated the death of

00:18:58.100 Christ to March 25th and the creation of the world to March 25th.

00:19:02.560 And in the East, they said, uh, April 6th.

00:19:04.440 And so exactly nine months later has to be the, the birth of Christ.

00:19:08.500 Just all of these, so it's basically supposed to tie in exactly the creation, which actually

00:19:12.880 does get to some of the kind of pagan ideas, which is this idea of there's death and then

00:19:16.360 there's rebirth and all of this.

00:19:17.920 And this ties into the kind of secular celebration.

00:19:20.980 Then you get the Christmas trees and you get all of this.

00:19:22.700 It is so rich.

00:19:24.800 And the left doesn't want us to acknowledge it at all.

00:19:27.080 We're not allowed to say Merry Christmas.

00:19:28.580 It's, it is, it is the most unifying holiday ever in the history of the world.

00:19:31.940 This is ultimately my point that American Christmas is the most unifying holiday and the left

00:19:37.580 being against it isn't exactly being against Christ, which of course the left is against

00:19:42.920 religion.

00:19:43.760 But I actually think they're more against the idea of unity among Americans, which is ultimately

00:19:48.480 what Christmas has come to, to be in some, you're right.

00:19:52.000 Christians don't maybe know which gospel, if any, gave them their view of Christmas.

00:19:58.300 Ultimately though, American Christmas is, is both that has a little something in it for

00:20:02.800 everyone except the people stealing the toys, which in this case is not the purest.

00:20:07.580 Puritans anymore. 0.95

00:20:08.320 It's the puritanical left who just doesn't want any of us to grab hold of any of it and 0.91

00:20:13.040 have this time where we come together in a kind of spirit of, of goodwill.

00:20:16.940 You know, this, this very problem has actually led me to think, I always thought American

00:20:21.580 conservatives were the kind of inheritors of the founding of the country, you know,

00:20:25.380 in the Mayflower in 1776.

00:20:27.540 I'm starting to think maybe it's the progressive left that are the inheritors of this puritanical, 0.98

00:20:34.480 censorious sort of, uh, obviously they've transformed it dramatically over time, but they're the,

00:20:39.880 they're now the ones stealing the toys just like governor Bradford did back in the 1620s.

00:20:43.640 Yeah.

00:20:43.880 That's where America's puritanical streak went.

00:20:45.740 I think that's exactly right.

00:20:47.860 Yeah.

00:20:48.000 Uh, I want to talk about this movie, uh, killing Santa Claus.

00:20:52.880 Have you guys seen this killing Santa?

00:20:54.260 I saw the preview.

00:20:54.980 It's terrific Mel Gibson film.

00:20:56.280 Uh, there, there is a little bit of a, of a daily wire component.

00:21:01.960 Uh, I don't want to give too much away, but someone currently sitting on this set may or

00:21:08.500 may not be one of the stars of the film.

00:21:10.300 We're going to talk about that, but first we're going to talk about our friends over at

00:21:13.380 PolicyGenius.

00:21:14.380 If you like Santa are being hunted, uh, and you are trying to determine how to provide

00:21:19.260 for your children after you are dispatched with haste, uh, by an angry kid who got a lump of coal,

00:21:25.920 you need life insurance.

00:21:27.600 We all need life insurance because there are people counting on us.

00:21:30.760 Uh, but if you want to get life insurance and you don't want to deal with the hassle

00:21:33.620 or expense, you need to try PolicyGenius.

00:21:36.200 PolicyGenius combines cutting edge insurance marketplace with, uh, help from licensed experts

00:21:40.520 to save you time and money.

00:21:41.980 Right now you can save 50% or more by using PolicyGenius to compare life insurance.

00:21:46.540 I did it.

00:21:47.580 I actually walked you guys through it.

00:21:49.280 Uh, my quest to get the insurance, the trouble that I had because the lockdowns began and it

00:21:54.080 was difficult to get, uh, the health examination.

00:21:56.760 People at PolicyGenius worked with us.

00:21:58.300 They took care of it.

00:21:59.000 They actually sent someone to my home to make sure that I was able to get that done.

00:22:03.120 I didn't have to do nothing and I got the absolute best, uh, rate possible.

00:22:07.560 I actually had a control, right?

00:22:08.780 I, I applied for health, for life insurance over here to see if PolicyGenius was actually

00:22:13.240 as good as they say.

00:22:14.760 They absolutely blew the prices of the competitor away by giving me access to so many different

00:22:19.180 bids from different insurance companies in their marketplace.

00:22:22.980 When you're shopping for a policy that could last for more than a decade, the kinds of savings

00:22:26.560 that PolicyGenius gives you really start to add up.

00:22:29.540 Here's how it works.

00:22:30.180 First, you go to PolicyGenius.com.

00:22:32.280 In minutes, you can work out how much coverage you need and compare quotes from insurers to

00:22:35.960 find your best price.

00:22:36.880 PolicyGenius will compare policies starting at as little as $1 a day.

00:22:41.260 You might even be eligible to skip the in-person medical examination and if not, they will

00:22:45.260 go out of their way to make sure that you're able to get it even in times such as these.

00:22:49.300 Once you apply, the PolicyGenius team will handle all the paperwork and the red tape and

00:22:53.520 the best part is they work for you, not the insurance company.

00:22:56.740 So if you hit any speed bumps during the process, they take care of it and they take care of everything.

00:23:01.840 That was the best part for me of using PolicyGenius.

00:23:03.940 That kind of service has earned them a five-star rating across over 1,600 reviews on TrustPilot

00:23:09.820 and Google.

00:23:11.360 You need life insurance and you need PolicyGenius.

00:23:13.840 Benjamin.

00:23:14.420 Let me explain.

00:23:15.520 Are you a responsible human being?

00:23:16.960 If you're a responsible human being, you want to make sure that your dependents are taken 1.00

00:23:19.400 care of in case, God forbid, you happen to be Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is your vice

00:23:23.340 president.

00:23:24.060 That's why you would need PolicyGenius.

00:23:26.100 But even if you're not Joe Biden, you still need PolicyGenius to make sure that your dependents

00:23:30.300 are taken care of.

00:23:31.020 That's PolicyGenius.com.

00:23:32.680 Head on over.

00:23:33.060 You could save 50% or more by comparing quotes.

00:23:35.260 Start the new year with one less thing to worry about.

00:23:37.280 PolicyGenius when it comes to insurance is nice and very important to get it right.

00:23:41.160 So our friend Mel Gibson, who of course made the greatest Christian film of all time, Braveheart,

00:23:48.040 and then he also made that movie about Jesus.

00:23:49.640 Yes.

00:23:49.960 The Passion of the Christ.

00:23:51.700 Mel Gibson, kind of a controversial figure, and not only controversial in the sort of

00:23:58.320 broader cultural war, but specifically controversial, his relationship with Jewish Americans.

00:24:04.300 Yes.

00:24:04.960 He's said a few things that he probably shouldn't have said while in a state that he probably

00:24:08.700 shouldn't have been in.

00:24:09.660 Yeah.

00:24:09.960 By the way, I desperately want him to make the Hanukkah movie.

00:24:12.320 He would be...

00:24:12.820 Mel Gibson's Hanukkah movie.

00:24:14.000 Him doing the best of you would be the greatest.

00:24:14.560 I would go raise the money for it.

00:24:15.940 Totally.

00:24:16.300 Right now, today.

00:24:17.300 It would be unbelievably good.

00:24:18.280 So I knew that Ben Shapiro believes that Mel Gibson is uniquely qualified to make a film

00:24:23.680 about the Maccabees, and that's why I wasn't surprised to see Ben doing his part to rehabilitate

00:24:29.380 the image of Mel Gibson in the Jewish community by starring in Mel Gibson's new film, Killing

00:24:35.280 Santa.

00:24:35.880 Let's see the clip.

00:24:38.960 I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

00:24:42.480 I've lost my influence.

00:24:44.740 Maybe it's time I retired the cult.

00:24:48.280 You still have it.

00:24:50.880 Some kids with a deer rifle put two holes in the sleigh, one in me.

00:24:55.320 All I have is a loathing for a world that's forgotten.

00:25:03.020 The United States military would like to procure your services.

00:25:06.320 This is a one-time deal, gentlemen.

00:25:09.740 How are you, Mike?

00:25:11.340 Nicole and the kids are well, I hope.

00:25:13.120 Where are you?

00:25:15.720 Where are you?

00:25:26.360 You just lost a big time!

00:25:29.340 Oh, no!

00:25:30.020 I'd like you to kill Santa Claus.

00:25:42.020 Really?

00:25:43.760 I know he let you down, too.

00:25:46.680 I want the big man's head.

00:25:48.420 Severed heads rot, they mold.

00:25:50.040 They don't want his beard.

00:25:51.000 I'm not shaving off a dead man's beard.

00:25:53.460 I'll come while you're sleeping.

00:25:54.780 The fat man's got his eye on you, kid.

00:25:58.880 He's not that nice.

00:26:00.600 He's not that nice to the people around him.

00:26:02.860 He's kind of just a little bit of a devil.

00:26:06.780 Ben Shapiro, the entire internet is aflame over your performance in The Fat Man.

00:26:13.240 You called Santa Claus a devil.

00:26:14.620 You asked for his head.

00:26:15.520 How is this helping rehabilitate Mel Gibson or Santa Claus himself with the Jewish people? 1.00

00:26:21.340 I know.

00:26:21.580 I mean, I've had a good tour of duty here.

00:26:23.580 So, as you know, I was also the star of Knives Out this year.

00:26:26.760 So, I've really had a big year.

00:26:28.140 I feel like I have some awards coming to me as a transgender little person.

00:26:31.320 Yes, Hollywood was good to you.

00:26:32.780 So, I feel like I've checked most of the boxes here.

00:26:35.020 But, yeah, there's always...

00:26:36.120 They keep getting the hair wrong.

00:26:37.320 It's a little bit more up.

00:26:38.280 They got a lot of the across hair.

00:26:39.500 They've got, like, the hair from, like, 15 years ago.

00:26:41.260 That's right.

00:26:42.000 You're like Nick Searcy this year.

00:26:43.500 You are in two major emotions.

00:26:45.820 Yeah, seriously.

00:26:46.620 That's unbelievable.

00:26:47.620 How much...

00:26:48.060 Did you actually track all the Twitter controversy about this being you?

00:26:51.600 No, I did not.

00:26:52.000 Or is this your first time hearing about it?

00:26:53.380 This is my first time hearing about it.

00:26:54.220 Oh, yeah.

00:26:54.480 It was actually a tempest in a teapot.

00:26:57.520 I think we would all agree.

00:26:58.620 But it was a bit of a hubbub.

00:27:01.400 I mean, this is when I converted to Judaism, right?

00:27:03.700 It wasn't always this way, guys.

00:27:05.280 This is the origin story we're getting.

00:27:06.860 Yeah, Ben Shapiro, part one.

00:27:08.800 They obviously had you in mind.

00:27:11.300 Just like the authors of the other movies.

00:27:13.080 Well, there's no question that they had you in mind in the other film.

00:27:16.400 Yeah.

00:27:17.400 Yeah, maybe.

00:27:18.260 I don't know.

00:27:18.580 I watched it, and I thought, that doesn't look like me.

00:27:20.620 But then again, I think Denzel Washington looks like me.

00:27:22.780 So, like, I don't see color.

00:27:25.200 It's just something I don't do.

00:27:26.200 You don't see color.

00:27:26.860 What is this character?

00:27:27.180 They didn't capture your chiseled physique or your extraordinary height.

00:27:30.720 That's exactly right.

00:27:31.320 I mean, at no point was there a gun show, for example.

00:27:34.880 And that's something we do at All Access, like, all the time.

00:27:37.900 What is this character's name?

00:27:39.280 Did I see it's, like, Billy or something?

00:27:41.980 The character?

00:27:42.500 I think so.

00:27:43.200 It is Billy, yeah.

00:27:44.500 Bill instead of Ben.

00:27:46.220 That's the...

00:27:46.580 That's like...

00:27:47.060 It's a little suspicious.

00:27:48.560 Dude, I want to be in some movies.

00:27:49.560 No one ever puts me in the movies.

00:27:51.240 That's not true.

00:27:51.840 You literally starred in a feature film that came out this year.

00:27:54.560 It wasn't that big, though, you know?

00:27:55.740 It wasn't like that.

00:27:56.460 This is going to be seen by a lot of people.

00:27:57.820 The literal star of a feature film that came out only three months ago.

00:28:03.220 Yeah, but, like, I didn't, like, post about that and stuff.

00:28:05.480 No, but I'm talking about it right now so that all of our Daily Wire fans...

00:28:08.460 Were you really in a film this year?

00:28:09.660 I was in a movie that came out this year, and I was so afraid...

00:28:13.480 I didn't miss this.

00:28:14.160 Oh, yeah, it came out this year, and I love the movie.

00:28:17.360 I'm very afraid that it's going to, like, get us all canceled.

00:28:20.060 But then I think, you know, of all of the things that I've tried to do at the Daily Wire

00:28:24.820 to get us all canceled, like, that movie, that's, like, number 300...

00:28:27.680 What's it called?

00:28:27.880 What's the movie called?

00:28:28.700 It's called Hollyweird.

00:28:29.880 It's on, yeah, it's, like, out on the streams, you know?

00:28:31.900 You can go get it.

00:28:32.820 This is not a joke.

00:28:33.500 You're actually in a movie.

00:28:34.240 There is a movie.

00:28:34.780 Yeah, it's not a movie.

00:28:35.480 It's not like Ben.

00:28:36.280 Ben doesn't even need to show up to be in his movies.

00:28:38.200 Right.

00:28:38.420 They just make characters for Ben.

00:28:40.100 Yeah.

00:28:40.720 But that's...

00:28:42.060 Now, if it does blow back, is this my final...

00:28:45.360 Can I fire him?

00:28:46.860 Please, please, let me.

00:28:47.840 It'd be rough to fire him over a film that he shot before we hired him, but I'm open

00:28:51.240 to it.

00:28:51.640 Okay.

00:28:52.100 It is...

00:28:52.420 There is actually a kind of wild tie-in.

00:28:54.180 I finished shooting the movie on Election Day 2016.

00:28:57.460 That's right.

00:28:57.740 How long these things take to come out?

00:28:58.820 You left.

00:28:59.980 Yes.

00:29:00.440 After the final shot of the film, you drove straight to the studio and appeared on our...

00:29:04.700 And I actually got in the car.

00:29:06.520 You brought us with you into your world of fantasy, and for the past few years, we've just

00:29:09.840 been living in this alternative reality.

