The Matt Walsh Show - December 23, 2025


Why Letting Kids Believe In Santa Is A GOOD Thing (Despite The Santa Haters)


Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

193.90833

Word count

1,929

Sentence count

183

Harmful content

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

It's about that time of year when the debate about Santa starts to pop up on social media again. Is he real or not? And what does this have to do with our kids? In this episode, I break down the difference between believing in Santa and not believing in him.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:00:29.980 You know, it's about that time of year again for the Santa discourse to start.
00:00:37.260 And every year, I'm seeing this on social media, you know, the great Santa debate.
00:00:41.280 And it started again. I don't know who started.
00:00:43.360 Probably not any one person started it.
00:00:45.040 But I'm seeing it pop up on my feed again, all the debating about Santa.
00:00:48.300 Who the heck are you?
00:00:49.540 What are you talking about? I'm Santa Claus.
00:00:51.420 No, you're not.
00:00:52.280 Now, by the way, if you have little children in earshot, you should turn this off.
00:00:55.720 So they should be listening.
00:00:56.880 Anyway, but if they are, you should turn it off.
00:01:00.180 Because I do want to chime in on this, because it does annoy me.
00:01:02.800 A lot of posts on X that have been popping up.
00:01:04.800 Here's just one, for example, from an account I follow.
00:01:07.560 It says, if you tell your kids there's a Santa, you're lying to them.
00:01:10.920 They're going to later find out that you lied to them
00:01:12.940 and realize that you may again lie to them in the future.
00:01:15.240 I don't know why parents do this, although mine didn't.
00:01:17.520 But it's a good indicator of bad parenting in my book.
00:01:20.120 So there's a lot of stuff like that.
00:01:21.800 You're lying to your kids about Santa.
00:01:23.380 You're a bad parent.
00:01:24.320 You're traumatizing them.
00:01:25.340 And they'll never trust you again.
00:01:27.300 All this kind of stuff.
00:01:28.980 And let me just say this.
00:01:30.720 We are a Santa household.
00:01:32.420 We are Santa believers.
00:01:33.940 We are Santa maxing, as the kids might say, every Christmas.
00:01:38.800 Are we lying to our kids?
00:01:39.960 Are we engaged in a deceptive conspiracy?
00:01:42.020 See, no.
00:01:44.100 Because here's what you have to understand about young kids.
00:01:47.200 They don't understand what not real even means.
00:01:51.020 So these parents that feel so proud of themselves because they go to, like, their four-year-old
00:01:54.140 and say, well, Santa isn't real.
00:01:56.060 Do you understand your four-year-old doesn't know what you're talking about?
00:01:59.240 Do you understand that your four-year-old not real doesn't mean anything?
00:02:03.180 For your four-year-old, when you say Santa isn't real, well, he's like, well, what do
00:02:06.060 you mean?
00:02:06.200 I see Santa on TV.
00:02:07.580 I see him at the mall.
00:02:08.400 What do you mean he's not real?
00:02:10.280 Clearly real.
00:02:12.200 And that's it.
00:02:12.920 Like, that's all that a young kid understands.
00:02:14.860 Young children think that Superman is real.
00:02:17.160 Okay?
00:02:17.300 They think fairies and leprechauns and dragons and mermaids are real.
00:02:20.820 They think monsters are real.
00:02:21.800 They're worried about, they're like, they're actually worried about a monster in their closet.
00:02:25.360 That's like a real thing that a five-year-old is concerned about in his life.
00:02:28.780 And when you say, maybe you had this conversation with your five-year-old, you said, well, monsters
00:02:32.880 aren't real, number one.
00:02:34.400 And there's not, I've tried to reason this way with my own kids.
00:02:37.420 I open the closet, say, like, look, there's not, it's a wall, there's nothing in here.
00:02:41.940 And the thing you're worried about doesn't even exist.
00:02:44.520 And even if it did exist, like, it's not in your closet.
00:02:47.180 Look at the closet.
00:02:48.040 There's nothing in here, I promise you.
00:02:49.760 But it doesn't matter.
00:02:51.920 They don't understand that because they have it in their imagination.
00:02:55.280 They have it in their mind.
00:02:56.260 And so if they have it in their mind, then it's real.
00:02:58.400 And that's all they know.
00:02:59.780 They think every character they see on TV is real.
00:03:02.120 Paw Patrol is a documentary for your four-year-old.
00:03:06.200 Your four-year-old is not watching a cartoon show.
00:03:08.660 Your four-year-old is watching, like, the real-life adventures live.
00:03:13.780 For, you know, for a four-year-old, Paw Patrol is cops.
00:03:17.340 Bad boys, bad boys, what you gonna do?
00:03:20.040 It's like watching live footage of actual police officers at work.
00:03:25.680 It's just that they happen to be, they happen to be, they happen to be dogs.
00:03:29.520 So that's what it is.
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00:04:39.500 And so here's my question.
00:04:40.460 With your kids, they have this fantastical view of the world.
00:04:45.620 Do you go out of your way?
00:04:47.740 I know their parents are proud of themselves.
00:04:49.340 We don't do Santa in our house.
00:04:51.660 We're too honest.
00:04:52.860 We're far too honest for that.
00:04:54.980 Well, do you extend that to everything else fantastical that they believe?
