The Matt Walsh Show - December 23, 2022


Matt Walsh Gives Parenting Advice： Christmas Edition


Episode Stats

Length

9 minutes

Words per Minute

192.16852

Word Count

1,788

Sentence Count

135

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary

How do you handle a holiday like Christmas when you have a two-year-old who doesn't quite get it yet? How do you know if it's a good idea to take him to see Santa when he's not quite ready? What about when he does get it? And how do you deal with the pressure of being a parent during the holidays?


Transcript

00:00:00.160 Well, I thought I would like to give a gift to the audience, a little bit of a Christmas gift.
00:00:05.200 I thought about what that gift might be, and part of the problem is I don't want to spend any money because I'm cheap.
00:00:11.360 So I'm going to give a gift that is free, and that is my advice.
00:00:17.240 Pontificating, that's the one thing that I can do.
00:00:20.240 And so we're going to go to Reddit.
00:00:22.380 Oh, God.
00:00:23.780 No.
00:00:25.400 To find some Christmas-related quandaries.
00:00:29.100 People who are looking for advice, especially parenting advice, around the holidays, around Christmas,
00:00:34.720 and see if we can't sort through this and just help enlighten some people and the masses.
00:00:41.240 So we'll start with this.
00:00:42.300 Is Christmas gross?
00:00:44.040 I loved Christmas as a kid.
00:00:45.320 It always has been a big-deal holiday for me, but I have a two-year-old who doesn't quite get it yet,
00:00:50.300 and explaining things to him is leaving a gross taste in my mouth.
00:00:53.340 It feels like Christmas is so much about wanting for children,
00:00:55.860 for teaching them to want things, to ask for things, to expect things.
00:01:00.540 Don't get me started on the good versus bad thing.
00:01:02.960 We would never go there.
00:01:04.640 Wait, what?
00:01:06.100 Don't get me started on the good versus bad thing.
00:01:08.480 We would never go.
00:01:09.200 You would never go there and explaining the difference between good versus bad?
00:01:12.420 Well, maybe you should go there.
00:01:13.900 Maybe that should be the first thing that you do as a parent.
00:01:16.080 If you're not going to go there as a parent, then you might as well just call it a day now,
00:01:21.460 because that's like your number one job as a parent is to help a child understand good versus bad
00:01:28.320 and to walk the path towards good.
00:01:30.480 So anyway, we'll continue.
00:01:32.820 I don't want to be the Grinch killjoy parent, but ugh, it's all just so ugh.
00:01:38.060 Like taking him to see Santa, who's going to ask him what he wants?
00:01:41.080 It all feels so much like teaching kids to focus their identity and joy on being consumers.
00:01:46.740 You know, there's this concept you hear from liberals sometimes where they say problematize.
00:01:51.820 They talk about problematizing something, and that means making something into a problem when it's not.
00:01:58.360 And this is a specialty of liberals.
00:02:01.100 They're very good at it.
00:02:01.940 It's the only thing they're good at, problematizing.
00:02:03.840 Now, I don't know if this person is a liberal.
00:02:06.100 The comment about good versus evil certainly makes it sound like she is.
00:02:08.800 Now, I'm not saying that materialism isn't a problem.
00:02:13.900 It is, especially around Christmas.
00:02:16.000 But I am saying that there is no problem with a two-year-old getting excited about getting presents.
00:02:23.020 That's not a problem, okay?
00:02:24.600 That's normal.
00:02:25.520 Now, you said yourself, I loved Christmas as a kid.
00:02:33.340 Well, then let your kid love it too.
00:02:35.180 Don't make a thing out of it, right?
00:02:37.740 This is so much now of, like, older generations.
00:02:40.060 This is what they do now, where there are things that they enjoyed as kids, and it was great, and they remember it fondly.
00:02:45.680 But now they're turning back around to make that thing they enjoyed as kids a problem, to make it complicated, to, like, steal some of that joy that they had.