00:29:12.440 Yeah, this is...

00:29:12.840 This is the movie.

00:29:13.380 It's just that we're all living in Knowles' funeral room.

00:29:15.840 Well, I left the set, and I actually...

00:29:18.100 You know, you remember all the polls.

00:29:19.560 It was 99%.

00:29:20.420 Hillary's going to wave. 1.00

00:29:21.380 So I prepared all my commentary on why Hillary was going to win. 0.99

00:29:23.840 I called Jeremy.

00:29:24.600 I said, all right, I'm in the car.

00:29:25.400 I'm heading to Daily Wire.

00:29:26.880 So, you know, what is it?

00:29:28.040 Hillary's up 3 million points now. 1.00

00:29:29.500 Okay, we'll get ready to go.

00:29:30.580 He said, actually, buddy, it's kind of close, you know?

00:29:33.460 And I thought, wow, this is even stranger than this film set that I was just on 20 minutes

00:29:38.180 ago.

00:29:38.400 It also tells people a thing about making movies, that he shot the film in 2016, and

00:29:43.720 it actually dropped this year.

00:29:44.940 And that's not a particularly long time.

00:29:48.420 No, no, that happens.

00:29:49.300 Yeah.

00:29:49.600 It does.

00:29:50.100 So I want to check in with Elisha Krause and get questions from our DailyWire.com members,

00:29:54.780 especially questions if they happen to be about the season.

00:29:57.820 Elisha?

00:29:58.920 We have plenty of questions about the season, but this is a good point to remind people

00:30:02.680 that if they want to ask questions, then they should head over to DailyWire.com slash

00:30:06.820 subscribe and use that code WATCH, W-A-T-C-H, for all of you out there who are homeschooled

00:30:11.960 like me, to get that 20% off and get not one, but two leftist tears tumblers.

00:30:17.300 I think it's a great Christmas gift.

00:30:18.620 I love last minute shopping.

00:30:20.000 So go ahead, join me in that last minute shopping and get a Daily Wire membership for

00:30:23.500 someone in your life that you love or a liberal who you want to annoy.

00:30:26.460 The first question goes to the God King himself, Jeremy Boring.

00:30:29.780 Best Christmas movie ever?

00:30:31.760 Oh, best Christmas movie ever.

00:30:34.300 There's only one answer to this question.

00:30:35.220 There's only one.

00:30:35.680 For me, it's A Wonderful Life.

00:30:37.580 Of course.

00:30:38.260 Yeah, jingle all the way.

00:30:39.220 Absolutely the best Christmas film ever.

00:30:41.420 One of the few films that my father and I would make a point to try to watch together

00:30:46.140 every year.

00:30:47.880 It's funny, when I married my wife, she hated the film.

00:30:51.080 Yeah.

00:30:51.560 But I think now I've even, her heart has grown three sizes and we enjoy the film together.

00:30:56.940 I think that it is an absolute masterpiece.

00:31:01.680 Of course, it was not actually well received when the film was first released.

00:31:05.860 It sort of, it found its way, the hard way.

00:31:08.740 And I think that that's actually appropriate given the subject matter of the film.

00:31:12.720 It's very dark.

00:31:13.260 I mean, Lionel Barrymore does not get punished in the film.

00:31:15.720 Right?

00:31:16.040 He gets away with it.

00:31:16.700 He steals the money and he gets away with it.

00:31:17.840 Steals the money and gets away with it.

00:31:18.800 Can I just make an argument for a Christmas story as the best Christmas movie?

00:31:21.720 I'd like to hear this.

00:31:22.540 I think it just, it captures the nostalgia of childhood.

00:31:26.880 It's a movie that, first of all, I watched it with my kids for the first time.

00:31:31.300 You know, kids four and seven.

00:31:33.780 Twins are seven.

00:31:34.720 And none of them had seen it.

00:31:36.340 We all enjoyed it.

00:31:37.420 So, you know, I think a Christmas movie has to be a movie that the whole family can enjoy.

00:31:41.960 If I put It's a Wonderful Life on for my four-year-old, it's going to go over his head

00:31:44.740 or he'll be traumatized by the man trying to throw himself off the bridge.

00:31:47.500 But it captures, for kids, you know, you watch it and you relate to it because it's, you're

00:31:52.960 seeing it through the eyes of the child.

00:31:55.040 And as an adult, you watch it and you relate to the narrator and you're remembering back

00:31:59.800 to when you were a kid.

00:32:01.460 So it captures, it captures both experiences of Christmas.

00:32:05.460 I have one more thing to say about It's a Wonderful Life.

00:32:07.380 I love that movie.

00:32:07.980 It's really like a top ten movie for me easily.

00:32:10.280 But there's a solid case to be made that Bedford Falls is better off if George throws

00:32:15.280 himself off the bridge.

00:32:16.040 And the case is, and here is the case, the case is that George Bailey causes the subprime

00:32:21.560 mortgage crisis in the United States.

00:32:23.860 The case is that he is giving loans without any sort of collateral to people who absolutely

00:32:28.460 100% cannot pay back those loans.

00:32:30.620 And because of that, he sends his own bank into crisis.

00:32:33.360 And even if Uncle Drunk has not lost the money, people stop paying back their loans.

00:32:38.700 There is a massive crisis.

00:32:39.780 They have to re-seize all the property.

00:32:41.100 And Lionel Barrymore ends up running the town anyway, except legally speaking.

00:32:44.280 It is interesting that you might-

00:32:45.980 It's an FDR, but the truth is the movie was created as almost an ode to FDR in certain

00:32:48.500 ways.

00:32:48.860 Yeah.

00:32:49.220 It's funny to say that Mr. Potter might be the good guy of that film because I reread

00:32:55.300 A Christmas Carol this year, and I read the speech in which Ebenezer Scrooge explains to

00:33:01.720 Bob Cratchit why it's inappropriate that he be paid not to work on Christmas Day.

00:33:06.900 And I actually couldn't find any fault with the argument.

00:33:13.280 Keep in mind, he does give him the day off, and he does agree to pay him for it.

00:33:17.880 Yeah, yeah.

00:33:18.260 So he actually doesn't withhold Christmas from Bob Cratchit.

00:33:22.360 He just, before he gives him the day off and pays him for it, he explains why it's patently

00:33:27.120 unfair that he would be expected to do so.

00:33:29.760 And also, the thing is, people get the Grinch totally wrong.

00:33:32.520 You know, like the Grinch, you know, he wanted those presents.

00:33:35.340 Yeah, why couldn't he?

00:33:36.120 I haven't seen it in a while.

00:33:36.800 And he's got some weirdos down there singing and annoying while he's trying to sleep.

00:33:40.960 The Grinch is essentially a conservative wanting people to get off his yard.

00:33:44.160 That's all it is.

00:33:44.940 Get off my yard.

00:33:45.920 Michael, do you want to tell us why me, myself, and Irene is the best Christmas?

00:33:48.300 Yeah, no, it is.

00:33:49.080 And people don't get this, this subtle, esoteric text.

00:33:52.120 The one I will make a case for as, if not the best Christmas movie, the last great Christmas

00:33:57.400 movie is Home Alone.

00:33:59.200 One, because it's got Joe Pesci in it.

00:34:00.920 So that's something, it's a wonderful life, doesn't it?

00:34:02.520 And two, because Home Alone 2 has Donald Trump in it.

00:34:04.080 And because, that's, oh my gosh, I, you're, I'm sorry, I need to change.

00:34:07.540 Home Alone 2.

00:34:08.180 I need to change my mind.

00:34:09.280 Home Alone 2.

00:34:10.140 I re-watched Home Alone last year on a flight back for Christmas.

00:34:13.840 Movie totally holds up.

00:34:15.300 It's a, that is a terrific movie.

00:34:17.200 Very, it actually has a heart to it.

00:34:19.420 It's a, you know, it's like, it's both very funny, has a heart.

00:34:22.160 And for a 10-year-old kid, or however old Macaulay Culkin was, great performer.

00:34:25.980 Can I point out one, one problem with that movie?

00:34:27.680 Is young, my kids watched that movie for the first time a couple years ago.

00:34:30.920 Yeah.

00:34:31.540 And it's very influential to kids.

00:34:33.480 Yes.

00:34:33.680 And they get the idea of setting, so my, my son saw that movie when he was maybe six years old.

00:34:38.760 Yeah.

00:34:39.420 And I don't know how he got his hand on it, but he somehow got his hands on a nail.

00:34:43.860 And he put it, like, pointy end up in the middle of the floor.

00:34:47.860 Oh, no.

00:34:48.960 To set a booby trap for the burglars.

00:34:50.600 I almost stepped on it.

00:34:52.640 And he explained to me, he was setting a booby trap for the burglars.

00:34:54.860 And I told him, you can't do that.

00:34:56.200 And so he took the nail and he brought it out to the garage.

00:34:58.240 And I went out to the garage and he had just placed it again in the garage, pointy end up.

00:35:02.460 So that's, you know, it's.

00:35:03.840 That's true.

00:35:04.300 It has an influence on kids.

00:35:06.000 You do kind of forget when you, when you rewatch that movie, he already got them.

00:35:10.260 Like early on in his booby traps, he sort of got them.

00:35:12.500 So eventually he just becomes like the Marquis de Sade, you know.

00:35:16.380 Torture these guys.

00:35:17.420 Also, he has the worst parents in human history.

00:35:19.340 We agree on this.

00:35:20.160 I mean, they literally just forget him in the house for what, like a week?

00:35:22.700 I just like leave him there.

00:35:23.980 And he's partying it up.

00:35:24.900 And at no point does somebody say like, can I just, like no one in the entire town has a phone?

00:35:28.480 Like you just call the neighbor and be like, can you go over and check on him?

00:35:30.860 No, you know what?

00:35:31.300 He's fine.

00:35:31.620 He's probably fine.

00:35:32.340 He's like seven.

00:35:33.000 He can take care of himself.

00:35:33.960 He'll be fine.

00:35:34.500 Have you guys seen the classic Monty Python and the Flying Circus sketch called Classic Jape?

00:35:39.040 Where they, in this very prim and proper British way, explain broad physical slapstick comedy called Classic Jape.

00:35:49.960 And essentially, I think someone watched that sketch and then wrote Home Alone.

00:35:53.540 Because it is like stepping on nails, getting hit by a two by four, you know, and very prim proper.

00:35:59.360 I'll make one more case for a good Christmas movie, Meet Me in St. Louis, which is actually a great musical.

00:36:04.700 That's where Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas comes from, that movie.

00:36:08.120 It's actually a very good movie.

00:36:09.600 And there's a little girl in it named Margaret O'Brien who actually won an Oscar for her performance.

00:36:13.220 She's like seven.

00:36:14.060 And she really is very good.

00:36:15.000 Judy Garland is at the height of her powers.

00:36:17.020 Probably the most talented person, by the way, who ever worked in Hollywood is Judy Garland. 0.99

00:36:19.620 She's up there.

00:36:20.280 And it's a really good movie.

00:36:21.940 It holds up really well.

00:36:23.140 Excellent.

00:36:23.600 Alicia?

00:36:24.840 Well, I think we might already have Matt's answer to this, considering he doesn't like Nails or Home Alone.

00:36:29.940 But Matt, since you tend to hate everything, what's your least favorite Christmas movie?

00:36:35.620 Least favorite Christmas movie?

00:36:36.820 I should have a ready answer for that, I guess.

00:36:39.520 That's one area where I'm kind of a softie on Christmas movies.

00:36:42.300 I tend to actually like all of them.

00:36:44.420 I can't think of a Christmas movie I've seen that I actually hate.

00:36:46.840 Somehow, I haven't managed to hate a Christmas movie.

00:36:49.800 I have one.

00:36:50.880 Yeah.

00:36:51.080 The new Peanuts Christmas special.

00:36:55.060 I didn't even know they made a new one.

00:36:56.100 Yeah.

00:36:56.380 So like three years ago, after playing the Peanuts Christmas special for 50 years or something,

00:37:04.260 the network decided that they could, well, they didn't actually announce their decision,

00:37:09.300 but they decided it's very clear that they didn't want to play Linus reading the Gospel of Luke on television every year.

00:37:16.340 And so they created a brand new Peanuts Christmas special, even better than the old Christmas special.

00:37:22.520 And the first year, they played both of them.

00:37:24.760 And then the next year, I think they only played the new one because they're just rewriting history.

00:37:28.980 And they took the Gospel out?

00:37:30.300 Well, it's just a completely different story.

00:37:32.500 Yeah.

00:37:32.660 You know, it has nothing, it's not like a remake of the original.

00:37:35.920 It's just a different, here's the Peanuts kids having a whole other Christmas adventure that isn't in any way about the Gospel.

00:37:41.960 I would say, so that one's already my least favorite, even though I haven't seen it.

00:37:45.320 But actually, I just, I remembered A Christmas Vacation.

00:37:48.900 It's a classic by a lot of people's standards.

00:37:51.520 I never saw it.

00:37:52.700 I watched it with my wife last week for the first time.

00:37:56.660 And I made it 30 minutes and fell asleep.

00:37:59.000 It just, it didn't, it didn't capture my interest.

00:38:02.160 Matt.

00:38:02.860 And, yeah, I just, I, you know, I think you, here's what, here's, I think if you grew up watching it, then you like it because you grew up watching it.

00:38:09.300 That's probably fair.

00:38:10.100 I think an adult who sat down and out to watch it.

00:38:12.060 But I also love it because of the hit song, Christmas Vacation.

00:38:14.640 Fa la la la la in a ho ho ho, jingle jangle jingle as we go.

00:38:19.000 I think I fell asleep for that.

00:38:19.920 I was asleep by that time.

00:38:22.000 Does the Rudolph special count as a Christmas movie?

00:38:25.600 Sure.

00:38:25.780 It's only like 30 minutes long, right?

00:38:27.120 I mean, it's not.

00:38:28.080 Well, it's, I guess it counts.

00:38:29.660 Yeah.

00:38:29.960 There's a lot, a lot there.

00:38:30.760 By the way.

00:38:31.660 That's your least favorite?

00:38:32.520 No, no, I love it.

00:38:33.140 Oh, I was going to say that.

00:38:33.600 I just, I would have added that to the other list because, you know, the woke people started to like it last year.

00:38:38.900 Yeah.

00:38:39.040 Did you read the articles?

00:38:40.080 Because apparently the dentist is gay.

00:38:42.580 I thought they were saying Rudolph was gay and the whole thing was about how Rudolph is gay and all the other reindeer and that's why he's special.

00:38:47.500 Yeah.

00:38:47.980 But the dentist is definitely.

