Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without the devoutly religious having a meltdown over the fact that there are Yuletide traditions OTHER than going to church. Every year we are subjected to complaints and tantrums about how Christmas trees and phrases like “Happy Holidays” are somehow an affront to Jesus Christ Himself.
One Texas pastor took his outrage to a downright cruel extreme that had lots of parents stepping up to put him in his place.
The pastor yelled at a mall crowd waiting to see Santa Claus that ‘Santa isn’t real.’
The incident actually happened in 2016 but has recirculated on the internet recently because, even after nearly a decade, the cruelty and intrusiveness have left people shocked.
It all went down in an Amarillo, Texas, mall a few weeks before Christmas 2016. Pastor Dave Grisham — a notorious bigot whose “evangelism” “ministries” have been deemed hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center — went up to the long line of kids and their families waiting to meet Santa Claus and began hollering that Santa Claus wasn’t real.
“Kids, I wanted to tell you today that there is no such thing as Santa Claus. Santa Claus does not exist!” Grisham yelled at the crowd. “The Christmas season is about Jesus… The man you’re gonna see today is just a man in a suit dressed up like Santa but Santa does not exist. Santa’s not real.”
As Grisham hollered his absurd screed at a bunch of children, several of them turned to look at him with expressions of surprise and shock. Unsurprisingly, that was not enough to stop him from escalating even further.
The pastor began yelling at parents to ‘stop lying’ to their kids about Jesus Christ.
“Parents, y’all need to stop lying to your children and telling them that Santa Claus is real when, in fact, he’s not,” Grisham then yelled at the parents waiting with their children. “When you substitute the lie of Santa Claus in the heart of your child for the truth of Jesus Christ, you’re bearing false witness against God.”
Grisham then yelled a whole list of things about Christmas he insisted parents needed to come clean about, like how Santa’s “workshop” doesn’t exist and they are the ones who buy all the gifts from Santa Claus, before leveling more accusations at parents.
“It is not your place to lie to your children. Tell them the truth about Jesus Christ; tell them the truth about what Christmas is all about,” he bellowed.
Parents quickly became angry and confronted the pastor for not minding his own business.
It was at this point when parents, understandably, began fighting back. “Hey, that’s enough,” one mom yelled. “Those are MY children,” another shouted.
Finally, an angry dad confronted Grisham and told him to leave his kids alone and stop preaching at them. Grisham, of course, refused and accused the dad of getting physical after he understandably attempted to push Grisham away from his children.
Grisham then lambasted the dad for not “telling your kids the truth,” to which the dad responded with the precise heart of the matter: “That’s not your decision.”
Still, Grisham was undeterred, pointing out that the parents were “lying” to their kids. “Yeah,” one dad defiantly responded. “That’s not your decision to make.” Grisham countered, “But that’s a sin,” to which the dad replied: “What you’re doing is a sin.”
The pastor is infamous for religious bigotry and harassing kids at Christmas.
Sadly, the Amarillo incident is only scratching the surface of Grisham’s long history of unhinged religious bigotry and cruel proselytization.
In 2010, Grisham organized a public spectacle in which he planned to burn a Koran in a public park. Thankfully that stunt was thwarted by a concerned citizen. That same year, he also publicly “executed” a figurine of Santa Claus with a rifle.
More recently, he filmed himself destroying a Catholic display on the side of a highway for being “idolatry,” and in December of 2023 returned to his Christmas-ruining antics once again, dressing up as the Grinch outside of a New Mexico elementary school and picketing with a sign reading, “Santa is fake, Jesus is real.” Just as Jesus would have done, surely.
Grisham and every other Christian are entitled to their beliefs, of course, but I’d imagine that if I showed up to one of their churches and began proselytizing about the evidence historians have found that Jesus Christ was gaythe police would be called on me in seconds flat.
More importantly, it is depraved to target children and use them as pawns in your preaching without their or their parents’ consent. Jesus Christ Himself had a lot to say about Christians like Grisham and those who cheer him on, and not a word of it was good.
Perhaps this Christmas, they could all celebrate by actually reading the Bible they claim to care so much about and taking His words to heart for once.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
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