00:02:57.860 It's like pulling the ladder back up behind you as you climb it.
00:03:01.160 That's kind of what's happening here.
00:03:02.400 Don't let your current adult hang-ups rob your child of the same joy that you experienced.
00:03:09.560 That's all.
00:03:10.120 Okay, how do you handle a holiday like Christmas?
00:03:13.940 Parents and in-laws' expectations are already stressing us out.
00:03:17.240 We're struggling to plan our first Christmas with a baby.
00:03:19.640 Pre-baby, my wife would go see her parents for the day, while I would go split my time evenly between my divorced parents.
00:03:25.040 Our baby is five months old, and we don't want to be hauling her around all day since she naps poorly anywhere but home.
00:03:30.720 We're leaning towards scheduling different days for different households, but we're dreading the pushback and anger from whoever gets told they won't see their grandchild on Christmas.
00:03:39.700 Well, it's a big thing.
00:03:40.460 You know, we went through this for the first several years of our marriage, and our two families live like an hour apart.
00:03:45.700 And my wife's family, you know, the parents are divorced also, so same sort of situation.
00:03:50.320 Everyone's kind of within a one-hour vicinity, and that's precisely the worst situation you could possibly be in for the holidays because it's close enough that you're expected to see everybody, but it's far enough away that it's a huge hassle to see everybody.
00:04:05.000 So not an issue for us now because we live like 12 hours away from the nearest set of parents, plus we have six kids.
00:04:12.880 So if people want to see us on Christmas, they need to come to us.
00:04:17.780 So maybe that's one of my solutions is just start churning out more babies, and then once you've got a bunch of them, then for every holiday, it's like you can say, you can't expect me with six kids.
00:04:27.740 You got to come to me, okay?
00:04:29.220 You want to see us on the holidays?
00:04:31.160 We're the staging ground now where we got all the kids, and you can come to us.
00:04:35.000 You decide what's best for you, what you and your family want to do, and you let the other members of the family know, like, this is what you're doing, and that's it.
00:04:44.160 And if they got an issue with it, they got an issue with it.
00:04:45.940 How does Santa enter homes without a chimney?
00:04:49.860 Growing up, we always had a chimney, so it wasn't an issue.
00:04:52.440 My husband's family didn't, but he never questioned it, and his parents never said anything to him about it.
00:04:57.460 I've heard from other people that Santa gets a special key that you leave outside for him on Christmas Eve.
00:05:01.860 We just bought a new house without a chimney, and I'm at a loss.
00:05:05.100 He's magic.
00:05:06.620 Once again, don't complicate this.
00:05:08.520 That's it.
00:05:09.160 If your kid asks, how does he get in the house?
00:05:11.420 He's magic.
00:05:11.960 We didn't have a chimney either when I was a kid.
00:05:15.300 We'd have the same question.
00:05:16.180 How does he get in?
00:05:16.760 It's just magic.
00:05:17.540 That's it.
00:05:18.060 He just does.
00:05:24.300 Next one says, I need help with the talk.
00:05:27.520 Yeah, that's right.
00:05:28.240 I need advice on how to bring up the whole Santa issue.
00:05:30.780 My son is in third grade and still believes in Santa.
00:05:33.320 I'm surprised we've made it this long.
00:05:34.800 I want him to hear it from me, not his friends, so I need to do it quick before the kids start talking about the holidays.
00:05:40.020 Well, you sit your kid down, and you say, listen, son, we lied to you.
00:05:47.460 Your whole life is a lie.
00:05:49.520 Nothing is real.
00:05:50.840 All is lost.
00:05:53.040 Have a great Christmas, son.
00:05:55.700 No, you just tell him Santa was a game that parents play with little kids.
00:06:03.560 It's a game.
00:06:04.580 It's a fun game.
00:06:05.180 It's make-believe.