00:38:49.060 I don't think Rudolph's gay because he's a reindeer, but I do think, I do think the dentist. 0.96

00:38:51.940 By the way, there's a hole in the Rudolph story, which I was made aware of on, on that great source known as Twitter, which is that reindeer are colorblind.

00:38:57.140 So the red light actually wouldn't be all that helpful is what I was informed of.

00:39:00.860 No, that's not true.

00:39:01.940 I think it's fair to say that in a foggy Christmas gale, any color light coming from the nose of a reindeer would be helpful.

00:39:12.080 Plus also the light.

00:39:12.980 Like the fact that it's red light.

00:39:14.500 And does Santa not have a flashlight though that he can?

00:39:17.000 He's magical.

00:39:17.880 He's flying through the air and he needs like a reindeer with a nose that lights up.

00:39:20.620 But he doesn't have wings, you know, he's not like, and also the light is not for the other reindeer, right?

00:39:25.320 The light is for Santa.

00:39:27.140 That's right.

00:39:27.460 Who's commanding the fleet.

00:39:29.840 Won't you guide my sleigh, not guide the other reindeer?

00:39:32.560 That's exactly right.

00:39:33.700 Unbelievable.

00:39:34.140 I'm glad we could settle this.

00:39:35.340 Absolutely.

00:39:36.160 Elisha, we're going to be back with you directly so that we can answer a few more wonderful Christmas questions.

00:39:40.740 First, we're going to talk about our friends over at Bravo Company Manufacturing.

00:39:48.880 When the framers wrote the Constitution, the very first thing that they did was make sacred the rights of, well, all of us, to free speech, to share our ideas without limitation by the government.

00:39:58.940 The second thing they did was to secure the right of individuals to protect that speech and their lives with force if needed.

00:40:05.100 Owning a rifle is a heavy responsibility.

00:40:07.440 Building a rifle is no less a responsibility.

00:40:10.140 Bravo Company Manufacturing, BCM as we call them for short, builds a professional-grade product which is built to combat standards.

00:40:17.480 That's because BCM believes that the same level of protection should be provided to every American, regardless of whether or not they're a private citizen or a professional.

00:40:24.800 The people at BCM assume that when a rifle leaves their shop, it will be used in a life-or-death situation by a responsible citizen, law enforcement officer, or a soldier overseas.

00:40:33.480 With that in mind, every component of a BCM rifle is hand-assembled and tested by Americans.

00:40:39.480 The people at BCM feel it's their moral duty as Americans to provide tools that will not fail the end user when it's not just a paper target, but someone coming to do you harm.

00:40:50.060 BCM also knows that making a reliable, life-saving tool is only half the story.

00:40:54.640 They know you have to learn how to use the thing.

00:40:56.040 So the company also works with leading instructors of marksmanship from top levels of America's special operations forces, from Marine Corps force reconnaissance to U.S. Army special operation forces, connecting them with other Americans to help them learn.

00:41:09.560 These top instructors teach the skills necessary to defend yourself, your family, or to defend your neighbor.

00:41:15.380 The best part about BCM is that they will not deny you your rifle if you ask Santa Claus for it.

00:41:22.440 Listen, kids, maybe Santa's elves don't make us find a rifle, as our friends over at Bravo Company Manufacturing, but Santa knows where to find them.

00:41:31.100 And the place to find them is at bravocompanymfg.com.

00:41:34.940 That's bravocompanymfg.com.

00:41:37.760 Benjamin.

00:41:38.160 Also, small children don't order rifles.

00:41:40.040 Your parents were adults.

00:41:41.000 They're the ones who probably just wanted to clear that.

00:41:42.860 No, that's fair.

00:41:43.860 But in the meantime, parents, what you should do to defend your children is have a Bravo Company Manufacturing Rifle.

00:41:50.300 All you have to do is head over to bravocompanymfg.com.

00:41:53.160 You can discover more about their products, special offers, upcoming news.

00:41:55.820 That is bravocompanymfg.com.

00:41:58.100 If you need more convincing, find out even more about BCM and the awesome people who make their products at youtube.com slash bravocompanyusa.

00:42:04.760 Quick note, by the way, on the movie thing.

00:42:07.260 How did we go through that entire conversation and not say Die Hard?

00:42:10.160 Die Hard is 100% a Christmas movie.

00:42:11.840 Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?

00:42:13.840 It is 100% a Christmas movie.

00:42:15.980 Absolutely a Christmas movie.

00:42:16.680 Of course it's a Christmas movie.

00:42:17.420 It is.

00:42:17.600 It's written into the script.

00:42:18.400 It happens on Christmas.

00:42:19.480 Yeah.

00:42:20.660 They literally write into the script a bunch of, I have a machine gun now, ho ho.

00:42:26.420 I mean, these are all Christmas jokes.

00:42:28.240 Now, I did see an excellent commentary that suggested actually that Die Hard is a Hanukkah movie.

00:42:32.060 The case was that a small group of a single man, actually, a mercenary, a small group, fights off a vast and more superiorly armed foe, right?

00:42:47.300 Using just the resources.

00:42:48.460 Who's almost certainly German.

00:42:50.860 Yeah.

00:42:51.360 Yeah, right.

00:42:51.920 That's correct.

00:42:52.740 Yeah.

00:42:52.840 Right?

00:42:53.080 That's exactly.

00:42:53.720 I mean, he actually says that he shops at the same place that Arafat gets his suits.

00:42:58.460 He does.

00:42:58.720 That is one of the lines in the film.

00:42:59.880 That's right.

00:43:00.300 Okay, so you've got an anti-Semite who's taking over this big building over there, and then you have one man who's fighting them off with vastly underwhelming arms, correct?

00:43:09.740 And then there's a bunch of kindling in the building at the end.

00:43:11.920 Mm-hmm.

00:43:12.440 Mm-hmm.

00:43:12.740 Clearly a Hanukkah movie.

00:43:13.920 Wow.

00:43:14.020 Clearly a Hanukkah movie.

00:43:15.360 While we're on the topic of Hanukkah, you know, I don't want to get too political, but I think it's safe to say that someone who at least believes that they're about to be the vice president of the United States

00:43:25.840 explain to the good people of America the true meaning of Hanukkah in this delightful video clip.

00:43:34.020 Hey, everybody.

00:43:34.800 We're here to talk about one of our favorite holidays in our big modern family.

00:43:39.780 Hanukkah.

00:43:40.740 And why do you love Hanukkah?

00:43:42.260 I love Hanukkah because it really is about the light.

00:43:48.880 Oh, God.

00:43:49.280 And bringing light where there has been darkness.

00:43:51.460 Is that her husband?

00:43:52.440 It is.

00:43:52.940 And there is so much work to be done in the world to bring light.

00:43:59.120 And it is a celebration of always Tikkun Alam. 0.95

00:44:03.960 No!

00:44:04.440 Which is about fighting for justice.

00:44:07.680 Incorrect.

00:44:08.560 And fighting for the dignity of all people.

00:44:10.880 No!

00:44:11.060 And it's about rededication.

00:44:13.060 To what?

00:44:13.460 And it's about joy.

00:44:14.380 And it's about joy.

00:44:15.280 And it's about spreading joy around the world.

00:44:17.580 Oh, sweet baby.

00:44:18.280 Oh, I can't say that.

00:44:18.820 And your family and your friends and your neighbors and your community.

00:44:21.260 That's important right now.

00:44:22.560 So that's what we are doing, is to wish everyone a happy Hanukkah.

00:44:26.880 Happy Hanukkah.

00:44:28.440 And to your family from ours, we wish you all the best.

00:44:33.320 Should we light the candle?

00:44:34.480 Yeah.

00:44:34.840 Yeah, let's do it.

00:44:35.660 Let's light a candle, guys.

00:44:36.520 Let's do it.

00:44:37.120 It's like a candle.

00:44:38.320 Oh, my gosh.

00:44:39.220 Will they successfully complete the task?

00:44:41.600 They did it.

00:44:42.560 Oh, my gosh.

00:44:43.220 Look at that.

00:44:43.680 They lit the shamash, and then they lit the previously lit candle, as you can already see there.

00:44:47.980 Wow.

00:44:48.800 Well, they had to have a dress rehearsal.

00:44:50.100 That was magical right there.

00:44:52.040 That is the worst Hanukkah video I have ever seen in all my life.

00:44:54.160 Does that not hold up?

00:44:55.220 Is that not what Hanukkah means?

00:44:55.740 No, every element of that is incorrect.

00:44:57.320 Every single element of it is wrong.

00:44:58.660 Walk us through it, Ben.

00:44:59.320 Okay, so the story of Hanukkah is extremely bloody, which is why it is awesome. 1.00

00:45:03.420 So the story is about...

00:45:04.360 That's why Santa wears red.

00:45:07.480 Yeah.

00:45:07.700 It is about the Seleucid Empire, which are the Greeks, okay?

00:45:13.220 They take over the Holy Land, and essentially, they install a high priest in the temple who

00:45:19.120 then proceeds to violate all of the temple precepts.

00:45:21.920 They ban all Jewish practice throughout Israel, and the Maccabees rise up, and they throw the 0.94

00:45:26.540 Greeks out, and then they rekindle the light in the temple.

00:45:29.040 The light of the menorah, actually, historically speaking, that's only discussed in the Talmud,

00:45:34.460 which is like a solid 400 years after Hanukkah.

00:45:38.820 Hanukkah originally was instituted as a military victory.

00:45:41.240 It would be sort of like if Jews today had a holiday for the 1967 Six-Day War, which, 0.65

00:45:45.440 by the way, I think they sort of should.

00:45:46.780 In any case, the basic idea was they had thrown the Greeks out of the Holy Land.

00:45:51.780 They then proceeded to set up the Maccabean Empire, which lasts for a couple of hundred years. 0.68

00:45:55.220 And it is a bloody, bloody war that did not just concern Jew and Greek, but also Hellenized 0.79

00:46:00.740 Jews who had gone along with the Greeks on the path of secularization.

00:46:03.980 So basically, it's fighting against all of the secularization that a lot of people on

00:46:08.300 the left stand for, the forced secularization from the top down, anti-religion from the top

00:46:12.100 down.

00:46:12.700 And when she talks about rededication, you mean like to the temple where they had actual

00:46:16.380 sacrifices to God, like that kind of rededication?

00:46:18.840 Because I'm not so sure that she's super hot on all of that.

00:46:21.340 What it is not about is Lady MacLightlight and Joyy McJoy Joy.

00:46:25.480 And whenever a Jew says Tikkun Olam, you know automatically they don't know anything about 1.00

00:46:29.840 what they are talking about.

00:46:31.080 Okay, Tikkun Olam is code for, I love the Democratic Party platform and I'm going to pretend that

00:46:35.120 it's actually in the Bible.

00:46:36.100 That's what Tikkun Olam is code for. 0.99

00:46:37.680 Tikkun Olam, for people who don't know, it goes back to a sort of populistic idea.

00:46:41.180 It's spoken a couple of times in Jewish texts as a phrase, but it's not a core part of Jewish

00:46:45.920 philosophy until you get to late 19th, early 20th century.

00:46:49.260 Tikkun Olam is based on the idea that when God created the universe in a Kabbalistic

00:46:52.480 way, he shattered the vessel.

00:46:54.300 Okay, and that it is our job to, by performing the mitzvot, by performing the acts that he

00:46:58.820 prescribes for us to do, we are rectifying the breaches that were created in God's creation

00:47:02.720 when he created the universe because he had to provide room for human freedom.

00:47:04.940 He had to provide room for us to make bad decisions and to sin.

00:47:07.840 And so every time we don't sin and we forego that, we are making the world a better place.

00:47:10.620 The way that the left has interpreted Tikkun Olam is to complete the world, which means

00:47:14.740 to them environmentalism.

00:47:16.560 It means to them social justice.

00:47:17.820 Christians have this very similar concept called restoration theology.

00:47:21.280 Or the Pelagian heresy, is it?

00:47:22.620 That's right.

00:47:23.420 Essentially, that we have to make the world a better place for God.

00:47:27.120 God will be happy and he'll love us and he'll come back to us once we've restored sort of

00:47:30.920 an Edenic.

00:47:31.740 Exactly.

00:47:32.400 So this whole Tikkun Olam stuff, what that is, is code for Michael Lerner, who's a wild 0.99

00:47:36.800 leftist, had a magazine called Tikkun, which is just a journal of radicalism.

00:47:40.480 And this has become, you know, kind of the rote phraseology that you use when you don't

00:47:44.800 actually know anything about Judaism.

00:47:45.660 And you go to you go to show like once a year for half a day on Yom Kippur, break for

00:47:49.080 lunch.

00:47:49.620 Like that's that's pretty much what it is.

00:47:51.120 And so like that is extraordinarily galling and insulting.

00:47:55.260 And the fact that there are a lot of Jews who don't take Judaism super seriously, who

00:47:58.460 find that inspiring.

00:47:59.560 If that inspires you, by all means, if Lady MacLeighton, Joy McJoy, Joy and Kamala Harris

00:48:03.740 telling you about Chanuka inspires you, then then really like.

00:48:06.260 So Kamala Harris is doing to Judaism what Biden does to Catholicism every time he speaks

00:48:10.740 about it, pretty much.

00:48:11.480 That's yeah, that's exactly right.

00:48:12.860 Yeah.

00:48:13.280 Except that we don't have the power to deny Kamala Harris communion.

00:48:16.240 That's true.

00:48:16.920 That's right.

00:48:17.440 Catholics have it, but they don't use it.

00:48:19.100 They use it like once every 20 years.

00:48:20.920 You know, it's a big event.

00:48:22.020 Yeah, we celebrate it.

00:48:22.960 Did you, by the way, did you see that article?

00:48:24.220 I mean, OK, we got political for one second.

00:48:25.880 You see that article?

00:48:26.440 I'm sure you did.

00:48:27.100 Both of you.

00:48:27.460 That article in the Washington Post about how Biden was going to redefine Catholicism.

00:48:30.740 There's this whole op-ed about how Biden was going to be the new Catholic leader.

00:48:35.420 It was going to be like the Pope and Biden, and they were going to lead Catholicism into

00:48:39.000 a new future, which is exciting.

00:48:40.420 So explain to me how that's going to work.

00:48:41.920 Matt Walsh.

00:48:43.160 Well, the new future looks exactly like what we've been living in for the last 60 years.

00:48:46.700 That's the interesting thing when they talk about Catholicism, just like the Pope is supposed

00:48:50.980 to create this new, it's exactly what we, it's exactly the situation we've been living

00:48:55.700 in for 60 years.