00:04:59.460 Do you go out of your way to make sure they don't believe in anything else?
00:05:04.340 If your five-year-old daughter came up to you and said,
00:05:06.200 Hey, Daddy, I saw a fairy in the garden.
00:05:08.880 I was out in the garden.
00:05:09.560 I saw a fairy.
00:05:10.340 Would you like bend down and look her in the eyes and say, fairies aren't real? 0.96
00:05:14.060 I know you're lying.
00:05:15.920 You didn't see a fairy.
00:05:17.220 Okay?
00:05:18.080 Debunked.
00:05:18.400 Actually, fact check, fairies aren't real. 0.97
00:05:22.500 I could show you on Snopes.
00:05:23.740 Come here.
00:05:24.420 Let's look it up.
00:05:25.360 I'll show you the Snopes.
00:05:26.420 It's been debunked.
00:05:27.860 Do you do that with your five-year-old?
00:05:29.840 Or are you like a normal person?
00:05:31.900 And when your five-year-old says, I saw a fairy in the garden.
00:05:34.360 Do you say, oh, you did?
00:05:36.440 Awesome.
00:05:37.040 Where was it?
00:05:37.660 What did it look like?
00:05:38.720 Oh, wow.
00:05:39.340 That's amazing.
00:05:40.460 I would hope it's the latter.
00:05:41.820 I would hope that that's how you respond.
00:05:43.600 Is that lying?
00:05:44.460 I mean, if telling your kids about Santa is lying, that would be lying too.
00:05:47.940 Is it lying?
00:05:49.480 But you know what?
00:05:49.900 It's not.
00:05:50.460 It's playing a game.
00:05:51.520 That's what it is.
00:05:51.960 You're playing a game.
00:05:52.960 This is a point that I think Jordan Peterson has made.
00:05:54.860 I think it's a good way of putting it.
00:05:55.740 When we tell your kids about Santa, are you lying to the internet?
00:05:57.720 Lying.
00:05:58.180 You're playing a game.
00:05:59.220 It's a game is what it is.
00:06:01.340 And now your kids don't really know that it's a game, but they don't know that any game is a game.
00:06:05.460 Right?
00:06:05.720 Everything is real.
00:06:06.560 Children live in a fantasy world where magic is real.
00:06:08.840 And going out of your way to kill this kind of magical thinking on a five-year-old is ridiculous to me.
00:06:14.820 Let them live in that world.
00:06:16.220 They're children.
00:06:17.360 Why take it from them?
00:06:18.320 Like, your kids get to live in a world for a short amount of time where there's actually a magical fat guy who flies through the air on reindeer and comes down a chimney and gives them presents.
00:06:31.680 That, I mean, it's a little, as you get older and you think about it more cynically, it's a little bit creepy.
00:06:35.220 But for a kid, it's like amazing.
00:06:37.240 And they get to actually live in that world, as far as they know.
00:06:43.360 And why not let them?
00:06:45.340 When do you tell your kids that Santa isn't real?
00:06:47.440 Well, that's not difficult to figure out.
00:06:49.220 You tell them at precisely the moment when they grow out of it anyway.
00:06:52.940 Kids grow out of it eventually.
00:06:54.400 They kind of figure it out.
00:06:55.700 And when that happens, you tell them that Santa was just a game.
00:07:00.220 I don't even, like, I hear from these adults sometimes who talk about, well, when I found out Santa wasn't real, I was traumatized.
00:07:06.380 I never trusted my parents again.
00:07:08.080 Okay, well, then get a grip.
00:07:09.880 Okay, that's a you problem.
00:07:11.420 Really?
00:07:11.780 You're an adult still dealing with the trauma of finding out Santa wasn't real?
00:07:16.840 Really?
00:07:17.740 Because what should have happened, what happened with me, it's like, I think my parents told me officially.
00:07:21.740 I don't even think my parents ever officially told me.
00:07:23.820 I just kind of got to an age and I'm like, well, this obviously isn't real.
00:07:28.400 You just kind of, you just see it.
00:07:30.400 Because you lose some of the innocence of childhood and you start to realize, like, okay, well, there's no fairies and leprechauns and stuff like that. 0.97
00:07:36.320 And then you realize that Santa isn't real.
00:07:38.980 And, you know, maybe as parents, you sit down.
00:07:41.380 We did this with our oldest kids, our oldest twins a few years ago.
00:07:45.320 Did the talk.
00:07:46.320 It's the first time about Santa.
00:07:49.400 And that was their reaction.
00:07:50.720 I told them, you know, that Santa isn't real.
00:07:54.140 And they didn't collapse in tears.
00:07:56.260 They didn't start screaming.
00:07:57.740 They didn't, they weren't traumatized.
00:08:00.640 You know what they said, both of my kids?
00:08:02.460 They said, yeah, Dad, we know.
00:08:04.780 And that was it.
00:08:05.640 That was, that was the whole conversation.
00:08:07.640 And they were excited because now they get to play the game on the other side with their younger siblings.
00:08:14.940 And now they get to sort of be Santa around Christmas time.
00:08:18.420 And they get to help with some of that stuff.
00:08:20.620 And they have a lot of fun with that.
00:08:22.200 Not because they're malicious and they want, they're excited to lie to their siblings.
00:08:26.080 But it's just a fun game that now they get to play and they get to help their younger siblings, you know, kind of have this kind of magical reality.
00:08:34.940 So I would hope that that would just be the final statement on Santa.
00:08:37.900 And I have decreed it as so.
00:08:40.300 And hopefully we can all leave it there.
00:08:43.600 You heard it here.
00:08:44.460 And that's the end of the conversation.
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