00:06:07.020 You weren't lying to him any more than you were lying back when your child believed in fairies and dragons and leprechauns.
00:06:16.460 And your kid will be fine.
00:06:18.000 Okay, people make such a big deal out of this thing with Santa and telling kids, and are they going to be traumatized?
00:06:23.300 And it's a fine kid.
00:06:24.700 I'll get over it.
00:06:25.460 Okay?
00:06:25.700 Another one says, how to keep it going after they know about Santa?
00:06:30.700 Is there a good non-religious way to explain the Christmas season magic when the kids no longer believe Santa flies in the sleigh and comes down the chimney?
00:06:38.860 No.
00:06:39.420 The answer is no.
00:06:40.080 Is there a good non-religious way to explain the magic of Christmas?
00:06:43.320 No, there isn't.
00:06:44.860 We love Christmas for non-religious wholesome reasons, so I think we can sort of explain the magic of Christmas season to them.
00:06:50.400 No, you can't.
00:06:51.580 I'd like to see you try.
00:06:52.440 You know where Christmas is, where that word comes from?
00:06:55.720 Christ mass.
00:06:56.940 Christ mass.
00:06:57.900 It's not a coincidence, and it is very specifically to celebrate the birth of Jesus.
00:07:03.940 You know, it's like, imagine saying this about your neighbor, Gary.
00:07:07.220 How can I explain the magic of Gary's birthday without including anything about Gary himself?
00:07:14.060 You can't do that with Gary, the neighbor, and you can't do that with Jesus.
00:07:17.060 Sorry.
00:07:17.340 Finally, kids opening all their gifts at once versus kids taking turns opening them.
00:07:23.580 So I decided to forego gift wrapping altogether this year and decided to only use reusable gift bags.
00:07:29.560 Maybe one of the top five greatest inventions in the history of mankind.
00:07:32.960 Think of all the labor hours that it saves.
00:07:35.640 Throw it in a bag.
00:07:36.560 Maybe put a little bit of decorative tissue paper you put in there.
00:07:39.120 Boom.
00:07:39.620 You're done.
00:07:39.980 Anyway, so I usually film my kids opening gifts, and we would all take turns as I'd film each person opening their gift.
00:07:45.800 This year, I'm debating on filming one person at a time just opening all their gifts at once.
00:07:49.540 Kind of like how you watch someone open gifts on their birthday, and everyone is focused on them.
00:07:54.340 Just embrace the chaos, man.
00:07:55.560 That's it.
00:07:56.180 Just embrace the chaos.
00:07:57.120 There's no good way to do this.
00:07:58.540 There is no orderly way.
00:07:59.920 Every family has spent years and years trying to solve this problem, trying to figure out the calculus on Christmas morning.
00:08:07.500 What's the best way to open all the gifts and to avoid the chaos and kids getting bored or getting antsy or whatever, jealous?
00:08:13.920 You know, you can't do it.
00:08:16.260 This is the same speech I've tried to give my wife so many times.
00:08:19.100 It's just, it is what it is, and it's going to be chaos.
00:08:22.120 Just accept it.
00:08:23.000 Who are you?
00:08:23.720 The one thing I will say, what disturbed me the most from this question, is you saying that you film everyone open every single gift.
00:08:33.580 Stop doing that.
00:08:34.960 When are you ever going to watch this?
00:08:36.820 So you're filming the whole Christmas morning deal.
00:08:42.160 When are you ever going to go back?
00:08:43.740 Are you going to go, like, on some random afternoon in March and just sit there and watch 57 minutes of people opening Christmas presents several months ago?
00:08:55.540 Just be in the moment.
00:08:58.100 Rather than experiencing the moment, like, in this little box, okay?
00:09:02.720 You're in a whole room.
00:09:03.840 Experience the entire moment.
00:09:05.900 So that's it.
00:09:06.440 Everyone who cares about this is in the room.
00:09:09.340 Put the camera down.
00:09:10.760 Live in the chaos.
00:09:12.420 That is my advice.
00:09:13.740 Follow all of this advice, and you will have yourself a Merry Christmas.