00:48:56.420 This is watered down, neutered, exactly what you're talking about with Judaism, taking 1.00

00:49:00.720 all, everything that's substantive and real and all the pain and suffering and realness

00:49:05.980 out of it and creating it and turning into this sort of, this thing that can be easily

00:49:12.300 washed down and can be summarized in talking points.

00:49:15.680 Yeah, I think the line from, I think it was Niebuhr, I'm just going to say it was Niebuhr,

00:49:19.520 but I don't remember who it was, says it's a God without wrath leading a people without

00:49:23.500 sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross. 0.93

00:49:27.920 That's exactly what I was trying to say.

00:49:29.460 That's what I was going for.

00:49:31.500 I was getting there.

00:49:32.460 Let's thank Niebuhr or whoever said it.

00:49:34.120 Yeah, what's his name?

00:49:35.560 So I want to talk about our holiday traditions that we've each had in our childhoods and up

00:49:42.340 until today, you know, three of us are parents, one of us about to be very soon.

00:49:47.220 Good luck to that kid. 0.94

00:49:48.180 Oh my God.

00:49:50.400 Yeah, proof as Ben sometimes says, proof that there is a God and he hates us.

00:49:54.140 And Michael Knowles will soon be a father.

00:49:58.080 But, you know, what did Christmas, and let's actually speak somewhat specifically about

00:50:03.320 Christmas because Ben, I actually think you have an interesting answer about this as well.

00:50:07.200 But what did Christmas mean to each of the four of us?

00:50:10.820 It was the central holiday.

00:50:13.000 You know, in Christianity, Easter is actually the central holiday as a matter of theology.

00:50:16.580 But for little kids, Christmas is, and especially for Italian little kids,

00:50:20.280 Christmas Eve especially, you know, you have 7,000 dishes.

00:50:24.520 Family all comes together.

00:50:25.800 It was the, truly, it was the center of my entire year.

00:50:31.160 It was like, without exception, like the greatest memories for almost all of my childhood.

00:50:39.480 And I think it's because, I think it's a regional thing, actually.

00:50:43.500 I think in New York, people care about it more when the snow is coming down.

00:50:46.640 It's one of the reasons I'm glad to be in Tennessee now is it does get a little chillier.

00:50:50.080 It snows here like twice a year or something.

00:50:52.240 And so all of that matters, you know.

00:50:55.000 I think in different regions of the world, it's a little bit different.

00:50:58.960 And we didn't even do midnight mass, by the way.

00:51:00.920 We did a little bit more of the kind of, we'd go to mass maybe Christmas Day,

00:51:03.960 but we'd do more of the secular thing.

00:51:06.320 I mean, there was, yeah, it is, it's all about Christ, you know, obviously, and all about mass, hopefully.

00:51:13.300 But it just reverberates such that I think in the modern American culture, that is the holiday, you know.

00:51:21.200 Or there just aren't, isn't much of a holiday for kids.

00:51:24.360 Yeah, Matt.

00:51:24.780 Yeah, I would be in line with that.

00:51:28.180 That's why I was talking about Christmas story, because I think that that captures what it felt like as a kid growing up, you know, in relatively modern America.

00:51:35.720 It is, it's the, it's the, it's the main event of, of childhood.

00:51:40.420 Now, for me, you know, I was, it was interesting for me, because I grew up in a heavily Jewish, sort of a wealthy Jewish area.

00:51:46.260 So I remember being very jealous of the Jewish kids, because they would get, they would get eight, they would get really nice gifts every day for over a week. 0.97

00:51:56.080 I had to celebrate that this year with my kids.

00:51:57.940 I have a four-year-old.

00:51:58.600 So after day four, he was like, I don't like some of these, and I like others.

00:52:00.960 Like, you know what, you're getting them all tonight, and be quiet.

00:52:03.700 Yeah, that was, I always felt that that was, you know, Christians, we used to do 12 days of Christmas, and so I always felt that that, I would have liked that.

00:52:10.040 But we had, I had six, five brothers and sisters, six kids in the family, so we got a couple of gifts.

00:52:15.520 But, you know, we didn't go overboard in the materialism aspect of it, but it was, it was just a great, it was the, the thing you look forward to all year.

00:52:23.960 We tried to do that 12 days of Christmas thing.

00:52:27.080 I never once got 11 pipers piping.

00:52:29.220 No, no, and you wait every year.

00:52:31.400 You say, I hope this is the year for the pipers.

00:52:32.720 You get the Lord's leaping, though.

00:52:34.080 Well, naturally.

00:52:36.000 We're not savages.

00:52:38.440 Ben, what was Christmas, what was the season for you?

00:52:40.900 Well, I mean, so, a few things.

00:52:42.700 One, Chinese food.

00:52:43.380 I think that it's, yeah, Chinese food.

00:52:44.720 There are a few things that I think are worthwhile noting here.

00:52:47.760 One is that when I was growing up, I went to public school, and I was in public school.

00:52:50.800 It was not verboten to do Christmas things at public school, and I think that's very important.

00:52:54.600 I mean, the fact is that we used to be a country where there were a couple of things that were intertwined, and when you remove one, you're not going to get the other.

00:53:00.420 And that is, you would have Ten Commandments posted in the classroom, and you would also have people doing, like, Christmas stuff at Christmas.

00:53:06.360 And you remove one, and you're going to end up removing the other, because when you remove the religious basis for the Ten Commandments, whichever religion you're practicing, you're going to end up removing the Ten Commandments from the classroom also.

00:53:15.780 So, I mean, when I was growing up, my sister, who's now married to a rabbi who is one of the more prominent people in the Orthodox Union, in the Orthodox community, she played an elf in the Christmas play.

00:53:25.980 I was singing, you know, Christmas songs on stage in public school.

00:53:29.680 My family, as a joke on Christmas, would go to Jewish houses and carol, because we can all sing, so we would do, like, four-part harmony to Silent Night.

00:53:35.880 There's a sort of famous apocryphal story.

00:53:37.580 I think it might be a real story, actually, but I don't know which two rabbis it was, where there were two rabbis in the United States who were very, who were Orthodox and, you know, very prominent, and they'd both gone to public school.

00:53:46.300 They ended up in the back of a taxi cab together, and one said to the other, yeah, you know, I went to public school, and the other said, I did, too.

00:53:50.840 They said, I don't believe you. Prove it.

00:53:52.100 And so they're in the back of the cab singing Silent Night to each other, and that's how they know that they went to.

00:53:55.460 It went to public school.

00:53:56.720 I think that something has been lost in the country when that's not the case, and I don't feel insulted at all.

00:54:01.760 I feel very, again, I feel, as a Jew, unbelievably grateful to a country that because it is, not in spite of its Christianity, because it is Christian, has become so unbelievably welcoming to people like me, to Jews.

00:54:13.360 I think that, as you're seeing on the modern left, which is increasingly secular and increasingly anti-Semitic at the same time, I think that there is a tie between those two things.

00:54:21.840 So I will also say that one of the best Hanukkah gifts that I got was tied into a Christmas story.

00:54:27.440 My parents on a Hanukkah, this is probably when I was like 18, as a joke, for Hanukkah, they gave me the pink bunny suit from a Christmas story, and then they'd hidden the sword, Aragorn's sword, from Lord of the Rings behind the piano.

00:54:41.780 So that after I put on the bunny suit, then they let me have Aragorn's sword, so I still have somewhere in my house Elendril, the sword of the West.

00:54:50.640 The sword of the West.

00:54:51.360 Indeed.

00:54:51.820 And the bunny suit.

00:54:52.660 And the bunny suit, which has made a reappearance.

00:54:54.960 Yeah, a few Christmases ago, we did make a Daily Wire video featuring the bunny suit.

00:54:59.880 So much like you guys, Christmas for me was the holiday of the year.

00:55:07.220 My parents would go all out with gift giving.

00:55:10.240 We weren't a wealthy family, but they would really spend at Christmas probably more than they should have.

00:55:18.440 It became a little bit of a problem for me as I got a little bit older, because actually, I don't know why, but I don't like to receive gifts, and I particularly don't like to receive gifts.

00:55:27.500 Cheap gifts that aren't very expensive.

00:55:28.760 Yeah, I know, I know.

00:55:29.600 Gifts from other people that you open in front of other people.

00:55:32.200 Yeah, yeah.

00:55:33.520 It's not a moral issue.

00:55:34.960 It's actually a...

00:55:35.740 It's awkward, because most people don't like it.

00:55:37.140 Yeah.

00:55:39.000 But we made a big to-do about Christmas, a big family dinner every year.

00:55:43.740 We'd eat enchiladas or something different than Thanksgiving food, which I never actually liked, but I always loved whatever got made at Christmas.

00:55:53.500 And watch It's a Wonderful Life with my dad.

00:55:56.760 I think, as I've been saying all night, I think it's a quintessential American holiday.

00:56:01.800 I had an argument with our friend, Strangeland Elf, on the Twitters, because she grew up overseas in Mongolia primarily, and I think maybe Thailand.

00:56:11.600 And as a result, she has some opinions that are maybe common among people who grew up overseas.

00:56:18.940 For example, she loves soccer, and she doesn't like Santa Claus. 0.96

00:56:23.820 She grew up very religious, but overseas.

00:56:26.060 She didn't experience American Christmas.

00:56:27.780 She experienced Christmas, an important holiday in her life, but she didn't experience American Christmas.

00:56:31.700 And she was in countries where, listen, I don't have any problem if they want to play soccer in Mongolia.

00:56:36.580 It's wealthy Western nations playing soccer that I hate.

00:56:41.680 And she was kind of going on on the Twitters about how bad Santa Claus is, and you shouldn't teach your kids about Santa Claus.

00:56:47.080 And she was just getting racial like crazy. 0.91

00:56:49.560 People were so ticked off at her.

00:56:51.420 That is the least popular opinion you can have.

00:56:54.520 And this is what I told her.

00:56:55.920 I said, you're missing the Americanness of Santa Claus.

00:57:02.220 You're missing the importance of American Christmas to Americans.

00:57:07.380 You're making maybe a theological point about Santa and Christ, but what you're missing is what Christmas story captures so perfectly.

00:57:15.600 What Ben's describing, even from his childhood as a young Jewish American, that there is this American holiday that we all celebrate, that we have a nostalgia for, that is formative.

00:57:26.140 In its way, it's formative for millions and millions of Americans.

00:57:29.240 You've reminded me, just one note on Santa Claus, because some people think he's a totally sort of fictional character.

00:57:35.700 And that's not true.

00:57:36.940 It's kind of an amalgam of different characters, but it goes back to St. Nicholas, who was a real person.

00:57:41.800 And, you know, we got this jolly old St. Nicholas, I think, he gives gifts to kids.

00:57:47.360 St. Nicholas was extraordinarily tough and somewhat aggressive sometimes.

00:57:52.400 Very famously, at the Council of Nicaea, he was debating the arch-heretic Arius, who had this view that Christ was not divine.

00:58:01.160 And Santa, St. Nicholas, got so infuriated that he walked up and just punched Arius right in the face, because fists don't care about your feelings, you know.

00:58:10.040 And he would just go in there and just wreck him.

00:58:11.860 So when you think about this soft, jolly, secular St. Nick.

00:58:15.660 Can I just say, in defense of that view, because anytime someone has a curmudgeonly view, I'm always...

00:58:20.940 You're always for it.

00:58:21.960 Yeah, even if I don't agree, I respect that she voiced that.

00:58:25.140 You know what's actually, before you say this, I actually told her on Twitter when she was saying this.

00:58:29.400 I said, this is your most Matt Walsh opinion.

00:58:31.480 It is.

00:58:31.780 It's more Matt Walsh than the actual Matt Walsh opinion, because we do Santa Claus with our kids.

00:58:36.580 But I think that there is an interesting thing that we kind of just gloss over, which is that you are lying to...

00:58:44.580 Hopefully there's no kids watching right now, but you are lying to your children.

00:58:47.600 You are actually lying to them about something.

00:58:50.540 And when they're young, you know...

00:58:53.600 What are you lying about?

00:58:56.380 You're telling them about Santa.

00:58:58.660 Let me just...

00:58:59.580 What I would say is, when a child is, say, four years old, very young, he has no way to differentiate between fact and fiction.

00:59:08.860 If you tell him Spider-Man isn't real, he doesn't know what that means, because he sees Spider-Man on TV.

00:59:15.120 No, he's right there.

00:59:16.020 Right.

00:59:16.180 But as a child gets a little bit older, and they start to understand the difference between what is real and what isn't, you have to go...

00:59:23.640 You have to actually try to deceive them to make them believe certain things.

00:59:27.180 True.

00:59:27.820 And so there is an actual ethical quandary there.

00:59:31.880 I mean, we do it with our kids.

00:59:32.900 We're just lying to them, to their face.

00:59:34.720 I just wonder, if we're being completely honest with ourselves, how much of what we say to our children is true?

00:59:43.120 Like, why are we stagling out Santa Claus?

00:59:45.780 Yeah.

00:59:46.120 I will admit that one of the not-as-pleasant Christmas memories of my childhood was a little Christian girl from across the street coming over to our house right around Christmas time, 1.00

00:59:54.340 and her explaining to me Santa Claus, and me being five, and being like, well, I have some news.

01:00:01.960 And her parents did call up my parents, rather upset about all of this.

01:00:06.180 And it's like, well...

01:00:07.020 My parents are like, well, is it true, or is it not true?

01:00:09.680 And the thing is, parents...

01:00:10.840 What can you do?

01:00:11.260 You can't unring that bell at that point.

01:00:12.380 They tell a lot of lies to their kids.

01:00:13.700 They'll say, you know, yeah, there's Santa Claus, or yeah, I'll be right back, I'm getting a pack of cigarettes.

01:00:17.480 Like, they'll say a lot of things.

01:00:19.140 Some of them are true, some of them are true.

01:00:20.360 What I would say, I think if your kid goes up to you and looks you in the eye and asks you the question, is this true?

01:00:26.380 I think at that point, you've got to...

01:00:28.380 Because you don't want to look them in the eye and just directly lie to them.

01:00:30.580 Because then eventually you've got to come back a year later and say, you know what, I actually was lying to you about that.

01:00:34.820 No, I think if they look you in the eye and they say, is this true, you should tell them that it isn't and never give them another gift.

01:00:40.240 Thanks for ruining the magic of the season.

01:00:41.860 Do you want to know the answer?

01:00:43.060 Do you want to know the answer?

01:00:44.800 Not all questions have good answers.

01:00:46.560 It's the monkey's paw kid.

01:00:47.880 Yeah.

01:00:49.340 I do think, this is an embarrassing story, but when I was, you know, when I, I don't know, six, seven, I figured it out.

01:00:56.000 You know, the jig was up, there's no Santa Claus.

01:00:58.240 Do you remember figuring it out and being like really upset about it?

01:01:00.780 No, I wasn't upset about it.

01:01:02.000 But I was just like, you know, obviously this isn't real and my parents are doing this.

01:01:07.580 And I still went along and I liked it and everything.

01:01:09.720 But this is the honest to goodness truth.

01:01:11.360 Then around nine or ten.

01:01:12.940 Yeah.

01:01:13.940 I actually got confused.

01:01:15.540 Much, so most kids, I feel like I was on the early side of figuring out that Santa isn't real.

01:01:19.740 Yeah.

01:01:19.940 But then I was, I had a resurgence of, of, of thoughts about Santa way after everyone had given up on Santa.

01:01:25.780 And it's because we were listening to KLL, the local country radio station there in, out of Lubbock, Texas.

01:01:32.140 On Christmas Eve, we were driving around Ransom Canyon looking at all the beautiful Christmas lights.

01:01:37.100 And I, I heard the disc jockey say, you know, we're, we're, we have an update here from NORAD.

01:01:44.580 And this Air Force official came on the radio and said, you know, we've been tracking Santa over the North Pole by radar.

01:01:54.840 He's about, you know, he's about to enter airspace of Newfoundland and all this kind of stuff.

01:01:59.160 And I actually, I'm nine or ten, I don't know.

01:02:00.880 And I thought, wait a minute.

01:02:03.300 Wait, what?

01:02:04.140 The American military would not lie.

01:02:06.380 No.

01:02:06.960 There's no way.

01:02:07.840 No, never.

01:02:08.500 Yeah.

01:02:09.060 There's no way that an actual officer in the Air Force would just be saying something to fool kids.

01:02:14.900 Maybe I've been wrong.

01:02:15.820 It wasn't.

01:02:16.460 Maybe I've been wrong about this whole thing.

01:02:18.040 And it was only at the moment you learned about the Gulf of Tonkin resolution.

01:02:21.840 Did you see Fauci just did this?

01:02:24.160 Fauci went on CNN and he said, listen, I know kids are worried that Santa can't come because of travel bans and all that.

01:02:29.740 But I went up personally and I vaccinated Santa.

01:02:32.320 So Santa has the vaccine.

01:02:33.200 And I thought, wait a second, buddy.

01:02:35.660 Two days ago, you went on TV and said, even after you get the vaccine, you're still not allowed to travel.

01:02:41.520 So Fauci, maintaining the sort of consistency he's had from the very beginning of this virus, goes on and Santa plays by a different rule.

01:02:49.340 He's magical and he's 800 years old and he's overweight.

01:02:53.020 There's no world he doesn't have diabetes.

01:02:55.000 Yes.

01:02:55.620 There's no world he doesn't have diabetes.

01:02:57.100 I mean, he drinks Coke.

01:02:58.100 Like for 100 years.

01:02:59.300 100 years straight.

01:03:00.700 You both said that you weren't upset when you learned at Santa Claus because I was devastated.

01:03:06.080 Were you really?

01:03:07.460 Yeah.

01:03:07.720 Well, you thought that there was this magical man coming into your home to bring you gifts flying with reindeer.

01:03:12.500 And then you realize that all that's a lie.

01:03:15.500 Your whole, all this magic in your life is just gone.

01:03:18.380 Are we just sociopaths or something?

01:03:20.360 When I found out.

01:03:21.540 This is why I am a sociopath.

01:03:22.880 This is how I became who I am now.

01:03:24.700 It was in that moment.

01:03:26.080 All his joy left him and never came back.

01:03:28.280 The only thing I love about this is that now you and Strangeland Elf have fully bonded as haters of Santa Claus who, I guess, not only believe, but have indeed experienced having a childhood shattered by the lives of your parents.

01:03:41.360 I guess, you know.

01:03:42.660 It also does go to.

01:03:43.140 Maybe your dad just didn't raise you right.

01:03:44.460 My dad raised me never to trust anything.

01:03:46.260 It does go to how many, like, things, if you think about them, become slightly creepy.

01:03:50.680 Like a man creeping into your house through the chimney at night.

01:03:53.080 Yeah.

01:03:53.440 To drop things off, like, in your house.

01:03:55.160 And he has elves, at least the way I was taught it, that the elves are spying on you throughout the year.

01:04:00.180 Oh.

01:04:00.900 I don't know.

01:04:01.160 Did you guys have that?

01:04:02.320 In mine, it was like a sweatshop.

01:04:04.260 They were just sort of locked into the North Pole.

01:04:06.100 Well, because how does Santa know?

01:04:08.020 Well, he sees you when you're sleeping and he knows when you're awake.

01:04:10.980 I was told it was the elves that are spying.

01:04:13.020 Well, I mean, breaking news.

01:04:14.760 Joe Biden is about to introduce Santa as ambassador to China.

01:04:19.520 That's true.

01:04:21.320 Sweatshop policy.

01:04:23.500 And the spying, actually.

01:04:24.220 And the spying.

01:04:24.800 Actually, all of them.

01:04:25.640 Yeah.

01:04:25.760 The best thing about Santa Claus is that he has a luscious beard.

01:04:29.940 And a man is judged not only by his character, but by his whiskers.

01:04:34.240 Sorry, Ben.

01:04:35.120 Yeah.

01:04:35.360 This is why you need beard supply.

01:04:37.640 Not only does it take guts to wear a beard, it takes guts to grow a beard.

01:04:42.300 But a beard is the mark of a man.

01:04:44.940 And I do not say that lightly, Michael.

01:04:46.820 Your cigars live in the finest humidors.

01:04:49.780 You're prized spirits in your choice decanters.

01:04:53.160 Quality must be cared for with quality.

01:04:56.340 So why should your beard take a hit?

01:04:58.600 Guys, your facial hair is deserving of the kind of time and attention that you give to all your other crap.

01:05:05.020 Quality must be cared for.

01:05:07.500 Quantity.

01:05:08.620 Quality.

01:05:09.480 There's a typo in the teleprompter, and I don't actually know what I was saying.

01:05:12.760 Your beard is important.

01:05:14.580 And that's why beard supply should be your only supply of beard care products.

01:05:19.300 You aren't going to get that good groomed look if you don't groom. 0.91

01:05:23.520 And you won't have a beard without boasting about if you don't make the best in the business a part of your daily routine.

01:05:30.980 Sure, there are a lot of beard products out there, but are they 100% all natural?

01:05:36.140 Made in the USA with soap, balms, oils, and accessory to boot?

01:05:40.680 Based out of my proud homeland of Texas?

01:05:44.360 No!

01:05:45.300 Take my favorite product, for example.

01:05:47.160 The old-fashioned beard oil.

01:05:49.300 Aged over two years.

01:05:51.380 That is quality.

01:05:52.560 And that is how you will grow the finest beard on the block.

01:05:57.440 Or, at the Daily Wire, the finest beard on Earth.

01:06:04.020 So, as a merry little Christmas present from Beard Supply, you can get 25% off of your order with code DW25.

01:06:10.860 Go to BeardSupply.com and use the promo code DW25.

01:06:14.380 That's DW25 for 25% off all the oils, all the soaps, all the balms, all the grooming supplies at BeardSupply.com.

01:06:21.380 Code DW25.

01:06:23.920 What are you waiting for?

01:06:24.880 Me to figure out how to read a teleprompter?

01:06:26.440 You're going to be waiting a long time.

01:06:27.760 Don't do that.

01:06:28.920 Go to BeardSupply.com.

01:06:31.060 DW25.

01:06:32.480 Be the number one beard on the block, wherever you are. 0.70

01:06:36.840 You can have a beard.

01:06:38.160 Like jolly old St. Nick.

01:06:40.040 Elisha, bail me out of this ad read, please.

01:06:44.440 I mean, y'all should have just let me do it, because we all know my husband has the best beard on the face of the planet.

01:06:49.000 He has a strong beard.

01:06:50.000 It's a strong beard.

01:06:50.800 I'll go ahead.

01:06:51.140 He's a lover, Jack.

01:06:52.400 Yeah.

01:06:52.520 Or as Ben once called him, a lumbersexual.

01:06:56.700 Yeah, I think I have that audio clip from the good old days.

01:06:59.280 And I got to tell other people about another great deal.

01:07:02.360 Don't forget to head over to DailyWire.com slash subscribe.

01:07:05.540 Right now, use code WATCH for 20% off a membership.

01:07:09.820 You can be a part of the all-access chats like we're having right after tonight's Christmas edition of Backstage.

01:07:14.680 So come on over there to talk to me and all the guys from Ben, Godking, Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles, and myself.

01:07:22.760 We'll be answering your behind-the-scenes questions, but you only get that if you're an all-access member.

01:07:27.360 So head over to DailyWire.com slash subscribe.

01:07:30.860 Use that code WATCH for 20% off right now.

01:07:33.800 In addition to that, I wanted to toss it to, I think this question is for Ben.

01:07:38.560 I think I already know the answer to this based on some earlier chatter that y'all had.

01:07:42.460 But somebody wants to know, in the Christmas spirit, are you willing to acknowledge that Dr. Michael Knowles is indeed a doctor and forgive him and never fire him?

01:07:53.220 I am a doctor. I teach things. I teach things every day.

01:07:56.060 No, I'm not a doctor.

01:07:57.380 What?

01:07:57.820 And I mean, I don't mean to be too harsh here in the Christmas season.

01:08:01.300 What does your wife have a doctorate in? 1.00

01:08:03.000 She has a PhD, which Joe Biden does not. Joe Biden has like a...

01:08:06.560 An EDD, which I didn't even know that was a degree.

01:08:08.980 It sounds like an ad for Roman.

01:08:10.420 A PhD?

01:08:12.460 But a PhD, right, this is for people who research and teach, comes from the Latin verb dotere.

01:08:22.240 In what field was it?

01:08:23.620 In psychology.

01:08:24.600 In psychology.

01:08:25.380 So you teach...

01:08:25.860 Is she a clinical psychologist?

01:08:27.680 No, no, no. A researcher.

01:08:28.940 Oh, she's a research psychologist.

01:08:29.860 A scholar.

01:08:30.160 Okay, so if she were a clinical psychologist, I'd be okay with calling her a doctor.

01:08:32.140 No, but then I wouldn't...

01:08:33.160 She's a research psychologist.

01:08:33.640 If she were a clinical psychologist, she wouldn't be a doctor because she wouldn't teach. 1.00

01:08:36.980 She'd just be... She'd like treat you.

01:08:38.480 So you're on the side that Joe Biden because she's a teacher.

01:08:40.940 She is a doctor.

01:08:41.160 Well, no, this is where it gets tricky because Joe Biden is obviously not a doctor.

01:08:45.260 That's the hard part.

01:08:46.440 But so here's actually why.

01:08:48.000 The EDDD, the Roman degree, is...

01:08:50.580 It's an occupational degree.

01:08:52.440 It's just basically a way for school administrators to make more money.

01:08:55.700 And obviously physicians.

01:08:57.240 I don't mean in any way to demean physicians.

01:08:59.360 But, you know, they're practicing a job.

01:09:01.500 It's a trade, right?

01:09:02.300 It's a craft.

01:09:03.580 But only someone who teaches...

01:09:05.100 Forget psychology for a second.

01:09:06.440 Someone who teaches, like, gender theory.

01:09:09.080 Somebody who teaches the most...

01:09:10.960 Foucault.

01:09:11.860 The most out there...

01:09:13.440 They are more a doctor than any physician.

01:09:17.040 You're the worst person I've ever heard of.

01:09:18.380 That's my argument.

01:09:18.720 And one of the dumbest.

01:09:19.880 So let me...

01:09:21.040 We all have the same test here.

01:09:22.980 If somebody says on a plane...

01:09:24.940 If somebody says on a plane, is there a doctor?

01:09:27.060 And you're a professor of gender studies and you raise your hand,

01:09:29.460 you should immediately be punched in the face. 0.96

01:09:31.320 Yeah.

01:09:31.540 Okay, because if...

01:09:32.820 And then an actual doctor will come help you after you've been punched in the face.

01:09:36.180 Because a professor of gender studies should be punched in the face. 1.00

01:09:38.380 Well, that is true.

01:09:39.580 You know, if you asked on a plane, is there a doctor here?

01:09:42.540 And a, you know, a PhD raised their hand.

01:09:44.720 That would be very helpful.

01:09:45.560 Because they could teach you the etymology of the word doctor.

01:09:48.340 Which would be very helpful in all of these situations.

01:09:50.780 Here's your problem.

01:09:51.560 And it actually goes to everything we've talked about tonight.

01:09:54.400 And how much I hate you.

01:09:55.540 And how much Ben hates you.

01:09:57.020 What you're saying is correct.

01:09:58.840 Mm-hmm.

01:09:59.640 But not in America.

01:10:00.940 No, that, mm, this is...

01:10:02.640 No, it's also not correct anywhere else.

01:10:04.060 It's just bullcrap.

01:10:04.740 I'm sorry.

01:10:05.200 Like, it's just a bunch of nonsense.

01:10:06.900 In Europe, they do this.

01:10:08.120 In Europe...

01:10:08.400 Here's about the Europeans.

01:10:09.480 The Europeans.

01:10:10.580 The Europeans say a thing.

01:10:11.960 Ooh.

01:10:12.660 No, the Europeans also don't shave their armpits.

01:10:14.400 There are lots of things Europeans do.

01:10:15.940 Okay, let's get over this.

01:10:17.340 And by the way, this point is true, unfortunately.

01:10:19.740 They lose world wars and they...

01:10:21.740 And then they call the Americans.

01:10:23.280 And it is true. 0.71

01:10:23.920 It's a practical matter.

01:10:25.300 I hate to say this, but in America...

01:10:27.360 You know, when I was in college, I had one professor who demanded to be called doctor.

01:10:30.060 Except for Pavel's home country.

01:10:31.120 I see you shaking your head there.

01:10:32.100 They shaved their armpits in Pavel's home country.

01:10:33.800 Oh, in Poland?

01:10:34.580 They save the West all the time.

01:10:36.480 I had one professor in college who demanded to be called doctor.

01:10:40.040 He was the least impressive professor.

01:10:42.580 He was the most pretentious.

01:10:43.640 He was the least...

01:10:43.920 Of course.

01:10:44.380 First of all, real doctors do not insist on being called doctor.

01:10:46.980 Right.

01:10:47.280 That's right.

01:10:47.580 So, where I live, okay, not to, like, put a stigma on the Jews, but I live near a lot

01:10:51.480 of Jews because I'm an Orthodox Jew.

01:10:53.400 And, like, literally half the people in the community are actual medical doctors.

01:10:56.980 Yeah.

01:10:57.220 Okay, and...

01:10:57.900 There's that old Jewish joke about there's the Jewish mother who has two sons and one of

01:11:02.780 them goes on to be president of the United States, and she's visiting her.

01:11:06.820 He's the first Jewish president of the United States.

01:11:08.500 She's visiting him in the White House.

01:11:10.580 She's staying in the Lincoln bedroom.

01:11:12.400 And as she walks out, a member of the press says, you know, Mrs. Shapiro, what is it like

01:11:18.100 having a son who is the president of the United States?

01:11:21.560 And she says, well, my other son is a doctor.

01:11:24.640 So, lots of doctors there.

01:11:26.360 And to a person, I mean, this came up, obviously, after synagogue one day, because we discuss only

01:11:30.900 the holiest of things.

01:11:31.640 And every one of them was like, if somebody came up to me and just called me Mr. Goldstein,

01:11:38.640 I would not be insulted in any way, because actual medical doctors don't care.

01:11:41.880 They know what they do for a living.

01:11:43.140 They don't need the constant pat on the back of being called doctor.

01:11:45.960 In fact, only the douchiest people need this generally.

01:11:48.460 Like, if you're a doctor of musicology, and then you're like, somebody calls you Mr.,

01:11:51.640 and they're like, no, it's doctor.

01:11:52.980 My wife is an actual medical doctor who's actually, like, searched inside corpses for body 0.94

01:11:57.280 parts and stuff to learn, like, where everything is and everything.

01:12:00.000 So, she's actually healed people.

01:12:01.360 She's actually been in dangerous situations with people who are in danger of themselves.

01:12:05.460 And if somebody calls her, I asked her about this, and this is why my wife is the best.

01:12:08.820 I mean, so I asked her about this.

01:12:10.420 And first of all, she was appalled at the idea that a dissertation on community college is

01:12:18.160 a doctorate.

01:12:18.820 But beyond that, she also, she said, if somebody did not call me doctor, I would be completely

01:12:24.500 fine with that, because on my list of things that make me an important human being, doctor

01:12:28.440 is like number six.

01:12:29.440 Yeah.

01:12:29.820 Right?

01:12:30.020 It goes like, I'm a wife.

01:12:32.000 I'm a mother.

01:12:33.380 I'm a Jew.

01:12:34.340 Yeah.

01:12:34.500 I'm an American.

01:12:35.700 And maybe once it's like number five, then it's like, I'm a doctor.

01:12:38.460 Like, her identity is not wrapped up in that.

01:12:40.000 If your identity is so wrapped up in your educational degree, then you're just a douchebag by definition.

01:12:43.600 Did you guys read the National Review article where the guy, oh my gosh.

01:12:47.960 Oh my gosh.

01:12:48.700 Who wrote it?

01:12:49.660 Kyle Smith.

01:12:50.100 Kyle Smith.

01:12:50.700 That's right.

01:12:50.960 Yeah.

01:12:50.980 1,000 props to Kyle Smith.

01:12:52.120 It was magnificent.

01:12:52.860 Who just face plants the dissertation.

01:12:54.600 It is well worth the read.

01:12:56.200 It is.

01:12:56.580 And as an intellectual snob, I will say that I am also just insulted by the quality of

01:13:00.700 the dissertation.

01:13:01.700 Like, and you know what?

01:13:02.860 Fine.

01:13:03.180 You don't like that?

01:13:03.820 Thuff.

01:13:04.400 I don't care.

01:13:04.920 Yeah.

01:13:05.380 Alicia.

01:13:07.520 Matt Walsh.

01:13:08.380 Is there a war on Christmas?

01:13:11.000 Well, we debated that.

01:13:12.380 Matt's leading the freaking war on Christmas here.

01:13:15.560 He's come out in the last 20 minutes against Santa Claus, against Christmas Vacation.

01:13:20.840 Christmas Vacation.

01:13:21.920 It's unbelievable.

01:13:22.760 I think there's a war on Christianity, but there's not, I'm not offended when someone 1.00

01:13:28.120 says happy holidays to me.

01:13:29.320 I don't see that as a problem.

01:13:32.020 I understand why companies do it.

01:13:33.520 I understand why someone, a cashier or whatever at Starbucks is going to say happy holidays

01:13:38.380 because they don't know if you celebrate Christmas.

01:13:39.280 What about holiday tree?

01:13:41.260 You see this, I saw it at Whole Foods the other day.

01:13:43.340 Holiday tree.

01:13:44.000 It's just a tree.

01:13:45.100 It's not, it's, there's no spiritual significance of the tree you have in your house.

01:13:48.640 But there's a cultural significance.

01:13:49.900 It's not a, it's not a Hanukkah tree.

01:13:51.280 It's not a Kwanzaa tree.

01:13:52.080 By the way, if you have a Hanukkah tree, you're doing Hanukkah wrong.

01:13:53.600 You're doing, you mess something up.

01:13:54.980 You've got to trade it.

01:13:56.860 Look, if it doesn't bother me, I feel like I can find a reason to be bothered by anything.

01:14:00.520 I'm so surprised.

01:14:01.860 I know.

01:14:02.120 It just does.

01:14:02.780 I, cause I understand.

01:14:03.560 And also holiday, holy day.

01:14:05.820 It's kind of, it's, you're not really getting around it anyway.

01:14:08.560 There's so much etymology on the show today.

01:14:11.180 A lot of etymology.

01:14:11.820 You know how to get the clicks.

01:14:12.800 Yeah.

01:14:13.100 They accuse us of clickbait.

01:14:14.640 It reminds me of the whole, you know, kneeling for the anthem thing.

01:14:19.420 And that never bothered me that much because kneeling is itself a sign of reverence.

01:14:23.820 You're in fact showing more reverence to the flag accidentally.

01:14:26.260 You don't mean to.

01:14:27.000 Right.

01:14:27.560 You accidentally showed more reverence to the flag perhaps than you even probably should.

01:14:30.820 That is a glass half full way to read Colin Kaepernick, which I'll take.

01:14:34.060 I feel like we've lost Matt Walsh.

01:14:35.860 I know.

01:14:36.160 I feel like he is actually, he embodied Andrew Slavin somehow.

01:14:39.520 It's the jacket.

01:14:40.060 Yeah, that's right.

01:14:40.840 It's the red jacket.

01:14:41.840 It is.

01:14:42.460 Way too festive.

01:14:43.480 Alicia.

01:14:44.800 All right.

01:14:45.200 This next question is for Michael.

01:14:46.780 If the 12 days of Christmas starts on December 13th, then wouldn't that place it in the middle

01:14:51.580 of Advent?

01:14:53.460 Yeah.

01:14:53.740 Yeah.

01:14:53.940 It doesn't though.

01:14:54.480 It starts on Christmas.

01:14:55.100 Okay.

01:14:57.500 All right.

01:14:57.880 Next question is.

01:14:59.660 We can clear that up.

01:15:00.960 Sounds like a Catholic question.

01:15:02.420 I don't get these things.

01:15:03.240 I think it does.

01:15:03.980 Maybe I'm wrong.

01:15:04.500 They can tell me in the comments if I'm wrong.

01:15:05.740 Yeah, it's the 12 days.

01:15:06.560 It's Christmas and the 11 days of Advent.

01:15:08.700 Yeah.

01:15:09.080 Okay.

01:15:09.340 We are in Advent right now.

01:15:10.860 And I know that's important to you as well.

01:15:12.220 Yeah.

01:15:12.420 Advent is good because this is the other thing.

01:15:14.320 You know, sometimes people, they start celebrating and smiling and I'm kind of like William Bradford

01:15:18.020 now and they're having too much fun.

01:15:19.980 No.

01:15:20.700 Solemn.

01:15:21.320 Yeah.

01:15:22.440 Expectant.

01:15:23.360 No smiles yet.

01:15:24.260 You got to wait until Christmas.

01:15:25.760 Then you get 12 days.

01:15:26.320 And this is the time to play the best song.

01:15:29.280 I think the best holiday song, which is Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel.

01:15:31.760 Yes.

01:15:32.320 Which is not a Christmas song.

01:15:33.200 It's an Advent song.

01:15:34.000 Yeah.

01:15:34.500 And I think it doesn't get better than that song.

01:15:36.060 I'm with you.

01:15:36.420 I'm totally with you.

01:15:37.200 But this is the time to play it.

01:15:37.460 There's a war on Advent, not on Christmas.

01:15:39.020 Good point.

01:15:40.220 Yeah.

01:15:40.520 And you guys lost.

01:15:43.080 Alicia.

01:15:43.400 Jeremy, this question is for you.

01:15:46.340 A Daily Wire member, which people, it's not too late, they can run on over to dailywire.com

01:15:50.380 slash subscribe and sign up so they can be a part of the all access that's right after

01:15:54.140 this backstage.

01:15:54.940 But some Daily Wire members want to know, how is everything going in Nashville?

01:15:59.940 And what are the major differences between Tennessee and California?

01:16:03.680 Um, when we, on the day that we moved here, I went to a restaurant to eat and I thought

01:16:11.240 it's so amazing to be eating inside after all these months in California.

01:16:17.200 Yesterday, I took some friends who were visiting from LA out to eat and they said, it's so amazing

01:16:22.640 to be eating after the last few weeks in California.

01:16:26.400 And I think that really sums it up.

01:16:28.040 Nashville has been a terrific move.

01:16:30.100 Um, we've all, I think, settled very well to, to my knowledge, everybody from the staff

01:16:36.180 who made the move has been very happy about it.

01:16:38.860 Uh, the city's been welcoming and accommodating Southern hospitality is real y'all.

01:16:43.820 Um, I lived in LA 20 years and two months.

01:16:47.660 I loved it.

01:16:48.400 It was my home.

01:16:49.220 I was driving around with my wife before we flew out sort of visiting some of the places

01:16:54.600 where major events happened in our lives.

01:16:56.200 You know, uh, here's my first apartment, your first apartment.

01:16:59.080 Here's where we, uh, went on our first date, this kind of thing.

01:17:02.400 And I said, you know, I love the city.

01:17:05.280 I mean, I've, I chose to live here.

01:17:06.900 I'm, I'm really going to miss LA.

01:17:09.660 And my wife said, yeah, no, I guess if I'm being honest with myself, I've been missing

01:17:15.960 LA for the last two or three years.

01:17:17.720 Yeah.

01:17:18.260 And that really sums it up.

01:17:19.340 LA has committed an, an, an actual public act of suicide over the last 36 months.

01:17:27.160 And it's only speeding up.

01:17:29.140 I don't, we couldn't have gotten out a moment.

01:17:31.720 Uh, we didn't get out a moment too soon.

01:17:33.640 If you see what's going on with this new district attorney, uh, out there, the, the re-lockdown

01:17:38.140 of the entire state.

01:17:40.660 And by the way, they have a worse spike than Arizona.

01:17:42.640 They have a worse spike than anyone in California with the giant lockdown.

01:17:45.060 And they never stopped the lockdown there.

01:17:46.740 No, never ended.

01:17:47.460 So to be here, uh, in a place that's welcomed us, um, and, and in a place that still, uh,

01:17:53.560 understands freedom has just been remarkable.

01:17:56.420 So yeah, I'm, I'm pro Tennessee.

01:17:58.400 Never in a million years thought I would live in Tennessee.

01:18:00.240 Always thought that if I left California, I'd go back to the ancestral homeland of Texas.

01:18:03.940 Uh, the one thing that I'll say about Tennessee though, is it was, uh, it was Tennessee, uh, uh,

01:18:09.480 it was Tennessee regulars fighting with us at the Alamos.

01:18:11.600 So I think that there's a real union between Texas and Tennessee.

01:18:14.400 Uh, and, and I'm proud, uh, proud to be here.

01:18:18.800 All right.

01:18:19.340 Next question goes to Ben.

01:18:20.900 Ben, we all know your thoughts about Kwanzaa and Hanukkah, but, um, someone wants to know

01:18:25.840 in the Daily Wire all access chat, what's the, what's the equivalent of Christmas?

01:18:30.320 Cause obviously Christmas and Easter are the arguably the two most important Christian holidays,

01:18:34.340 but what would be the equivalent to those in Judaism?

01:18:37.440 Hmm.

01:18:38.120 Well, not Hanukkah.

01:18:39.920 Uh, so Hanukkah is in the same time period, but it really has nothing to do

01:18:44.200 at all with, with Christmas.

01:18:45.560 And it's not one of the more stringent Jewish holidays.

01:18:47.980 The way that you can tell an actual Jewish holiday, as in like one of the ones that is

01:18:52.080 a big one is I won't be on the air.

01:18:53.780 If I'm on the air, it's not a, it's not a major Jewish holiday.

01:18:56.820 There are a couple of like mid majors, you know, that are, they're like, it's, it's sort

01:19:00.360 of like, you know, the, I don't know, the, the big 10 versus the SEC.

01:19:04.820 Um, but it's, it's, it's like the Purim and Hanukkah are kind of the second level guys.

01:19:09.180 Uh, and then the top level are Yom Kippur is usually placed at kind of the very top.

01:19:13.320 And then it's, uh, and then it's three holidays that are, that are similarly placed as far

01:19:17.680 as importance.

01:19:18.200 And that would be Passover, Sukkot, which is the festival of booths. 0.95

01:19:21.340 Uh, and then, um, the, the, and then Shavuot, which is the, uh, I'm trying to remember what

01:19:26.460 the Feast of Tabernacles is what it is in English.

01:19:28.520 Those three are the big three.

01:19:30.280 Probably if you're going to say which one is the closest to Christmas, uh, of those,

01:19:34.260 you'd probably go with Shavuot. 0.76

01:19:37.800 The reason being that that's the giving of the Torah. 0.86

01:19:39.560 So I assume that the giving of Jesus is sort of like that if you were going to, if for Christians. 0.85

01:19:42.800 So I guess that would be the answer.

01:19:44.520 Um, but there's no gift giving on that holiday.

01:19:46.680 You just, the, the only custom is you stay up all night in order to study Torah, uh, over the

01:19:50.340 course of that holiday, but that's, that's pretty much it.

01:19:52.220 So I'm Midnight Mass.

01:19:53.200 Yeah, that's, that's true.

01:19:54.160 No, there is a similarity there.

01:19:56.220 Alicia.

01:19:57.400 All right.

01:19:57.760 Next question is back to the God King.

01:19:59.800 Somebody wants to know, they're very excited for the, uh, joining of Candace Owens to the

01:20:03.460 Daily Wire family.

01:20:04.600 And when does she officially join and will she ever be allowed to join backstage?

01:20:08.700 Well, she joined backstage tonight, uh, reading Luke 2.

01:20:13.160 She, uh, identified herself with the Daily Wire.

01:20:16.340 So she's already joined the Daily Wire.

01:20:17.660 Sarah, I think the question that you're actually asking is when will her show begin?

01:20:21.100 And the answer to that is when her maternity leave ends, uh, Candace will be having a baby 1.00

01:20:27.200 in the next two weeks.

01:20:28.300 We're all very excited for her.

01:20:29.940 Uh, and after that, we're going to give her a minute to bond with the baby. 0.93

01:20:32.360 We've already hired a producer for her show.

01:20:34.140 We've been scouting locations, uh, because a component of her show will be that there's

01:20:37.800 a live studio audience.

01:20:39.680 So we've, we've been working very hard for the last month on getting the show, uh, together.

01:20:43.960 Uh, but, you know, the baby gets a vote in terms of what the exact timeline is.

01:20:48.880 I would be looking for the Candace show to start, uh, at late February, early March.

01:20:54.440 All right, Matt, somebody wants to know, are you going to miss shoveling snow?

01:21:00.200 I feel like I'm going to be positive again with this answer, but I, I kind of will miss

01:21:03.680 it.

01:21:04.060 Um, so off brand.

01:21:05.420 Yeah, I, I, I do kind of miss the snow already a little bit.

01:21:08.820 We, yeah, we lived in Pennsylvania and, uh, it wasn't like living in, in, you know, Vermont

01:21:12.980 or something, but we got a fair amount of snow and that, well, I've worked from home,

01:21:17.660 so I haven't had to go into an actual office and forever.

01:21:21.200 So, um, so it didn't matter.

01:21:23.280 We homeschool, so we could, it could just snow and we lived out in the country and we

01:21:26.620 didn't have to go anywhere anyway.

01:21:27.760 So, uh, and we had a hill right outside our house and I would go out with the kids.

01:21:32.060 And of course, you know, you get the kids dressed up in the, in all the winter gear

01:21:35.360 and it takes like 90 minutes to get them in the winter gear and then you go outside and

01:21:39.160 immediately they've, they've got their hat off in the snow and the glove comes off and

01:21:42.460 they're crying cause it's cold.

01:21:44.420 Um, but I would tell them, is it joyful?

01:21:46.580 It is.

01:21:46.900 Michael, get ready.

01:21:48.280 It is.

01:21:48.700 And I would tell them, okay, you, you can cry all you want.

01:21:51.400 I'm sledding.

01:21:52.000 So I would just go and sled down the hill and they would just watch me crying.

01:21:54.780 That's really how it would go.

01:21:56.740 And this guy hates Santa Claus.

01:21:58.720 And I, so I, I will miss that a little bit, but I do think we get a little bit of snow

01:22:01.780 here from what I've been told.

01:22:03.320 So, yeah.

01:22:04.920 Every once in a while, Michael, other than your baby, who I think is due any day now,

01:22:10.460 what is the best Christmas gift that you've ever received?

01:22:12.920 The best Christmas?

01:22:13.940 Oh my gosh.

01:22:14.720 I don't know.

01:22:15.000 I've gotten great Christmas gifts.

01:22:16.440 You know, the Italians, I forget someone's, you said it wasn't too materialistic when you

01:22:21.120 were a kid.

01:22:22.040 The Southern, Jeremy, my family was more like your family.

01:22:24.940 The Southern Italians really go all out.

01:22:26.920 They shower you in gifts that they, frankly, a lot of people shouldn't even afford, you know?

01:22:30.780 But that's just the way it was.

01:22:33.000 My favorite one probably I ever got is a sitar.

01:22:37.620 You know, seriously, I, you know, I don't play any, any instrument well, but I play like

01:22:43.560 every stringed instrument poorly.

01:22:45.360 And I, I was down at the Jersey shore where we would go on vacation, way down the Southern

01:22:49.780 Jersey shore.

01:22:50.540 And I saw this sitar one summer and I said, I want that sitar.

01:22:53.660 I was going through like a Beatles phase.

01:22:55.300 You know, I wanted the sitar.

01:22:56.220 And I mentioned this, no way, it was pretty expensive and there's no way to get it.

01:23:00.940 And this was kind of before internet buying all over was, was very popular.

01:23:04.720 So one, one time my mother sort of pretended she had to babysit or something.

01:23:10.060 She drove four hours down the Jersey shore.

01:23:12.240 I went to see my father's, drives four hours down the Jersey shore, buys the sitar, drives

01:23:16.220 four hours back up that night.

01:23:17.460 So I wouldn't find out that she was gone that long and gives me this sitar.

01:23:21.220 And I kid you not, my grandmother puts on a sari she bought in India in the seventies,

01:23:26.620 puts a dot on her forehead.

01:23:28.300 I'm not my Sicilian grandmother and presents me with this sitar when I was like 14 years old.

01:23:34.300 And now your grandmother is governor of North Carolina.

01:23:38.020 Virginia, really?

01:23:38.720 No, no, no, no, sorry.

01:23:39.520 Hey, hey, hey, hey, governor of North Carolina.

01:23:40.140 Can I ask what a sitar is?

01:23:41.520 It's this giant Indian instrument that actually, it's much easier to play than it looks like

01:23:45.820 because most of the strings are just drone strings.

01:23:47.780 And then it really became famous because George Harrison smoked too much pot one time

01:23:51.180 and decided to incorporate it into a bunch of Beatles songs and become friends with Robbie Shanker.

01:23:55.000 And my takeaway from the story is that there were people who love you that much and I don't understand.

01:23:58.260 It's shocking.

01:23:59.140 Only a handful.

01:24:02.040 So guys, we've talked about the movies we love and hate.

01:24:04.840 Now it's time to talk about our favorite and least favorite Christmas songs.

01:24:10.400 And Drew Klavan will actually be joining us for this part of the show.

01:24:15.260 So Matt, there's a pretty troubling topic.

01:24:18.400 I think you've been covering it better than any of us on social media.

01:24:21.580 Why don't you fill us in?

01:24:22.640 I think it's important around Christmas time to focus on the negative.

01:24:26.260 So it's important to establish what are the five worst or the worst Christmas songs

01:24:31.640 because we have to endure them.

01:24:32.900 Have you ever felt your heart grow three sizes on any Christmas day?

01:24:37.380 Matt, Christmas songs are great.

01:24:39.300 What's wrong with you?

01:24:40.420 It hasn't happened yet, but mainly because of these songs.

01:24:42.640 I'm blaming these songs.

01:24:43.700 So if I were to make a list of like the top five worst Christmas songs,

01:24:48.300 All I Want for Christmas, Do They Know It's Christmas,

01:24:52.560 and then Wonderful Christmas Time, Wonderful Christmas Time, and Wonderful Christmas Time,

01:24:56.080 round out the top three.

01:24:57.380 Check, please.

01:24:57.960 Check, please.

01:24:58.340 We can get at it.

01:24:59.740 We can end this now.

01:25:00.940 How dare you?

01:25:01.780 Wonderful Christmas Time is so aggressively bad.

01:25:06.340 It fills me with rage when I listen to it.

01:25:08.240 It's the least creative, least innovative song I've ever heard.

01:25:12.120 It sounds like he...

01:25:13.200 I think you just don't understand what Sir Paul McCartney is trying to convey,

01:25:17.840 which is that he is simply having a wonderful Christmas time.

01:25:21.120 I will grant Matt one thing.

01:25:23.960 The lyrics are, they're a little, they are a little bit off.

01:25:28.460 And yet I like that song much more than his fellow ex-Beatle John Lennon's song,

01:25:33.300 War Is Over, Merry Christmas, War Is Over, with that awful screeching Yoko in the background.

01:25:38.460 However, the lyrics of War Is Over is actually quite Christmassy, right?

01:25:43.180 Like the spiritual warfare is over.

01:25:45.100 The savior of the world is here.

01:25:46.480 I'm sure this was all going through John and Yoko's mind when they were writing it.

01:25:50.360 But the fact is, as a song itself, the McCartney song much better.

01:25:54.200 I would like, I'd like to make an offering to the group, if I may,

01:25:57.300 just because I know more about old music than I think almost anybody.

01:26:01.640 Back in the days when they wrote good songs,

01:26:03.920 they actually wrote the worst Christmas song ever written,

01:26:06.400 which is The Happy Snowman.

01:26:09.220 On a Christmas Eve, a happy snowman

01:26:13.300 Stood and dreamed beside a cottage door

01:26:17.060 It's about a happy snowman who's happy because he's a member of the family

01:26:22.000 and the kids promise him that there'll be a gift under the tree for him

01:26:26.520 and he just feels so proud that he's a member of the family.

01:26:29.320 And then, suddenly, tragedy strikes.

01:26:33.640 And I'm not capable of relating this in my own words.

01:26:37.600 Let me just read to you the lyrics that describe the final lyrics of this song.

01:26:42.500 The cottage porch looked beautiful and bright.

01:26:45.320 The holly wreath was turned on for the night

01:26:47.160 when all at once it caught on fire and fell.

01:26:50.940 He couldn't knock.

01:26:52.040 He couldn't ring the bell.

01:26:53.360 He couldn't run for help.

01:26:54.580 He couldn't call.

01:26:55.560 But then he had to save the children after all.

01:26:57.660 He knew he'd melt away.

01:26:59.460 And yet the snowman threw himself across the burning floor.

01:27:03.280 How the children miss their friends, the snowman.

01:27:05.800 But they'll always remember him for

01:27:07.580 a heart that was brave and the joy that he gave

01:27:10.600 and the funny fedora he wore.

01:27:13.200 That sounds great.

01:27:14.420 What's the problem with that?

01:27:15.360 If that song doesn't move you, I don't know.

01:27:18.300 I don't know what was.

01:27:20.040 I don't own a Victrola, so I'll never be able to hear that song.

01:27:23.440 But man, that got dark fast.

01:27:26.120 It turns bad.

01:27:27.120 Very quickly, I know.

01:27:28.440 Yeah, well, I think clearly the answer is actually slightly different.

01:27:32.240 And the clear answer here is Little Drummer Boy.

01:27:34.360 Harumpa-pum-pum, harumpa-pum-pum, harumpa-pum-pum.

01:27:38.240 Just endlessly into the dark night of eternity.

01:27:42.500 It's repetitive.

01:27:43.720 It doesn't actually have a bridge.

01:27:45.400 It just repeats over and over and over until you die.

01:27:48.460 I will say, Ben, that when I was a kid,

01:27:52.980 Little Drummer Boy was by far my least favorite Christmas song.

01:27:56.160 I just absolutely despised it for many of the reasons that you just outlined.

01:28:01.800 I have to admit, though, that it's grown on me over the years

01:28:04.080 because the sentiment of it is so sweet.

01:28:06.120 I always worry at the end when the baby Jesus, he's a newborn baby, and he smiles,

01:28:10.540 and it's probably just gas.

01:28:12.100 You know, I think that kind of ruins the song a little bit.

01:28:17.120 I'll move past that blasphemy for just a second to get into... 0.94

01:28:21.580 I actually want to make a preemptive defense.

01:28:23.720 One song a lot of people criticize at Christmas,

01:28:26.380 it's a little-known song, maybe it's known more in New York,

01:28:28.740 it's called Dominic the Donkey.

01:28:30.360 So I understand that it's not the most lyrically or musically complex song,

01:28:34.580 but I just think in this era of heightened sort of ethnic and racial tensions,

01:28:38.960 as an Italian-American, I would just ask that you leave that song off of the list.

01:28:44.080 Matt, what were your other two songs?

01:28:46.060 All I Want for Christmas.

01:28:47.240 Well, yeah.

01:28:47.840 And then what was the other one?

01:28:49.900 You mean All I Want for Christmas is my two front teeth?

01:28:52.460 No, no.

01:28:53.320 No, the Mariah Carey.

01:28:54.760 Oh, All I Want for Christmas is you.

01:28:57.420 Did anyone ever notice that it is like the most dismissive song

01:29:00.000 of the person that she wants for Christmas of all time?

01:29:02.320 Oh, yeah.

01:29:02.740 Right?

01:29:03.100 The actual lyric is, I don't want a lot for Christmas.

01:29:07.540 All I Want for Christmas is you.

01:29:10.240 Right?

01:29:10.780 I mean, just crapping all over that which she wants for Christmas. 0.99

01:29:14.380 Yeah, I hadn't thought of that.

01:29:16.020 We haven't yet touched on one of the worst Christmas songs,

01:29:19.120 the one about the mother kissing Santa Claus last night.

01:29:22.680 Oh, my Lord.

01:29:23.060 This poor husband getting cuckolded by jolly old St. Nicholas.

01:29:27.260 It's awful.

01:29:28.040 This is my least favorite Christmas song.

01:29:30.320 It just infuriates me every time.

01:29:32.760 Well, I think that we're missing the most horrible of all songs, of course,

01:29:35.720 which is Baby, It's Cold Outside.

01:29:36.920 Baby, it's cold outside.

01:29:41.380 It's far too sensitive toward women, I think, is the big takeaway that I've gotten from the culture.

01:29:46.100 Really, it's too politically correct.

01:29:47.260 Now you make a fine point.

01:29:47.900 It needs to be more politically incorrect.

01:29:52.340 It was back in the day when a little seduction went a long way.

01:29:54.920 You know, in the movie where it appears, it's sung both by a man to a woman and then reversed.

01:30:01.240 The roles are reversed.

01:30:02.160 And there's a woman who seduces a man. 1.00

01:30:03.860 It's one thing for Matt to be a complete Grinch, but there are some great Christmas songs, too.

01:30:08.580 We can agree on that, yeah?

01:30:09.880 I mean, I was just trying to think what's my favorite Christmas song.

01:30:12.440 I don't know that I could pick one because there are so many genres.

01:30:14.800 The ones that come to my mind, Holly Jolly Christmas, just because you get Burl Ives.

01:30:20.400 No, I mean it.

01:30:21.320 If I can get Burl Ives, I'll have that guy sing me the alphabet.

01:30:24.180 You've got Angels We Have Heard on High.

01:30:27.340 It's a slightly different type.

01:30:29.280 It's a wonder.

01:30:29.660 I don't know any of the lyrics other than Gloria, but that's pretty good.

01:30:37.680 Sounds great.

01:30:37.980 I love her.

01:30:38.380 There's only one correct answer to this question.

01:30:40.100 It's the best Christmas song, and it is Silent Night.

01:30:43.660 Silent Night

01:30:45.880 Holy Night

01:30:50.380 I agree with Ben completely on this.

01:30:53.540 I think Silent Night is the best old-fashioned Christmas song, and the best, for me, modern

01:31:00.160 Christmas song, always remembering that all songs stop being written in 1959, is Have

01:31:05.980 Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.

01:31:07.040 That's exactly right.

01:31:07.980 Exactly right.

01:31:09.000 That's exactly where I was going.

01:31:09.660 Now it's settled, right?

01:31:11.060 As your fellow octogenarian, Clavin, I will say that that is 100% correct.

01:31:16.320 I would prefer to keep this conversation negative, but if we have to go positive, then I would

01:31:20.520 say, Hark the Herald Angels Sing.

01:31:22.260 I think you have to determine the best Christmas song based on what sounds the best when sung

01:31:27.460 by a choir in church on Christmas Day.

01:31:30.400 And for me, Hark the Herald.

01:31:32.040 That's rude.

01:31:33.760 I will say that Christmas is the only season in which I wish that I were Anglican, and you

01:31:38.140 could just go to one of those even-song services where the little bitty boys have probably been

01:31:42.900 neutered, you know, in some ancient ritual that we despise as Americans.

01:31:46.540 It's the reason that we actually left England and formed our own country was to get away

01:31:49.720 from this, but my God, it's beautiful when they sing Christmas songs.

01:31:53.580 Christmas is here, bringing the shit to young and old, me, come the boat, ding-dong-ding-dong,

01:31:59.300 that is the song.

01:32:00.400 All right, well, I mean, I think we've covered pretty much every Christmas song ever written.

01:32:03.740 That's probably not fair.

01:32:04.620 There are so many Christmas songs, and none of us have yet made fun of Grandma Got Run

01:32:08.120 Over by a Reindeer or anything, but I think that the segment's definitely gone on long

01:32:12.000 enough.

01:32:12.520 So why don't we just go around the horn one time, real quick, best and worst, Drew?

01:32:16.280 Uh, best is Silent Night.

01:32:18.740 Worst, I'm sticking with The Happy Snowman with a runner-up for Mele Kalikimaka, which 0.91

01:32:22.840 was the Feliz Navidad of its day.

01:32:24.760 Oh, that's a great one!

01:32:26.720 All right, Benjamin.

01:32:28.160 All right, best, Silent Night, worst.

01:32:30.780 I'm gonna stick with my pick.

01:32:31.780 Little Drummer Boy remains the worst.

01:32:33.140 It is so supremely irritating and also happens to be an earworm that will drill directly into

01:32:38.580 your brain for eons.

01:32:40.320 Michael.

01:32:40.640 I'm gonna say best, Angels We Have Heard on High with a very close runner-up to Wonderful

01:32:48.200 Christmastime, and the worst of all time probably has to be the one where Mommy cucks her husband 0.98

01:32:54.600 with Santa Claus.

01:32:55.960 That's just, for all the reasons you explained, Jeremy, it's absolutely unacceptable.

01:33:00.260 It's very rare that I agree on any one thing with Michael, and in this case, I agree with

01:33:04.340 two.

01:33:04.740 So I'm just gonna say ditto to that list.

01:33:07.000 Angels We Have Heard on High and the Cuckolding Song are my list as well.

01:33:11.140 And Matt, why don't you round this out, since you're the one who brought us down this dark

01:33:14.460 and miserable journey.

01:33:15.600 You can just tell us your two least favorite if it'll make you happier.

01:33:18.860 I'll reiterate Hark the Angels for best.

01:33:23.140 And worst has to, again, be Wonderful Christmastime.

01:33:25.420 It is so, it's a war on Christmas in and of itself.

01:33:28.880 It's so bad that it makes me want to renounce my faith and become Jewish almost every time 1.00

01:33:32.460 I hear it.

01:33:32.840 Um, and, uh, it's, it doesn't get worse than that.

01:33:36.220 It has to be Wonderful Christmastime.

01:33:37.900 Why did we invite this guy?

01:33:47.880 So now is the time for our next festive partaking.

01:33:50.940 This year we've played Secret Santa, which, for the kids at home who may never have heard

01:33:54.780 of this, Secret Santa, because, I don't know, you've lived under a rock your entire life,

01:33:57.780 is where we, uh, we don't know what we're getting, but we're each secretly assigned another

01:34:02.400 one of us to buy a gift for, and so now we'll each get the opportunity to open said gift

01:34:08.100 and find out who loves us and how much I'm going to go first.

01:34:11.800 Okay.

01:34:13.880 So it's roughly the size of, I don't know, maybe like a small, very small box of cigars,

01:34:20.480 cigars if someone loved me.

01:34:21.900 But it would be quite a small box of cigars.

01:34:24.580 I don't know.

01:34:26.620 Nobody likes the bow.

01:34:36.160 So, not a box of cigars.

01:34:39.080 The Catechism of the Catholic Church, second edition, revised in accordance with the official

01:34:51.500 Latin text, promulgated by Pope John Paul II.

01:34:57.380 That's great reading.

01:34:58.520 So no one loves me.

01:34:59.500 Yeah.

01:35:00.580 That's the answer.

01:35:01.200 No one loves me.

01:35:02.040 It's good reading.

01:35:03.800 Uh, dare I ask who thought that the Catechism of the Catholic Church, second edition, would

01:35:08.700 be a good gift for me?

01:35:09.580 You know, shockingly, it, it wasn't me, although I have, I mean, this is one of those, you know,

01:35:14.860 you show up to a party and you don't have anything and you say, this is from us.

01:35:18.100 Like, this is from us.

01:35:18.980 Whoever got you that?

01:35:20.940 I, I don't, I can't imagine it was.

01:35:24.020 Oh, but who was?

01:35:25.980 Benjamin.

01:35:26.780 Well, I mean, if you're going to play Secret Santa, you really go full Secret Santa.

01:35:29.880 And also, I just figured I'd give him something that, I mean, for Jeremy, he needs a doorstop,

01:35:34.200 right?

01:35:34.440 I mean, like he has a new house and everything.

01:35:36.820 Like.

01:35:37.840 That's fair.

01:35:38.400 I like to check in on what the papists are saying every now and then.

01:35:41.020 Thank you, Benjamin.

01:35:42.160 You're welcome.

01:35:42.620 Oh, wait.

01:35:43.060 It was very important to them that we go in a particular order.

01:35:46.180 I think it's you.

01:35:47.160 Is it me?

01:35:47.660 Okay.

01:35:48.760 Wow.

01:35:49.480 This is a large gift.

01:35:50.620 Oh, yeah.

01:35:51.200 This is, it's certainly a horse.

01:35:54.820 All right.

01:35:55.720 The Catechism.

01:35:56.520 From my favorite company, Amazon.

01:35:58.700 Okay, so first of all, I'm super excited.

01:36:00.120 Because if it's from Amazon, it's good.

01:36:01.860 And all you Amazon haters like AOC, you can stick it.

01:36:05.480 Amazon can come to my hometown anytime.

01:36:07.560 Amazon is the greatest company in all the land.

01:36:11.600 Does that narrow it down?

01:36:12.580 They're like, oh, yes, something from Amazon.

01:36:14.380 Yes.

01:36:14.880 It doesn't matter what it is.

01:36:15.920 If it comes from, if it comes from Lord Jeff Bezos, if he has bestowed it upon me.

01:36:20.040 It could only be anything.

01:36:20.940 Okay, let's see.

01:36:24.320 Guys, I don't know who did this, but this is really meaningful.

01:36:26.700 And I just want, I'm going to cry.

01:36:28.480 I think.

01:36:30.180 It is, indeed.

01:36:31.560 It is a sweatshirt.

01:36:33.800 Wow.

01:36:35.120 My fellow platinum award winning rap artist, Cardi B.

01:36:39.700 Someone knew you.

01:36:40.520 I'm glad you like it, Ben.

01:36:42.760 Thank you so much, Matt Walsh.

01:36:44.520 And coming from you, it means so much.

01:36:46.040 Yeah, I know.

01:36:46.320 We both are big fans of Cardi B.

01:36:48.540 So I thought.

01:36:49.200 Mutual admiration.

01:36:50.000 Apparently, there's something else in the box as well, I've been told, by the voice in

01:36:53.220 my ear.

01:36:53.880 And it is, indeed, a Cardi B CD.

01:36:55.860 You can put that in your disc, put your Sony Discman rollerblading.

01:37:00.320 Now, I've been told, I haven't heard this album.

01:37:01.740 I have been told, and it has excellent songs, like Get Up 10, Drip, Bickenhead, Bodak Yellow,

01:37:09.220 Be Careful, Best Life, I Like It, Ring featuring Kehlani, Moneybag, Bartier Cardi, I assume that's

01:37:17.640 a pun on Cardi A, She Bad, Through Your Phone, and I do.

01:37:22.680 So at the end, she gets married.

01:37:23.480 It's a happy CD.

01:37:24.900 At the end, she gets married.

01:37:26.020 She Bad is the best track on the album, in my opinion, but I'd be interested to see what

01:37:29.860 you think about it.

01:37:30.480 I appreciate that.

01:37:31.200 The words of Shakespeare.

01:37:32.300 So, thank you so much.

01:37:34.340 You're welcome.

01:37:35.000 I'll wear it every and every day.

01:37:36.340 Matt.

01:37:37.340 All right.

01:37:39.980 I've never had a gift I like, so.

01:37:43.520 It'll be a first time for everything.

01:37:48.300 Did you also get something for me?

01:37:49.940 I need a knife to open this thing.

01:37:52.780 I might have a key.

01:37:53.760 How is this supposed to work?

01:37:55.140 I don't know.

01:37:55.500 It's literally a production failure.

01:37:56.760 All right.

01:37:57.060 There we go.

01:37:58.000 But it's wrapped again, so.

01:37:59.560 Good.

01:38:01.400 All right.

01:38:02.000 Yeah.

01:38:02.260 And there's a story with this, so it's sort of like, you know.

01:38:05.820 What's?

01:38:06.500 Yeah.

01:38:07.120 I love a gift.

01:38:07.400 I love the gift in the gift.

01:38:09.820 Yeah.

01:38:10.160 What if it's just endless gifts?

01:38:11.300 And at the end, it's just a note that says convert.

01:38:13.380 My nightmare is opening gifts from people.

01:38:15.200 What could it possibly be?

01:38:24.540 For my shiny, bald head.

01:38:28.320 Yeah.

01:38:28.940 Like.

01:38:29.500 Oh, wait.

01:38:31.520 I know what happened.

01:38:32.720 No.

01:38:33.000 Well, no.

01:38:33.440 I just, I thought, you know, knowing that you would be here, that someday maybe you could go.

01:38:38.800 You could.

01:38:39.260 Yeah.

01:38:39.780 I.

01:38:40.420 Oh.

01:38:41.740 Sure.

01:38:42.200 I mean, yeah.

01:38:42.740 This was meant, this was totally meant for me, right?

01:38:44.660 Yeah.

01:38:45.480 Okay.

01:38:46.020 Yeah.

01:38:46.800 Yeah.

01:38:47.240 It's not like I was forgotten.

01:38:48.320 This is why I hate these.

01:38:49.820 See what happened for the folks at home?

01:38:51.480 Yeah.

01:38:51.900 It's our very own Andrew Clavin was supposed to be here tonight.

01:38:55.060 That's what that is.

01:38:55.580 But he managed to successfully pass his genetic line.

01:38:59.100 He did.

01:38:59.460 Down to the next generation.

01:39:01.220 And today, unto him was born a happy and healthy grandson.

01:39:05.260 Son, and in a pinch, because he was hanging out in the coat closet, we got Matt Walsh to

01:39:12.300 sit down and do the show.

01:39:15.200 That's awkward.

01:39:16.080 I am going to keep this, though, anyway.

01:39:18.280 Yeah.

01:39:18.480 Hey, look.

01:39:19.040 Someday, maybe it'll come into play.

01:39:22.300 Or you can barter with Drew.

01:39:23.360 Who knows?

01:39:23.740 He's got a good head of hair, I see.

01:39:25.120 He does.

01:39:25.560 He does.

01:39:25.900 For now.

01:39:26.320 For now.

01:39:26.760 Michael, you're up late.

01:39:27.940 I guess it's no surprise who the gift is from.

01:39:29.740 Wow.

01:39:30.020 Oh, great.

01:39:31.000 Okay.

01:39:31.760 Oh, man.

01:39:32.380 What did Jeremy get me?

01:39:35.260 Well, tis the season, and ho, ho, ho, and all that.

01:39:39.660 All right.

01:39:40.300 Okay.

01:39:40.960 All right.

01:39:41.440 Please tell me it's me.

01:39:43.660 It's not.

01:39:44.740 Okay.

01:39:45.300 I kind of like where this is going.

01:39:48.300 Yeah.

01:39:50.940 It's the most wonderful time of the year.

01:39:52.720 Is this?

01:39:55.120 Oh, my gosh.

01:39:56.420 Is this truly the gift that I most wanted?

01:40:00.460 Is this a giant meatball?

01:40:02.120 It's a giant meatball.

01:40:03.100 Oh, my gosh.

01:40:04.420 Dude, you know, it's funny.

01:40:06.220 Like, I know it's a gag and everything, but you know me so well.

01:40:09.280 This is the present that I most wanted.

01:40:11.520 Wow.

01:40:12.240 Merry Christmas, buddy.

01:40:13.380 Thank you.

01:40:13.400 Am I the only guy who got something he actually wanted?

01:40:15.620 This is so great.

01:40:16.160 No, no, no.

01:40:16.520 I've always wanted a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

01:40:18.800 Jesus Christ.

01:40:19.800 I'm going to turn over here.

01:40:20.220 Friends, thank you for joining us for this holiday edition of Backstage.

01:40:23.880 It's been a wonderful 2020.

01:40:25.040 I actually have to say, I know 2020 has been hard for a lot of people in this country.

01:40:29.440 This is a time of celebration, and we hope that you'll take the time to spend with your

01:40:34.140 family and reflect on the blessings that we still have and the things that are still

01:40:38.080 worth fighting for.

01:40:39.340 We look forward to seeing you again in 2021.

01:40:43.100 Thanks from all of us.

01:40:43.960 Bye.

01:41:03.760 Bye.

01:41:04.500 Bye.

01:41:05.660 Bye.

01:41:06.800 Bye.

01:41:11.500 Bye.

01:41:11.780 Bye.

01:41:12.640 Bye.

The Matt Walsh Show - December 22, 2020

Daily Wire Backstage： The 2020 Season Finale

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript