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Dec. 22, 2020 - The Michael Knowles Show

01:40:43

Daily Wire Backstage: The 2020 Season Finale

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	Hey, Michael Knowles here.
	The latest episode of Daily Wire Backstage, the 2020 season finale, is available now.
	Tis the season to come together, sip some whiskey, and argue about what's the greatest Christmas song of all time.
	Join me, Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, and the God King, Jeremy Boring, as we give a fitting end to this wild 2020.
	Take a listen.
	Hey everyone, Candace Owens here, and today I will be reading to you all from Luke chapter 2, beginning at verse 8.
	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.
	And the angel said unto them, Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
	You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.
	And suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.
	Praise God, praise the Lord, and Merry Christmas from all of us at The Daily Wire.
	Hey.
	Merry Christmas, you guys.
	Annual holiday celebrated by literally billions of Christians worldwide commemorating the birth of Jesus.
	Kwanzaa.
	No.
	You never get anything right.
	Good to be with you, happy to be with you, and so happy that it's Christmas time.
	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, and also by the beautiful, the talented, the lovely Elisha Krause.
	Elisha, how's it going out there in California?
	Pretty good.
	Still warm.
	Don't be too jealous.
	But also, I thought I was the hostess with the mostest, so when did I get demoted?
	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.
	So be sure to go to the show page at the top of dailywire.com.
	Once you click on backstage, then you can go down to the chat box and ask the questions.
	And my lovely producer, Savannah, and I will be pulling those questions throughout the show.
	Also, we have a lot of awesome content that the guys have been talking about for a while now.
	One of the contents that's now available for you to not only listen to but watch is Apollo 11, what we saw.
	Everyone should be sure to check it out.
	And it's now exclusively available at Daily Wire on Apple and Spotify.
	You can also watch it via the Daily Wire Apple TV or Roku app, which is pretty cool.
	So now you can get Daily Wire content on Apple TV or Roku.
	The series is just one of the new content pieces that, of course, is available here at the Daily Wire.
	That's coming down the pipeline, including the lovely Candace Owens, who we just saw, the Prager U Library in its entirety, and a new entertainment channel, along with a lot of investigative journalism.
	If you are like me and you are last-minute Christmas shopping, do not be afraid.
	Or, Lo, he is with you always.
	But also because we have a special Daily Wire discount for you, 20% off.
	So head on over to dailywire.com because then you can become an all access number and get those not one but two tumblers and just print out a certificate, send the email to a friend and be like, look at how much I love you or give it to the liberal in their life and collect the leftist tears at their annoyance.
	So head on over to dailywire.com for those two leftist tears tumblers and become a Daily Wire insider for that 20% off.
	Use the code WATCH, that's W-A-T-C-H, at dailywire.com.
	Was Alicia ever the hostess with the mostess?
	I don't know.
	Did we actually hold like a competition?
	Well, I just mean, I would have thrown my name in the hopper if I'd known that there was a competition at least.
	Alicia, thank you.
	We're going to be checking in with Alicia throughout the night to bring us your questions.
	We want to hear from you here at what is the last backstage of 2020.
	We're going to be talking mostly about Christmas, mostly about the season, mostly reflecting on the year...
	I'm mostly looking forward to the new year.
	Not talking so much politics.
	The reason is, like, Christmas is in just a couple of days.
	You can't just talk about politics.
	You guys talk about politics all day long.
	But there is the marriage of Christmas in politics, I do think is fair ground for a conversation tonight.
	Christmas, one of my things that I always love to talk about with Christmas is that, you know, like people always say, oh, there's a war on Christmas.
	These radical leftists and their war on Christmas.
	And then you sort of look at the history of America and America has always been in a war over Christmas.
	It was founded on a war on Christmas.
	It was founded on a war over Christmas.
	So I think that it's perfectly appropriate for us to deal with politics of the 16th century or 17th century.
	Before we do that, I do want to talk about the most recent political Christmas event that's taken place, and that is that apparently Santa has gone completely woke.
	I know you all talked about this on your shows, but Santa, in the day and age in which we live, will no longer get you your Red Ryder BB gun.
	Do we have the clip of woke Santa?
	No, no guns.
	Nerf guns.
	Nope, not even a Nerf gun.
	Nope.
	If your dad wants to get it for you, that's fine, but I can't bring it to you.
	But what else would you like?
	Lots of auto toys.
	There's Legos.
	There's bicycles.
	There's cars and trucks.
	What do you think?
	What do you think?
	That kid is within his rights to beat the living hell out of Santa.
	Santa can't tell you no unless you have been naughty.
	In fairness, don't you think that kid will shoot his eye out?
	In Santa's defense, that kid is going to shoot his eye out.
	Andrew, what do you think?
	I got a promotion.
	I'm Andrew Clavin.
	Wait a minute.
	Where did you grow a beard?
	Although, how am I the most festively dressed person around here?
	Because Andrew Clavin loves Santa.
	Because he loves Christmas.
	He does love Christmas more than anybody I've ever met.
	And so do I. So do I. The one thing about that clip, though, that gets me is all the parents just sitting around Not saying anything, not speaking up for this kid.
	I mean, you only have so many opportunities in life where you can actually yell at Santa and be in the right.
	And here's an opportunity.
	But they all just sit around and let this kid be picked on by Santa Claus.
	I think the one place where the left sometimes wins in these moments is because people have an inherent decency in them, and you don't know that you're about to step into a situation like this.
	You're not prepared, and then it starts to happen.
	You actually don't know what the appropriate response is.
	I don't mean to tie this to a broader political point, but this is a broader political point that I've been thinking about, especially considering that we're about to enter the culture wars.
	And I think that so much of what we've been living through is this three-step process that folks on the left have been able to effectuate in virtually every institution of our society up to, and including religious institutions and cultural institutions.
	And that is, they pick on the fact that conservatives tend to be nice people who want to be inoffensive.
	And then they identify being inoffensive with shutting up about your values.
	If you don't want to offend anybody, then never talk about your values ever.
	Matt gets this all the time, right?
	Why are you even talking about this issue?
	Sure, we made this the top trending topic on Twitter.
	But Matt, how dare you sound off on it because now you're not a nice person.
	Now, we all know you're not a nice person.
	But that has nothing to do with you sounding off on the values issue.
	So they start off with step number one is you guys are really – we know that you're nice.
	And so we're going to take advantage of your niceness to tell you to shut up.
	Then you're supposed to shut up.
	You're never supposed to comment on it at all.
	The only way to be safe is for you to just be quiet.
	And then finally, silence is violence.
	So if you actually stay silent, that is not enough.
	You actually have to start echoing the message.
	They take advantage of the fact that we're sort of nice people by nature and that we will kind of let these things go.
	And it is a case for never letting this sort of stuff go and just telling Santa to head in.
	I mean, I do it every year, basically, but I mean, not for nachos.
	I don't know if you guys saw my favorite response to this.
	There were many good ones.
	Each of the three of you had a good response.
	But our friend Stephen Crowder, purveyor of fine ashtrays, I think had the absolute best response, which is he had the little boy onto his show and gave him a second chance to interact with Santa Claus.
	I hate to promote Stephen Crowder, but I thought we would enjoy this clip together.
	Oh!
	There's little Michael!
	Little Michael, do you know who this is making a call just for you?
	Who is that?
	Santa.
	This is Santa!
	That's right!
	And I understand that you're a fan of me, Santa, and you had a little bit of a run-in with one of those helpers at the mall who hadn't been vetted properly yesterday.
	Is that right?
	What do you call him?
	Bad Santa.
	That's right!
	Bad Santa, who didn't pass the chemical test beforehand, but we've taken care of that.
	Honestly, some of Crowder's best work ever.
	I want to talk about our friends before we keep going over at Ring.
	Ring keeps you safe.
	And we've all recently made major moves.
	Each of the four of us has made a major move in our lives.
	Matt, not a month ago, was a resident of the state of California.
	Pennsylvania, the three of us in LA now making moves to Nashville and to South Florida.
	Ring is what makes it possible.
	Not just because it makes it possible to keep this house that you're in safe.
	What I've discovered with Ring lately is that I'm trying to sell my house back in LA and I like to be able to check in on the sort of, you know, sulfur raining down on LA, all the brimstone.
	You can do it That's right.
	I can pull up my phone and look at my Ring doorbell camera and just see the chaos in the streets.
	And I have the security of knowing that...
	Well, soon I will have sold that house.
	I have the security of knowing that it has not yet burned to the ground.
	That's because of our friends over at Ring.
	It is doorbell season, the busiest time of the year for your front door.
	And that's definitely true.
	Well, at all of our homes as well.
	You can keep an eye out on all of the hustle and bustle, no matter where you are, right from your phone.
	If someone stops by or something's going on, Ring lets you know, and you can see and speak to whoever is there from anywhere.
	This holiday season, it's not just the best time to get Ring.
	It's the derndest time to get Ring.
	That's not in the teleprompter.
	I just made that up.
	But the best time to give Ring as a gift is really what we're talking about today.
	Ring makes the perfect holiday gift, so this holiday season, give someone the gift of peace of mind.
	Ring has security products for every corner of your home, inside and out.
	Best of all, you can see it all in the Ring app.
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	Keep an eye on every corner of your house with easy-to-install indoor and outdoor cams We're good to go.
	That this is basically your eye in the sky on your kids.
	So I have three under seven, and one of them is now crawling, which means she'll eat anything there is to eat off the floor, like anything.
	Ring keeps her safe because I can see what she's about to do and race into the other room and pick her up before she eats that thing.
	You can do the same with Ring.
	For a limited time, go to ring.com slash backstage for special holiday offers.
	That is ring.com slash backstage to save your children.
	And also keep yourself safe and all that sort of stuff.
	So check them out, ring.com slash backstage.
	So we talked about how there's a perpetual war on Christmas in this country.
	There's nothing more American than the war on Christmas.
	Christmas was illegal in some of the early colonies.
	In the Mayflower, Plymouth, it was completely illegal.
	And the reason is because the early founders of the country were decidedly Protestant.
	And I know we always like to talk about putting Christ back in Christmas.
	You'll hear a bunch of our evangelical fans say, oh, we've got to put Christ back in Christmas.
	Yeah.
	back in Christmas, but of course, Christmas is fundamentally a Catholic holiday before becoming an American holiday.
	And so Christmas didn't come in vogue in America.
	For almost a century after the founding, you had really the sort of religious Protestant version of Christmas start to take hold in the South.
	We talked about this last year, but famously, Lincoln had a picture made of himself with Santa as an act of propaganda during the Civil War because he was taking something beloved in the South and making it quintessentially American, not not allowing them to have it because they use Santa as a way of differentiating Southerners from Northerners.
	And this brings us to the second complaint that you often hear from religious Americans, which is they're trying to make Christmas a secular holiday.
	The truth is Christmas in America was always a secular holiday, right?
	Essentially, war propaganda, and then in the 1880s and through the early part of the 1900s, it was really Coca-Cola and Montgomery Ward who just essentially, and greeting cards, essentially invented...
	You know, the earliest Christmas celebrations in America was 1621.
	It was right after the Mayflower landed, and William Bradford, the governor, writes about this with absolute contempt on Plymouth Plantation.
	And he says, you know, all the good Puritans go out and work the fields that day and everything, but these sort of Anglican, just degenerate, debauched people, they decided they want to stay home from the fields and celebrate Christmas.
	So Bradford reluctantly agrees to do it, and he hopes that they get corrected later on.
	And he comes back And do you know that the kids were sitting outside playing games in the street?
	They had toys and they were, you know, enjoying themselves.
	Reminds you of Mencken's line that puritanism is the haunting fear that somewhere someone is happy.
	And so he comes, I kid you not, Brad, he writes about this, he didn't miss it.
	Brad finds the kids playing games and he steals all their toys.
	He goes around, he takes every one of their toys.
	Man after my own heart.
	That's right.
	No, he was.
	I'm that kind of guy.
	He sends them home.
	He says, if you want to sit on Christmas Day in quiet, solemn contemplation, you may.
	Otherwise, get back to work.
	It was a rowdy holiday, generally speaking.
	The people who celebrated Christmas at that time generally were treated as a day of festivity and drunkenness, and the Puritans just absolutely despised it.
	So you have a decidedly Catholic holiday that was rejected by a decidedly Catholic Protestant and Puritanical Protestant early settling.
	Then you had a very commercial, secular holiday that formed up because the Coca-Cola company decided we could all use some Santa Claus in our lives.
	And then you had the sort of co-opting of that then To become a sort of decidedly American amalgamation of Protestant religiosity and secularism already married to a holiday that was fundamentally about the union of Catholic religiosity married to pagan religions.
	You know, it's...
	And you really have...
	This is why I actually...
	And all the great songs are written by the Jews.
	And all the great songs are written by the Jews.
	I actually think that Christmas, as we understand it, is the most definitively American holiday.
	You know, in a way, we're touching maybe Catholic traditions from Europe or Anglican traditions from the UK. But really, American Christmas is American Christmas.
	And this is why I... Ben and I have had this conversation many times over the years, but I actually think that all the versions of American Christmas are good.
	It's good that Catholics have Mass on Christmas.
	It's good that Protestants celebrate the birth of Christ.
	It's even good that people who aren't religious in America have Santa Claus.
	It's good that they have greeting cards.
	It's good that they have...
	Chinese food.
	Chinese food.
	Oh, no, that's it.
	No, it is.
	It is this wonderful time of the year when we, the most wonderful time of the year, some might say.
	It's this wonderful time of the year when we come together in sort of celebration of these things that we do all have in common.
	And this is why I always say, I actually think that the Jews should, American Jews, should celebrate Christmas.
	Not perhaps the religious aspects of it, but the uniquely American aspects.
	Most Jews enjoy this time of year, for sure.
	And it's not just because of the Hanukkah.
	I mean, it's very nice when there are all the lights out.
	And I enjoy other people.
	Honestly, I think Jews have a lot to be grateful for, for being in the United States, the most tolerant country in the history of the world, toward Jews.
	And I think a lot of that is tied into the uniquely American brand of Christianity.
	So you tie that together, and Jews ought to celebrate the fact that Americans are celebrating Christmas.
	And I think that that is a good thing.
	It's not really good, though, that the...
	The actual story of Christmas, the Nativity story, has receded entirely into the background.
	I mean, you talk to the average Christian, they don't even know.
	The notion they have of the Nativity story is sort of an amalgamation of...
	Well, they don't even know which story is in the Gospel, which Gospel books actually have the Nativity story.
	But the story they have is one that's not even in the Bible itself, and they probably couldn't tell you which one between Matthew and Luke tells which part of the story.
	And that's the part of it that I see as...
	Not good at all.
	It sort of goes like this, right?
	There's an illegal immigrant Palestinian.
	That's one way of living.
	And a single, knocked-up mother.
	Right?
	And then there are a bunch of intolerant bigots who show up.
	Being shunned by the intolerant.
	Correct.
	I think that's the story, correct?
	Am I getting that right?
	That's what I saw on Twitter.
	I did see that on Instagram.
	You know, there is so much about Christmas.
	Like, I actually went down one of these rabbit holes a couple weeks ago because there are so many layers to it, as you describe.
	Even, I always thought my whole life that they picked the date because of...
	Pagan holidays.
	And it actually seems, more recent scholarship says, it probably wasn't that.
	There were some pagan holidays a little earlier, also in December.
	But the reason that the church fathers say that they picked the date is actually because they believed that a divine life had to be a perfect length.
	and they dated the death of Christ to March 25th and the creation of the world to March 25th.
	And in the East, they said April 6th.
	And so exactly nine months later has to be the birth of Christ.
	All of these, so it's basically supposed to tie in exactly the creation, which actually does get to some of the kind of pagan ideas, which is this idea of there's death and then there's rebirth and all of this.
	And this ties into the kind of secular celebration.
	Then you get the Christmas trees and you get all of this.
	It is so rich.
	And the left doesn't want us to acknowledge it at all.
	We're not allowed to say Merry Christmas.
	It is the most unifying holiday ever in the history of the world.
	This is ultimately my point, that American Christmas is the most unifying holiday, and the left being against it isn't exactly being against Christ, which of course the left is against religion.
	But I actually think they're more against the idea of unity among Americans, which is ultimately what Christmas has come to be.
	You're right, Christians don't maybe know which gospel, if any, gave them their view of Christmas.
	Ultimately, though, American Christmas is...
	It is both.
	It has a little something in it for everyone except the people stealing the toys, which in this case is not the Puritans anymore.
	It's the Puritanical left who just doesn't want any of us to grab hold of any of it and have this time where we come together in a kind of spirit of goodwill.
	You know, this very problem has actually led me to think I always thought American conservatives were the kind of inheritors of the founding of the country, you know, in the Mayflower in 1776.
	I'm starting to think Maybe it's the progressive left that are the inheritors of this puritanical, censorious sort of, obviously they've transformed it dramatically over time, but they're now the ones stealing the toys, just like Governor Bradford did back in the 1620s.
	Yeah, that's where America's puritanical streak went.
	I think that's exactly right.
	I want to talk about this movie, Killing Santa Claus.
	Have you guys seen this, Killing Santa?
	I saw the preview.
	This terrific Mel Gibson film.
	There is a little bit of a Daily Wire component.
	I don't want to give too much away, but someone currently sitting on this set may or may not be one of the stars of the film.
	We're going to talk about that, but first we're going to talk about our friends over at Policy Genius.
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	It is nice and very important to get it right.
	So, our friend Mel Gibson, who, of course, made the greatest Christian film of all time, Braveheart, and then he also made that movie about Jesus, The Passion of the Christ.
	Mel Gibson, kind of a controversial figure, and not only controversial in the sort of broader cultural war, but specifically controversial, his relationship with Jewish Americans.
	Yes.
	He said a few things that he probably shouldn't have said while in a state that he probably shouldn't have been in.
	Yeah.
	By the way, I desperately want him to make the Hanukkah movie.
	Mel Gibson's Hanukkah movie.
	I would go raise the money for it right now, today.
	It would be unbelievably good.
	So I knew that Ben Shapiro believes that Mel Gibson is uniquely qualified to make a film about the Maccabees.
	And that's why I wasn't surprised to see Ben doing his part to rehabilitate the image of Mel Gibson in the Jewish community by starring in Mel Gibson's new film, Killing Santa.
	Let's see the clip.
	I don't know what I'm doing wrong.
	I've lost my influence.
	Maybe it's time I retired the coat.
	You still have it.
	Some kids with a deer rifle put two holes in the sleigh, one in me.
	All I have is a loathing for a world that's forgotten.
	The United States military would like to procure your services.
	This is a one-time deal, gentlemen.
	How are you, Mike?
	Nicole and the kids are well, I hope.
	Where are you?
	You just rushed a big time!
	Help me!
	Help me!
	Oh, no!
	I'd like you to kill Santa Claus.
	Really?
	I know he let you down too.
	I want the big man's head.
	Severed heads rot, they mold.
	They don't want his beard.
	I'm not shaving off a dead man's beard.
	I'll come while you sleep.
	The fat man's got his eye on you, kid.
	He's not that nice.
	He's not that nice to the people around him.
	He's kinda just a little bit of a devil.
	Ben Shapiro, the entire internet is aflame over your performance in The Fat Man.
	You called Santa Claus a devil.
	You asked for his head.
	How is this helping rehabilitate Mel Gibson or Santa Claus himself with the Jewish people?
	I know.
	I mean, I've had a good tour of duty here.
	So as you know, I was also the star of Knives Out this year.
	So I've really had a big year.
	I feel like I have some awards coming to me as a transgender little person.
	Yeah.
	Yes, Hollywood was good to you.
	So I feel like I've checked most of the boxes here.
	But yeah, there's always...
	They keep getting the hair wrong.
	It's a little bit more up.
	They got a lot of the across hair.
	They've got the hair from like 15 years ago.
	That's right.
	You're like Nick Searcy this year.
	You are in two major motions.
	Yeah, seriously.
	That's unbelievable.
	How much...
	Did you actually track all the Twitter controversy about this being you?
	No, I did not.
	Or is this your first time hearing about it?
	This is my first time hearing about it.
	Oh yeah, it was actually a...
	A tempest in a teapot, I think we would all agree.
	But it was a bit of a hubbub.
	This is when I converted to Judaism, right?
	It wasn't always this way, guys.
	This is the origin story we're getting.
	Yeah, Ben Shapiro, part one.
	They obviously had you in mind.
	Just like the authors of the other movies.
	Well, there's no question that they had you in mind in the other film.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, maybe.
	I don't know.
	I watched it, and I thought, that doesn't look like me.
	But then again, I think Denzel Washington looks like me.
	So, like, I don't see color.
	It's just something I don't do.
	You don't see color.
	They didn't capture your chiseled physique or your extraordinary height.
	That's exactly right.
	I mean, at no point was there a gun show, for example.
	And that's something we do at All Access, like, all the time.
	What is this character's name?
	Did I see it's, like, Billy or something?
	I think so.
	It is Billy, yeah.
	Bill instead of Ben.
	That's a little suspicious.
	Dude, I want to be in some movies.
	No one ever puts me in the movies.
	That's not true.
	You literally starred in a feature film that came out this year.
	It wasn't that big, though.
	It wasn't like that.
	This is going to be seen by a lot of people.
	The literal star of a feature film that came out only three months ago...
	Yeah, but I didn't post about that and stuff.
	No, but I'm talking about it right now so that all of our Daily Wire fans...
	Were you really in a film this year?
	I was in a movie that came out this year.
	And I was so afraid...
	I didn't miss this.
	Oh yeah, it came out this year.
	And I love the movie.
	I'm very afraid that it's going to get us all canceled.
	But then I think...
	You know, of all of the things that I've tried to do at the Daily Wire to get us all canceled, like that movie, that's like number 300.
	What's the movie called?
	It's called Hollyweird.
	It's on, yeah, it's like out on the streams, you know, you can go get it.
	This is not a joke, you're actually in a movie.
	There's a movie, yeah, it's not a movie, it's not like Ben.
	Ben doesn't even need to show up to be in his movies.
	Right.
	They just make characters for Ben.
	Yeah.
	But that's, if it does blow back, is this my final, can I fire him?
	Please, please let me.
	It'd be rough to fire him over a film that he shot before we hired him, but I'm open to it.
	Okay.
	There is actually a kind of wild tie-in.
	I finished shooting the movie on Election Day 2016.
	That's right.
	How long these things take to come out?
	You left after the final shot of the film.
	You drove straight to the studio and appeared on our election.
	I actually got in the car.
	You brought us with you into your world of fantasy, and for the past few years, we've just been living in this alternative reality.
	This is the movie.
	We're all living in Knowles' family room.
	Well, I left the set, and I actually, you know, you remember all the polls.
	It was 99%.
	Hillary's going to win.
	So I prepared all my commentary on why Hillary was going to win.
	I called Jeremy.
	I said, all right, I'm in the car.
	I'm heading to Daily Wire.
	So, you know, what is it?
	Hillary's up 3 million points now.
	Okay, we're getting ready to go.
	He said, actually, buddy, it's kind of close, you know, and I thought, wow, this is even stranger than this film set that I was just on 20 minutes ago.
	It also tells people a thing about making movies that he shot the film in 2016 and it actually dropped this year.
	And that's not a particularly long time.
	No, that happens.
	So I want to check in with Alicia Krause and get questions from our DailyWire.com members, especially questions if they happen to be about the season.
	Alicia.
	We have plenty of questions about the season, but this is a good point to remind people that if they want to ask questions, then they should head over to dailywire.com slash subscribe and use that code WATCH, W-A-T-C-H, for all of you out there who are homeschooled like me, to get that 20% off and get not one, but two leftist tears tumblers.
	I think it's a great Christmas gift.
	I love last-minute shopping, so go ahead, join me in that last-minute shopping and get a Daily Wire membership for someone in your life that you love or a liberal who you want to annoy.
	The first question goes to the God King himself.
	Jeremy Boring, best Christmas movie ever.
	Best Christmas movie ever.
	There's only one answer to this.
	For me, It's a Wonderful Life.
	Of course.
	Jingle all the way.
	Absolutely the best Christmas film ever.
	One of the few films that my father and I would make a point to try to watch together every year.
	It's funny, when I married my wife, she hated the film.
	But I think now her heart has grown three sizes and we enjoy the film together.
	I think that it is...
	An absolute masterpiece.
	Of course, it was not actually well-received when the film was first released.
	It found its way the hard way, and I think that that's actually appropriate given the subject matter of the film.
	It's very dark.
	I mean, Lionel Barrymore does not get punished in the film.
	Right?
	He gets away with it.
	He steals the money and he gets away with it.
	Steals the money and gets away with it.
	Can I just make an argument for a Christmas story as the best Christmas movie?
	I'd like to hear this.
	I think it just captures the nostalgia of childhood.
	It's a movie that, first of all, I watch it with my kids for the first time.
	You know, kids four and seven.
	Twins are seven.
	And none of them had seen it.
	We all enjoyed it.
	So, you know, I think a Christmas movie has to be a movie that the whole family can enjoy.
	If I put It's a Wonderful Life on for my four-year-old, it's going to go over his head or he'll be traumatized by the man trying to throw himself off the bridge.
	But it captures...
	For kids, you know, you watch it and you relate to it because you're seeing it through the eyes of the child.
	And as an adult, you watch it and you relate to the narrator.
	And you're remembering back to when you were a kid.
	So it captures both experiences of Christmas.
	I have one more thing to say about It's a Wonderful Life.
	I love that movie.
	It's really like a top ten movie for me easily.
	But there's a solid case to be made.
	Bedford Falls is better off if George throws himself off the bridge.
	And here is the case.
	The case is that George Bailey causes the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States.
	The case is that he is giving loans without any sort of collateral to people who absolutely 100% cannot pay back those loans.
	And because of that, he sends his own bank into crisis.
	And even if Uncle Drunk has not lost the money, people stop paying back their loans.
	There is a massive crisis.
	They have to re-seize all the property.
	And Lionel Barrymore ends up running the town anyway.
	Except legally speaking.
	It is interesting that you might...
	It's an FDR, but the truth is the movie was created as almost an ode to FDR in certain ways.
	Yeah.
	It's funny to say that Mr.
	Potter might be the good guy of that film because I reread A Christmas Carol this year and I read the speech in which Ebenezer Scrooge explains to Bob Cratchit why it's inappropriate that he be paid not to work on Christmas Day and I actually couldn't find any fault with the argument.
	He...
	Keep in mind, he does give him the day off, and he does agree to pay him for it.
	So he actually doesn't withhold Christmas from Bob Cratchit.
	He just, before he gives him the day off and pays him for it, he explains why it's patently unfair that he would be expected to do so.
	And also, the thing is, people get the Grinch totally wrong.
	The Grinch, he wanted those presents.
	I haven't seen it in a while.
	He's got some weirdos down there singing and annoying while he's trying to sleep.
	Yeah.
	The Grinch is essentially a conservative wanting people to get off his yard.
	Yeah.
	Michael, do you want to tell us why I meet myself and Irene at the best Christmas movie?
	No, it is, and people don't get this, this subtle, esoteric text.
	The one I will make a case for is, if not the best Christmas movie, the last great Christmas movie is Home Alone.
	One, because it's got Joe Pesci in it, so that's something, it's a wonderful life.
	And two, because Home Alone 2 has Donald Trump in it.
	Oh my gosh!
	I'm sorry, I need to change my mind.
	Home Alone 2.
	I re-watched Home Alone last year on a flight back for Christmas.
	Movie totally holds up.
	That is a terrific movie.
	It actually has a heart to it.
	It's both very funny.
	It has a heart.
	And for a 10-year-old kid, or however old Macaulay Culkin was, great performer.
	Can I point out one problem with that movie?
	My kids watched that movie for the first time a couple years ago.
	And it's very influential to kids.
	And they get the idea of setting...
	So my son saw that movie when he was maybe 6 years old.
	And I don't know how he got his hand on it, but he somehow got his hands on a nail.
	And he put it, like, pointy end up in the middle of the floor to set a booby trap for the burglars.
	I almost stepped on it, and he explained to me he was setting a booby trap for the burglars, and I told him, you can't do that.
	And so he took the nail, and he brought it out to the garage.
	And I went out to the garage, and he had just placed it again in the garage, pointy end up.
	So that's, you know, it has an influence on kids.
	You do kind of forget, when you rewatch that movie...
	He already got them.
	Like, early on in his booby traps, he sort of got them.
	So, eventually, he just becomes like the Marquis de Sade, you know?
	Torture these guys.
	Also, he has the worst parents in human history.
	We agree on this.
	I mean, they literally just forget him in the house for, what, like a week?
	They just, like, leave him there?
	And he's partying it up, and at no point does somebody say, like, can I just, like, no one in the entire town has a phone?
	Like, you just call the neighbor and be like, can you go over and check on him?
	No, you know what?
	He's fine.
	He's probably fine.
	He's, like, seven.
	He can take care of himself.
	Have you guys seen the classic Monty Python and the Flying Circus sketch called Classic Jape?
	Where they, in this very prim and proper British way, explain broad physical slapstick comedy called Classic Jape.
	And essentially, I think someone watched that sketch and then wrote Home Alone.
	Because it is like stepping on nails, getting hit by a 2x4, you know, and...
	Very prim-proper.
	I'll make one more case for a good Christmas movie, Meet Me in St.
	Louis, which is actually a great musical.
	That's where Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas comes from that movie.
	It's actually a very good movie, and there's a little girl named Margaret O'Brien who actually won an Oscar for her performance.
	She's like seven.
	And she really is very good.
	Judy Garland is at the height of her powers.
	Probably the most talented person, by the way, who ever worked in Hollywood is Judy Garland.
	She's up there.
	And it's a really good movie.
	It holds up really well.
	Excellent.
	Alicia?
	Well, I think we might already have Matt's answer to this, considering he doesn't like Nails or Home Alone.
	But Matt, since you tend to hate everything, what's your least favorite Christmas movie?
	Least favorite Christmas movie?
	I should have a ready answer for that, I guess.
	That's one area where I'm kind of a softie on Christmas movies.
	I tend to actually like all of them.
	I can't think of a Christmas movie I've seen that I actually hate.
	Somehow, I haven't managed to hate a Christmas movie.
	I have one.
	The new Peanuts Christmas Special.
	I didn't even know they made a new one.
	So, like, three years ago, after playing the Peanuts Christmas special for 50 years or something, the network decided that they could...
	Well, they didn't actually announce their decision, but they decided it's very clear that they didn't want to play Linus reading the Gospel of Luke on television every year, and so they created a brand new Peanuts Christmas special, even better than the old Christmas special, and the first year they played both of them, And then the next year I think they only played the new one because they're just rewriting history.
	And they took the gospel out?
	It's just a completely different story.
	It's not like a remake of the original.
	Here's the Peanuts kids having a whole other Christmas adventure that isn't in any way about the gospel.
	So that one's already my least favorite, even though I haven't seen it.
	But actually I remembered A Christmas Vacation.
	It's a classic by a lot of people's standards.
	I never saw it.
	I watched it with my wife last week for the first time, and I made it 30 minutes and fell asleep.
	It just didn't capture my interest.
	Matt!
	I think if you grew up watching it, then you like it because you grew up watching it.
	That's probably fair.
	But I also love it because of the hit song, Christmas Vacation.
	Fa la la la in a ho ho ho, jingle jangle jingle as we go.
	I think I fell asleep for that.
	I was asleep by that time.
	Does the Rudolph special count as a Christmas movie?
	Sure.
	It's only like 30 minutes long, right?
	I mean, it's not...
	Well, it's...
	I guess it counts, yeah.
	There's a lot there.
	By the way...
	That's your least favorite?
	No, no, I love it.
	Oh, I was going to say.
	I would have added that to the other list.
	Because, you know, the woke people started to like it last year.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Did you read the articles?
	Because apparently the dentist is gay.
	I thought they were saying Rudolph was gay, and the whole thing was about how Rudolph is a reindeer, and that's why he's special.
	Yeah, but the dentist is definitely.
	I don't think Rudolph's gay, because he's a reindeer, but I do think the dentist is.
	By the way, there's a hole in the Rudolph story, which I was made aware of on that great source known as Twitter, which is that reindeer are colorblind, so the red light actually wouldn't be all that helpful, is what I was informed of.
	No, that's not true.
	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.
	Plus, also the light.
	The fact that it's red light.
	And does Santa not have a flashlight, though, that he can...
	He's magical.
	He's flying through the air and he needs a reindeer with a nose that lights up.
	He doesn't have wings.
	And also, the light is not for the other reindeer.
	The light is for Santa, who's commanding the fleet.
	Won't you guide my sleigh, not guide the other reindeer?
	That's exactly right.
	Unbelievable.
	I'm glad we could settle this.
	Absolutely.
	Elisha, we're going to be back with you directly so that we can answer a few more wonderful Christmas questions.
	First, we're going to talk about our friends over at Bravo Company Manufacturing.
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	The second thing they did was to secure the right of individuals to protect that speech and their lives with force if needed.
	Owning a rifle is a heavy responsibility.
	Building a rifle is no less a responsibility, but...
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	With that in mind, every component of a BCM rifle is hand-assembled and tested by Americans.
	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.
	BCM also knows that making a reliable, life-saving tool is only half the story.
	They know you have to learn how to use the thing.
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	That's bravocompanymfg.com.
	Benjamin.
	Also, small children don't order rifles.
	Your parents were adults.
	They're the ones who probably just wanted to clarify.
	No, that's fair.
	But in the meantime, parents, what you should do to defend your children is have a Bravo Company manufacturing rifle.
	All you have to do is head over to bravocompanymfg.com.
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	Quick note, by the way, on the movie thing.
	How did we go through that entire conversation and not say Die Hard?
	Die Hard is 100% a Christmas movie.
	Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?
	It is 100% a Christmas movie.
	Absolutely a Christmas movie.
	It's written into the script.
	It happens on Christmas.
	They literally write into the script a bunch of I have a machine gun now, ho ho.
	I mean, these are all Christmas jokes.
	Now, I did see an excellent commentary that suggested actually that Die Hard is a Hanukkah movie.
	The case was that a small group A single man, actually.
	A mercenary.
	A small group fights off a vast and more superiorly armed foe.
	Using just the resources.
	Who's almost certainly German.
	Yeah, right.
	That's correct.
	He actually says that he shops at the same place that Arafat gets his suits.
	That is one of the lines in the film.
	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?
	And then there's a bunch of kindling in the building at the end.
	Clearly a Hanukkah movie.
	Clearly a Hanukkah movie.
	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 explained to the good people of America the true meaning of Hanukkah in this delightful video clip.
	Hey everybody, we're here to talk about one of our favorite holidays in our big modern family.
	Hanukkah.
	And why do you love Hanukkah?
	I love Hanukkah because it really is about the light and bringing light where there has been darkness.
	Is that her husband?
	It is.
	And there is so much work to be done in the world.
	Oh, she settled down.
	That's good.
	To bring light.
	And it is a celebration of, always, tikkun alam.
	No!
	Which is about fighting for justice.
	Wrong!
	Incorrect!
	And fighting for the dignity of all people.
	No!
	And it's about rededication.
	To what?
	And it's about joy.
	And it's about joy!
	And it's about spreading joy around the world.
	Oh, sweet baby.
	Oh, I can't say that.
	And sharing it with your family and your friends and your neighbors and your community.
	That's important right now.
	So that's what we are doing, is to wish everyone a happy Hanukkah.
	And to your family from ours, we wish you all the best.
	Should we light the candle?
	Yeah, let's do it.
	Let's light a candle, guys.
	Let's do it.
	It's like a candle.
	Oh my gosh.
	Will they successfully complete the task?
	They did it!
	Oh my gosh, look at that.
	They lit the shamash, and then they lit the previously lit candle, as you can already see there.
	Wow.
	Well, they had to have a dress rehearsal.
	That was magical, right there.
	That is the worst Hanukkah video I have ever seen in all my life.
	Does that not hold up?
	Is that not...
	No, every element of that is incorrect.
	Every single element of it is wrong.
	Walk us through it, Ben.
	Okay, so the story of Hanukkah is extremely bloody, which is why it is awesome.
	So the story is about...
	That's why Santa wears red.
	Yeah, well...
	No.
	So...
	It is about the Seleucid Empire, which are the Greeks, okay?
	They take over the Holy Land, and essentially they install a high priest in the temple who then proceeds to violate all of the temple precepts.
	They ban all Jewish practice throughout Israel, and the Maccabees rise up and they throw the Greeks out, and then they rekindle the light in the temple.
	The light of the menorah, actually, historically speaking, that's only discussed in the Talmud, which is like a solid...
	400 years after Hanukkah.
	Hanukkah originally was instituted as a military victory.
	It would be sort of like if Jews today had a holiday for the 1967 Six-Day War, which, by the way, I think they sort of should.
	In any case, the basic idea was they had thrown the Greeks out of the Holy Land.
	They then proceeded to set up the Maccabean Empire, which lasts for a couple of hundred years.
	And it is a bloody, bloody war that did not just concern Jew and Greek, but also Hellenized Jews who had gone along with the Greeks.
	On the path of secularization.
	So basically it's fighting against all the secularization that a lot of people on the left stand for.
	The forced secularization from the top down, anti-religion from the top down.
	And when she talks about rededication, you mean like to the temple where they had actual sacrifices to God?
	Like that kind of rededication?
	Because I'm not so sure that she's super hot on all of that.
	What it is not about is Lady MacLightlight and Joye McJoyjoy.
	And whenever a Jew says Tikkun Olam, you know automatically they don't know anything about what they are talking about.
	Tikkun Olam is code for, I love the Democratic Party platform and I'm going to pretend that it's actually in the Bible.
	That's what Tikkun Olam is code for.
	Tikkun Olam, for people who don't know, it goes back to a sort of populistic idea.
	It's spoken a couple of times in Jewish texts as a phrase, but it's not a core part of Jewish philosophy until you get to...
	Late 19th, early 20th century.
	Tikkun Olam is based on the idea that when God created the universe in a Kabbalistic way, he shattered the vessel.
	And that it is our job to, by performing the mitzvot, by performing the acts that he prescribes for us to do, we are rectifying the breaches that were created in God's creation when he created the universe because he had to provide room for human freedom.
	He had to provide room for us to make bad decisions and to sin.
	And so every time we don't sin and we forego that, we are making the world a better place.
	The way that the left has interpreted Tikkun Olam is It's to complete the world, which means to them environmentalism.
	It means to them social justice.
	Christians have this very similar concept called restoration theology.
	Or the Pelagian heresy, is it?
	That's right.
	Essentially that we have to make the world a better place for God.
	God will be happy and he'll love us and he'll come back to us once we restore sort of an Edenic...
	Exactly.
	So this whole Tikkun Olam stuff, what that is is code for Michael Lerner, who's a wild leftist, had a magazine called Tikkun, which is just a journal of radicalism.
	And this has become kind of the rote phraseology that you use when you don't actually know anything about Judaism and you go to shul like once a year for half a day on Yom Kippur break for lunch.
	Like, that's pretty much what it is.
	And so, like, that is extraordinarily galling and insulting.
	And the fact that there are a lot of Jews who don't take Judaism super seriously who find that inspiring, if that inspires you, by all means, if Lady MacLeight and Joy McJoy Joy and Kamala Harris telling you about Chanuka inspires you, then really, like...
	So Kamala Harris is doing to Judaism what Biden does to Catholicism every time he speaks about it, pretty much.
	Yeah, that's exactly right.
	Except that we don't have the power to deny Kamala Harris communion.
	That's true.
	Catholics have it, but they don't use it.
	They use it like once every 20 years.
	It's a big event.
	We celebrate it.
	By the way, did you see that article?
	Okay, we got political for one second.
	Did you see that article?
	I'm sure you did, both of you.
	That article in the Washington Post about how Biden was going to redefine Catholicism.
	There's this whole op-ed about how Biden was going to be the new Catholic leader.
	It was going to be like the Pope and Biden, and they were going to lead Catholicism into a new future, which is exciting.
	So explain to me how that's going to work, Matt Walsh.
	Well, the new future looks exactly like what we've been living in for the last 60 years.
	That's the interesting thing.
	When they talk about Catholicism, just like the Pope is supposed to create this new...
	It's exactly the situation we've been living in for 60 years.
	This is watered down, neutered, exactly what you're talking about with Judaism.
	Taking everything that's substantive and real and all the pain and suffering and realness out of it and creating it and turning into this thing that can be easily washed down and can be summarized and talking points and Yeah, I think the line from, I think it was Niebuhr, I'm just going to say it was Niebuhr, but I don't remember who it was, says it's a God without wrath leading a people without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.
	That's exactly what I was trying to say.
	That's what I was going for.
	I was getting there.
	Let's thank Niebuhr or whoever said it.
	Yeah, what's his name?
	So I want to talk about our holiday traditions that we've each had in our childhoods and up until today, you know, three of us are parents, one of us about to be very soon.
	Good luck to that kid.
	Oh my God.
	Yeah, proof, as Ben sometimes says, proof that there is a God, and he hates us.
	Michael Knowles will soon be a father.
	But what did Christmas, and let's actually speak somewhat specifically about Christmas, because Ben, I actually think you have an interesting answer about this as well, but what did Christmas mean to each of the four of us?
	It was the central holiday.
	You know, in Christianity, Easter is actually the central holiday as a matter of theology.
	But for little kids, Christmas is, and especially for Italian little kids, Christmas Eve especially, you know, you have 7,000 dishes, family all comes together.
	It was the, truly, it was the center of my entire year.
	It was like...
	Without exception, like the greatest memories for almost all of my childhood.
	And I think it's a regional thing, actually.
	I think in New York, people care about it more when the snow's coming down.
	It's one of the reasons I'm glad to be in Tennessee now, is it does get a little chillier.
	It snows here like twice a year or something.
	And so all of that matters, you know.
	I think in different regions of the world, it's a little bit different.
	And we didn't even do Midnight Mass, by the way.
	We did a little bit more of the kind of...
	We'd go to Mass maybe at Christmas Day, but we'd do more of the secular thing.
	I mean, there was...
	It's all about Christ, obviously, and all about Mass, hopefully.
	But it just reverberates such that I think in the modern American culture, that is the holiday.
	Or there just isn't much of a holiday for kids.
	Yeah, Matt.
	Yeah, I would be in line with that.
	That's why I was talking about Christmas Story, because I think that that captures what it felt like as a kid growing up in relatively modern America.
	It's the main event of childhood.
	Now, for me, it was interesting for me because I grew up in a heavily Jewish, sort of a wealthy Jewish area.
	So I remember being very jealous of the...
	Jewish kids, because they would get really nice gifts every day for over a week.
	I had to accelerate that this year with my kids.
	I have a four-year-old, so after day four, he was like, I don't like some of these and I like others.
	Like, you know what, you're getting them all tonight, and be quiet.
	Yeah, I always felt that that was...
	Christians, we used to do 12 Days of Christmas, and so I always felt that I would have liked that.
	But I had five brothers and sisters, six kids in the family, so we got a couple of gifts.
	But we didn't go overboard in the materialism aspect of it, but it was just a great—it was the thing you look forward to all year.
	We try to do that 12 days of Christmas thing.
	I never once got 11 pipers piping.
	No, no.
	And you wait every year.
	I hope this is the year for the pipers.
	Did you get the Lord's leaping, though?
	Well, naturally.
	We're not savages.
	Ben, what was Christmas, what was the season for you?
	Well, I mean, so, a few things.
	One, I think that it's, yeah, Chinese food.
	There are a few things that I think are worthwhile noting here.
	One is that when I was growing up, I went to public school, and I was in public school.
	It was not verboten to do Christmas things at public school.
	Yeah.
	And I think that's very important.
	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, and that is you would have Ten Commandments posted in the classroom, and you would also have people doing Christmas stuff at Christmas.
	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.
	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.
	I was singing Christmas songs on stage in public school.
	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.
	There's a sort of famous apocryphal story.
	So 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.
	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.
	And he said, I don't believe you.
	Prove it.
	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 public school.
	I think that something has been lost in the country when that's not the case.
	And I don't feel insulted at all.
	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.
	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.
	So I will also say that one of the best Hanukkah gifts that I got was tied into a Christmas story.
	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.
	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.
	The sword of the West.
	Indeed.
	And the bunny suit.
	And the bunny suit.
	Which has made a reappearance.
	Yeah, a few Christmases ago we did make a Daily Wire video featuring the bunny suit.
	So...
	Much like you guys, Christmas for me was the holiday of the year.
	My parents would go all out with gift-giving.
	We weren't a wealthy family, but they would really spend at Christmas probably more than they should have.
	It became a little bit of a problem for me as I got a little bit older because I actually...
	I don't know why, but I don't like to receive gifts, and I particularly don't like to receive gifts from other people that you open in front of other people.
	It's not a moral issue.
	It's awkward.
	It's very awkward.
	But we made a big to-do about Christmas, a big family dinner every year.
	We'd eat enchiladas or something different than Thanksgiving food, which I never actually liked, but I always loved whatever got made at Christmas.
	And watch It's a Wonderful Life with my dad.
	I think, as I've been saying all night, I think it's a quintessential American holiday.
	I had an argument with our friend Strangeland Elf on the Twitters because she grew up overseas.
	Yeah.
	In Mongolia primarily and I think maybe Thailand.
	As a result, she has some opinions that are maybe common among people who grew up overseas.
	For example, she loves soccer and she doesn't like Santa Claus.
	She grew up very religious but overseas.
	She didn't experience American Christmas.
	She experienced Christmas, an important holiday in her life, but she didn't experience American Christmas.
	And she was in countries where, listen, I don't have any problem if they want to play soccer in Mongolia.
	It's wealthy Western nations playing soccer that I hate.
	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.
	And she was just getting racial like crazy.
	People were so ticked off at her.
	That is the least popular opinion you can have.
	And this is what I told her.
	I said, you're missing the Americanness.
	You're missing the importance of American Christmas to Americans.
	You're making maybe a theological point about Santa and Christ, but what you're missing is what Christmas story captures so perfectly, 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.
	In its way, it's formative for Americans.
	Millions and millions of Americans.
	You've reminded me, just one note on Santa Claus, because some people think he's a totally sort of fictional character, and that's not true.
	It's kind of an amalgam of different characters, but it goes back to St.
	Nicholas, who was a real person.
	And, you know, we got this jolly old St.
	Nicholas-I-thing, he gives gifts to kids.
	St.
	Nicholas was extraordinarily tough.
	And somewhat aggressive sometimes, very famously, at the Council of Nicaea, he was debating the arch-heretic Arius, who had this view that Christ was not divine.
	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?
	And he would just go in there and just wreck them.
	So when you think about this soft, jolly, secular St.
	Nick...
	Can I just say, in defense of that view, because anytime someone has a curmudgeonly view, I'm always...
	You're always for it.
	Even if I don't agree, I respect that she voiced that.
	Before you say this, I actually told her on Twitter when she was saying this.
	I said, this is your most Matt Walsh opinion.
	It is.
	It's more Matt Walsh than the actual Matt Walsh opinion, because we do Santa Claus with our kids.
	But I think that there is an interesting thing that we kind of just...
	Gloss over, which is that you are lying to...
	Hopefully there are no kids watching right now, but you are lying to your children.
	You are actually lying to them about something.
	And when they're young, you know...
	What are you lying about?
	You're telling them about Santa.
	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.
	If you tell him Spider-Man isn't real, he doesn't know what that means.
	He sees Spider-Man on TV. No, he's right there.
	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 actually try to deceive them to make them believe certain things.
	And so there is an actual ethical quandary there.
	I mean, we do it with our kids.
	We're just lying to them to their face.
	I just wonder, if we're being completely honest with ourselves, how much of what we say to our children is true?
	Why are we stagling out Santa Claus?
	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, and her explaining to me Santa Claus and me being five and being like, well, I have some news.
	Yeah.
	And her parents did call up my parents rather upset about all of this.
	It's like, well, my parents are like, is it true or is it not true?
	What can you do?
	You can't unring that bell at that point.
	They tell a lot of lies to their kids.
	They'll say, you know, yeah, there's Santa Claus or yeah, I'll be right back.
	I'm getting a pack of cigarettes.
	They'll say a lot of things.
	Some of them are true.
	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?
	I think at that point, you've got to...
	Because you don't want to look them in the eye and just directly lie to them, 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.
	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.
	Thanks for ruining the magic of this.
	Do you want to know the answer?
	Do you want to know the answer?
	Not all questions have good answers.
	It's the monkey's paw kid.
	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.
	You know, the jig was up.
	There's no Santa Claus.
	Do you remember figuring it out and being really upset about it?
	No.
	I wasn't upset about it.
	But I was just like, you know, obviously this isn't real and my parents are doing this.
	And I still went along and I liked it and everything.
	But this is the honest to goodness truth.
	Then around nine or ten...
	Yeah.
	I actually got confused.
	I feel like I was on the early side of figuring out that Santa isn't real.
	But then I had a resurgence of thoughts about Santa way after everyone had given up on Santa.
	And it's because we were listening to KLLL, the local country radio station there out of Lubbock, Texas.
	On Christmas Eve, we were driving around Ransom Canyon looking at all the beautiful Christmas lights, and I heard the disc jockey say, you know, we have an update here from NORAD, and this Air Force official came on the radio and said, you know, we've been tracking Santa over the North Pole by radar.
	He's about to enter airspace of Newfoundland and all this kind of stuff.
	And I actually, I'm 9 or 10, I don't know, and I thought, Wait a minute.
	Wait, what?
	The American military would not lie.
	No.
	There's no way that this- No, never.
	Yeah, there's no way that an actual officer in the Air Force would just be saying something to fool kids.
	Maybe I've been wrong.
	It wasn't- Honestly, maybe I've been wrong about this whole thing.
	And it was only at the moment you learned about the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
	Yeah.
	Did you see, Fauci just did this.
	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, but I went up personally and I vaccinated Santa, so Santa has the vaccine.
	And I thought, wait a second, buddy.
	Two days ago, you went on TV and said, even after you get the vaccine, you're still not allowed to travel.
	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.
	He looks magical, and he's 800 years old, and he's overweight.
	There's no world he doesn't have diabetes.
	Yes, there's no world he doesn't have diabetes.
	I mean, he drinks Coke, like, for 100 years.
	100 years straight.
	You both said that you weren't upset when you learned at Santa Claus, because I was devastated.
	Were you really?
	Yeah, well, you thought that there was this magical man coming into your home to bring you gifts flying with reindeer, and then you realize that all that's a lie.
	All this magic in your life is just gone.
	Are we just sociopaths or something?
	When I found out...
	No, this is why I am a sociopath.
	This is how I became who I am now.
	It was in that moment.
	All of his joy left him and never came back.
	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.
	I guess...
	Maybe your dad just didn't raise you right.
	My dad raised me never to trust anything.
	It does go to how many things, if you think about them, become slightly creepy?
	Like a man creeping into your house through the chimney at night to drop things off in your house.
	And he has elves, at least the way I was taught it.
	The elves are spying on you throughout the year.
	Oh.
	Did you guys have that?
	In mine, it was like a sweatshop.
	They were just sort of locked into the North Pole.
	Well, because how does Santa know?
	Well, he sees you when you're sleeping and he knows when you're awake.
	I always thought it was the elves that are spying.
	Well, I mean, breaking news, Joe Biden is about to introduce Santa as ambassador to China.
	That's true.
	That's why it's got policy.
	And the spying.
	And the spying, actually, all of them.
	The best thing about Santa Claus is that he has a luscious beard.
	And a man is judged not only by his character, but by his whiskers.
	Sorry, Ben.
	This is why you need beard supply.
	Not only does it take guts to wear a beard, it takes guts to grow a beard.
	But a beard is the mark of a man.
	And I do not say that lightly, Michael.
	Your cigars live in the finest humidors.
	Your prized spirits in your choice decanters.
	Quality must be cared for with quality.
	So why should your beard take a hit?
	Guys, your facial hair is deserving of the kind of time and attention that you give to all your other crap.
	Quality must be cared for Quantity, quality.
	There's a typo in the teleprompter and I don't actually know what I was saying.
	Your beard is important.
	And that's why beard supply should be your only supply of beard care products.
	You aren't going to get that good groomed look if you don't Groom.
	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.
	Sure, there are a lot of beard products out there, but are they 100% all natural?
	Made in the USA with soap, balms, oils, and accessory to boot?
	Based out of my proud homeland of Texas?
	No!
	Take my favorite product, for example, the old-fashioned beard oil.
	Aged over two years.
	That is quality.
	And that is how you will grow the finest beard on the block.
	Or, at the Daily Wire, the finest beard on Earth.
	So, as a merry little Christmas present from Beard Supply, you can get 25% off of your order with code DW25. Go to BeardSupply.com and use the promo code DW25. That's DW25 for 25% off all the oils, all the soaps, all the balms, all the grooming supplies at BeardSupply.com.
	Code DW25. What are you waiting for?
	Me to figure out how to read a teleprompter?
	You're going to be waiting a long time.
	Don't do that.
	Go to BeardSupply.com.
	DW25. Be the number one beard on the block wherever you are.
	You can have a beard like jolly old Saint Nick.
	Elisha, bail me out of this ad read, please.
	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.
	He has a strong beard.
	It's a strong beard.
	He's a lover, Jack.
	Or as Ben once called him, a lumbersexual.
	Yeah, I think I have that audio clip from the good old days.
	And I got to tell other people about another great deal.
	Don't forget to head over to dailywire.com slash subscribe right now.
	Use code WATCH for 20% off a membership.
	You can be a part of the all-access chats like we're having right after tonight's Christmas edition of Backstage.
	So come on over there to talk to me and all the guys.
	From Ben, God King, Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles, and myself, we'll be answering your behind-the-scenes questions.
	But you only get that if you're an all-access member.
	So head over to dailywire.com slash subscribe.
	Use that code WATCH for 20% off right now.
	In addition to that, I wanted to toss it to...
	I think this question is for Ben.
	I think I already know the answer to this based on some earlier chatter that y'all had.
	But somebody wants to know...
	In the Christmas spirit, are you willing to acknowledge that Dr.
	Michael Knowles is indeed a doctor?
	No.
	And forgive him and never fire him?
	I am a doctor.
	I teach things.
	I teach things every day.
	No.
	I'm not a doctor.
	What?
	And, I mean, I don't mean to be too harsh here in the Christmas season.
	What does your wife have a doctorate in?
	She has a PhD, which Joe Biden does not.
	Joe Biden has like a...
	An EDD. An EDD. Which I didn't even know that was a degree.
	It sounds like an ad for Roman.
	A PhD...
	But a PhD, right, this is for people who research and teach.
	It comes from the Latin verb docere.
	In what field was it?
	In psychology.
	In psychology.
	So you teach.
	Is she a clinical psychologist?
	No, no, no.
	A researcher.
	Oh, she's a researcher.
	A scholar.
	Okay, so if she were a clinical psychologist, I'd be okay with calling her.
	No, but then I wouldn't.
	If she were a clinical psychologist, she wouldn't be a doctor because she wouldn't teach.
	She'd just be, she'd like treat you.
	So you're on the side that Joe Biden is a teacher.
	Well, no, this is where it gets tricky because Joe Biden is obviously not a teacher.
	That's the hard part.
	But so here's actually why.
	The EDDD, the Roman degree, it's an occupational degree.
	It's just basically a way for school administrators to make more money.
	And obviously physicians.
	I don't mean in any way to demean physicians.
	But, you know, they're practicing a job.
	It's a trade, right?
	It's a craft.
	But only someone who teaches, forget psychology for a second, someone who teaches gender theory, somebody who teaches Foucault, the most out there, they are more a doctor than any physician.
	You're the worst person I've ever heard of.
	That's my argument.
	And one of the dumbest.
	We all have the same test here.
	If somebody says on a plane, if somebody says on a plane, is there a doctor, and you're a professor of gender studies, and you raise your hand, you should immediately be punched in the face.
	Okay, because...
	And then an actual doctor will come help you after you've been punched in the face.
	Because a professor of gender studies should be punched in the face.
	Well, that is true.
	You know, if you asked on a plane, is there a doctor here, and a PhD raised their hand, that would be very helpful.
	Because they could teach you the etymology of the word doctor, which would be very helpful in all of these situations.
	Here's your problem, and it actually goes to everything we've talked about tonight.
	And how much I hate you.
	And how much Ben hates you.
	What you are saying is correct.
	Mm-hmm.
	But not in America.
	No, this is...
	No, it's also not correct anywhere else.
	It's just bullcrap.
	I'm sorry.
	It's just a bunch of nonsense.
	In Europe, they do this.
	Here's what the Europeans...
	The Europeans say a thing.
	The Europeans also don't shave their armpits.
	There are lots of things Europeans do.
	Okay, let's get over this.
	And by the way, this point is true, unfortunately.
	They lose world wars and they...
	And then they call the Americans, and it is true.
	It's a practical matter.
	I hate to say this, but in America...
	You know, when I was in college, I had one professor who demanded to be called doctor.
	Except for Pavel's home country.
	I see you shaking your head there.
	They shaved their armpits in Pavel's home country.
	Oh, in Poland?
	They save the West all the time.
	I had one professor in college who demanded to be called doctor.
	He was the least impressive professor.
	He was the most pretentious.
	Of course.
	First of all, real doctors do not insist on being called doctors.
	Right, that's right.
	So, where I live, not to put a stigma on the Jews, but I live near a lot of Jews because I'm an Orthodox Jew.
	And literally half the people in the community are actual medical doctors.
	Yeah.
	There's that old Jewish joke about there's the Jewish mother who has two sons and one of them goes on to be President of the United States.
	And she's visiting her.
	He's the first Jewish President of the United States.
	She's visiting him in the White House.
	She's staying in the Lincoln bedroom.
	And as she walks out, a member of the press says, you know, Mrs.
	Shapiro, what is it like having a son?
	Who is the President of the United States?
	And she says, well, my other son is a doctor.
	Lots of doctors there.
	And to a person.
	I mean, this came up, obviously, after synagogue one day, because we discuss only the holiest of things.
	And every one of them was like, if somebody came up to me and just called me Mr.
	Goldstein?
	I would not be insulted in any way because actual medical doctors don't care.
	They know what they do for a living.
	They don't need the constant pat on the back of being called doctor.
	In fact, only the douchiest people need this generally.
	If you're a doctor of musicology and then you're like, somebody calls you mister and they're like, no, it's doctor.
	My wife is an actual medical doctor who's actually like Searched inside corpses for body parts and stuff to learn, like, where everything is and everything.
	So she's actually healed people.
	She's actually been in dangerous situations with people who are in danger of themselves.
	And if somebody calls her...
	I asked her about this, and this is why my wife is the best.
	I mean, so I asked her about this.
	And first of all, she was appalled at the idea that that a dissertation on community college is a doctorate.
	But beyond that, she also she said, if somebody did not call me doctor, I would be completely fine with that.
	Because on my list of things that make me an important human being, doctors like number six.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	It goes like I'm a wife.
	I'm a mother.
	I'm a Jew.
	I'm an American.
	And maybe once you get to, like, number five, then it's like, I'm a doctor.
	Like, her identity is not wrapped up in that.
	If your identity is so wrapped up in your educational degree, then you're just a douchebag by definition.
	Did you guys read the National Review article?
	Oh, my gosh.
	Oh, my gosh.
	Who wrote it?
	Kyle Smith.
	Kyle Smith, that's right.
	Yeah, 1,000 props to Kyle Smith.
	It was magnificent.
	Who just face plants the dissertation.
	It is well worth the read.
	It is.
	And as an intellectual...
	Snob, I will say, that I'm also just insulted by the quality of the dissertation.
	And you know what?
	Fine.
	You don't like that?
	Tough.
	I don't care.
	Yeah.
	Elisha?
	Matt Walsh.
	Is there a war on Christmas?
	Well, we debated...
	Matt's leading the freaking war on Christmas here.
	He's come out in the last 20 minutes against Santa Claus, against...
	Christmas vacation.
	Christmas vacation.
	It's unbelievable.
	I think there's a war on Christianity, but there's not...
	I'm not offended when someone says happy holidays to me.
	I don't see that as a problem.
	I understand why companies do it.
	I understand why someone, a cashier or whatever at Starbucks, is going to say happy holidays because they don't know if you sell it for Christmas or not.
	What about holiday tree?
	You see this?
	I saw it at Whole Foods.
	Holiday tree is pretty cool.
	It's just a tree.
	There's no spiritual significance of the tree you have in your house.
	But there's a cultural significance.
	It's not a Hanukkah tree.
	It's not a Kwanzaa tree.
	By the way, if you have a Hanukkah tree, you're doing Hanukkah wrong.
	You mess something up.
	You've got to trade it for it.
	Look, if it doesn't bother me, I feel like I can find a reason to be bothered by anything.
	That's why I'm so surprised.
	It just does, because I understand.
	And also, holiday, holy day, it's kind of...
	You're not really getting around it anyway.
	You know how to get the clicks.
	They accuse us of clickbait.
	You know what?
	It reminds me of the whole kneeling for the anthem thing.
	And that never bothered me that much because kneeling is itself a sign of reverence.
	You're in fact showing more reverence to the flag accidentally.
	You don't mean to.
	But you accidentally showed more reverence to the flag perhaps than you even probably should.
	That is a glass half full way to read Colin Kaepernick, which I'll take.
	I feel like we've lost Matt Walsh.
	I feel like he has actually embodied Andrew Slavin somehow.
	It's the jacket.
	Yeah, that's right.
	It's the red jacket.
	It is.
	It's way too festive.
	Elisha.
	Alright, this next question is for Michael.
	If the 12 days of Christmas starts on December 13th, then wouldn't that place it in the middle of Advent?
	Yeah, it doesn't though.
	It starts on Christmas.
	Okay.
	Alright, next question.
	Sounds like a Catholic question.
	I think it does.
	Maybe I'm wrong.
	They can tell me in the comments if I'm wrong.
	It's the 12 days.
	It's Christmas and the 11 days.
	We are in Advent right now.
	I know that's important to you as well.
	Advent is good.
	Sometimes people start celebrating and smiling.
	I'm kind of like William Bradford now.
	They're having too much fun.
	No.
	Solemn.
	Expectant.
	No smiles yet.
	You gotta wait until Christmas, then you get 12 days.
	And this is the time to play the best song, I think the best holiday song, which is Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel.
	Yes.
	Which is not a Christmas song, it's an Advent song.
	And I think it doesn't get better than that song.
	I'm with you.
	I'm totally with you.
	There's a war on Advent, not on Christmas.
	Good point.
	Yeah, and you guys lost.
	Alicia!
	Jeremy, this question is for you.
	A Daily Wire member, which people, it's not too late.
	They can run on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe and sign up so they can be a part of the all access that's right after this backstage.
	But some Daily Wire members want to know how is everything going in Nashville and what are the major differences between Tennessee and California?
	On the day that we moved here, I went to a restaurant to eat.
	And I thought, it's so amazing to be eating inside after all these months in California.
	Yesterday, I took some friends who were visiting from LA out to eat.
	And they said, it's so amazing to be eating inside.
	After the last few weeks in California, I think that really sums it up.
	Nashville has been a terrific move.
	We've all, I think, settled very well.
	To my knowledge, everybody from the staff who made the move has been very happy about it.
	The city's been welcoming and accommodating.
	Southern hospitality is real, y'all.
	I lived in LA 20 years and two months.
	I loved it.
	It was my home.
	I was driving around with my wife before we flew out, sort of visiting some of the places where major events happened in our lives.
	You know, here's my first apartment, your first apartment.
	Here's where we went on our first date, this kind of thing.
	And I said, you know, I love the city.
	I mean, I chose to live here.
	I'm really going to miss LA. And my wife said, yeah, I I guess, if I'm being honest with myself, I've been missing L.A. for the last two or three years.
	And that really sums it up.
	L.A., It has committed an actual public act of suicide over the last 36 months.
	And it's only speeding up.
	We couldn't have gotten out a moment.
	We didn't get out a moment too soon.
	If you see what's going on with this new district attorney out there, the re-lockdown of the entire state.
	By the way, they were spiked in Arizona.
	They were spiked in any way in California with the giant lockdown.
	And they never stopped the lockdown there.
	No, never ended.
	So to be here in a place that's welcomed us and in a place that still understands freedom has just been remarkable.
	So yeah, I'm pro-Tennessee.
	Never in a million years thought I would live in Tennessee.
	Always thought that if I left California, I'd go back to the ancestral homeland of Texas.
	The one thing that I'll say about Tennessee, though, is it was Tennessee...
	There's Tennessee regulars fighting with us at the Alamo, so I think that there's a real union between Texas and Tennessee, and I'm proud to be here.
	All right, next question goes to Ben.
	Ben, we all know your thoughts about Kwanzaa and Hanukkah, but someone wants to know in the Daily Wire all-access chat, what's the equivalent of Christmas, because obviously Christmas and Easter are arguably the two most important Christian holidays, but what would be the equivalent to those in Judaism?
	Hmm.
	Well, not Hanukkah.
	So Hanukkah is in the same time period, but it really has nothing to do at all with Christmas.
	And it's not one of the more stringent Jewish holidays.
	The way that you can tell an actual Jewish holiday, as in, like, one of the ones that is a big one, is I won't be on the air.
	If I'm on the air, it's not a major Jewish holiday.
	There are a couple of, like, mid-majors, you know, that are, like, it's sort of like...
	I don't know, the Big Ten versus the SEC. Purim and Hanukkah are kind of the second level guys.
	And then the top level are Yom Kippur is usually placed at kind of the very top.
	And then it's three holidays that are similarly placed as far as importance.
	And that would be Passover, Sukkot, which is the festival of booths, and then Shavuot, which is the...
	I'm trying to remember what the...
	Feast of Tabernacles is what it is in English.
	Those three are the big three.
	Probably, if you're going to say which one is the closest to Christmas of those, you probably go with...
	Shavuot, the reason being that that's the giving of the Torah, so I assume that the giving of Jesus is sort of like that for Christians, so I guess that would be the answer.
	But there's no gift-giving on that holiday.
	The only custom is you stay up all night in order to study Torah over the course of that holiday, but that's pretty much it.
	So at Midnight Mass.
	Yeah, that's true.
	No, there is a similarity there.
	Elisha?
	Alright, next question is, back to the God King.
	Somebody wants to know, they're very excited for the joining of Candace Owens to the Daily Wire family, and when does she officially join, and will she ever be allowed to join backstage?
	Well, she joined backstage tonight reading Luke 2.
	She identified herself with The Daily Wire, so she's already joined The Daily Wire.
	I think the question that you're actually asking is, when will her show begin?
	And the answer to that is when her maternity leave ends.
	Candace will be having a baby in the next two weeks.
	We're all very excited for her.
	And after that, we're going to give her a minute to bond with the baby.
	We've already hired a producer for her show.
	We've been scouting locations because a component of her show will be that there's a live studio audience.
	So we've been working very hard for the last month on getting the show together.
	But, you know, the baby gets a vote in terms of what the exact timeline is.
	I would be looking for the Candace show to start at late February, early March.
	All right, Matt, somebody wants to know, are you going to miss shoveling snow?
	I feel like I'm going to be positive again with this answer, but I kind of will miss it.
	So off-brand.
	Yeah, I do kind of miss the snow already a little bit.
	We lived in Pennsylvania, and it wasn't like living in Vermont or something, but we got a fair amount of snow.
	Well, I've worked from home, so I haven't had to go into an actual office forever.
	So it didn't matter.
	We homeschooled, so it could just snow, and we lived out in the country, and we didn't have to go anywhere anyway.
	And we had a hill right outside our house, and I would go out with the kids.
	And of course, you know, you get the kids dressed up in all the winter gear, and it takes like 90 minutes to get them in the winter gear, and then you go outside.
	And immediately they've got their hat off in the snow and a glove comes off and they're crying because it's cold.
	But I would tell them...
	Parenting is a joyful time.
	It is.
	Michael, get ready.
	It is.
	And I would tell them, okay, you can cry all you want.
	I'm sledding.
	So I would just go and sled down the hill and they would just watch me crying.
	That's really how it would go.
	And this guy hates Santa Claus.
	So I will miss that a little bit.
	But I do think we get a little bit of snow here from what I've been told.
	Yeah.
	Every once in a while.
	Michael, other than your baby, who I think is due any day now, what is the best Christmas gift that you've ever received?
	The best Christmas gift?
	Oh my gosh, I don't know.
	I've gotten great Christmas gifts.
	You know, the Italians, I forget.
	You said it wasn't too materialistic when you were a kid.
	Jeremy, my family was more like your family.
	The Southern Italians really go all out.
	They shower you in gifts that they, frankly, a lot of people shouldn't even afford, you know?
	But that's just the way it was.
	My favorite one probably I ever got is a sitar.
	Seriously, I don't play any instrument well, but I play every stringed instrument poorly.
	And I was down at the Jersey Shore, where we would go on vacation, way down the southern Jersey Shore, and I saw this sitar one summer, and I said, I want that sitar.
	I was going through a Beatles phase, I wanted the sitar.
	And I mention this.
	It was pretty expensive, and there's no way to get it.
	And this was kind of before internet buying all over was very popular.
	So one time, my mother sort of pretended she had to babysit or something.
	She drove four hours down the Jersey Shore.
	I went to see my father.
	She drove four hours down the Jersey Shore, buys the sitar, drives four hours back up that night so I wouldn't find out that she was gone that long.
	And gives me this sitar, and I kid you not, my grandmother puts on a sari she bought in India in the 70s, puts a dot on her forehead, I'm not my Sicilian grandmother, and presents me with this sitar when I was like 14 years old.
	And now your grandmother is governor of North Carolina.
	That's right.
	Virginia, really.
	Can I ask what a sitar is?
	It's this giant Indian instrument that actually, it's much easier to play than it looks like, because most of the strings are just drone strings.
	And it really became famous because George Harrison smoked too much pot one time and decided to incorporate it into a bunch of Beatles songs and become friends with Robbie Shanker.
	My takeaway from the story is that there are people who love you that much, and I don't understand why.
	It's shocking.
	Only a handful.
	So guys, we've talked about the movies we love and hate.
	Now it's time to talk about our favorite and least favorite Christmas songs.
	And Drew Clavin will actually be joining us for this part of the show.
	So, Matt, there's a pretty troubling topic.
	I think you've been covering it better than any of us on social media.
	Why don't you fill us in?
	I think it's important around Christmas time to focus on the negative.
	So it's important to establish what are the five worst or the worst Christmas songs, because we have to endure them.
	Have you ever felt your heart grow three sizes on any Christmas day?
	Matt, this is...
	Christmas songs are great.
	What's wrong with you?
	It hasn't happened yet, but mainly because of these songs.
	I'm blaming these songs.
	If I were to make a list of the top five worst Christmas songs, All I Want for Christmas, Do They Know It's Christmas, and then Wonderful Christmas Time, Wonderful Christmas Time, and Wonderful Christmas Time, round out the top three.
	I'm out.
	We can end this now.
	How dare you?
	Wonderful Christmas Time is so aggressively bad.
	It fills me with rage when I listen to it.
	It's the least creative, least innovative song I've ever heard.
	It sounds like he...
	I think you just don't understand what Sir Paul McCartney is trying to convey, which is that he is simply having a wonderful Christmas time.
	I will grant Matt one thing.
	The lyrics are, they're a little, they are a little bit off.
	And yet I like that song much more than his fellow ex-Beatle John Lennon song, War Is Over, Merry Christmas, War Is Over, with that awful screeching Yoko in the background.
	However, the lyrics of War Is Over Is actually quite Christmassy, right?
	Like the spiritual warfare is over, the savior of the world is here.
	I'm sure this was all going through John and Yoko's mind when they were writing it.
	But the fact is, as a song itself, the McCartney song much better.
	I'd like to make an offering to the group, if I may, just because I know more about old music than I think almost anybody.
	Back in the days when they wrote good songs, they actually wrote the worst Christmas song ever written, which is The Happy Snowman.
	On a Christmas Eve, a happy snowman stood and dreamed beside a cottage door.
	It's about a happy snowman who's happy because he's a member of the family.
	And the kids promise him that there'll be a gift under the tree for him.
	And he just feels so proud that he's a member of the family.
	And then, suddenly, tragedy strikes.
	And I'm not capable of relating this in my own words.
	Let me just read to you the lyrics that describe the final lyrics of this song.
	The cottage porch looked beautiful and bright.
	The holly wreath was turned on for the night.
	When all at once, it caught on fire and fell.
	He couldn't knock.
	He couldn't ring the bell.
	He couldn't run for help.
	He couldn't call.
	But then he had to save the children after all.
	He knew he'd melt away, and yet the snowman threw himself across the burning floor.
	How the children missed their friends, the snowman, but they'll always remember him for a heart that was brave and the joy that he gave and the funny fedora he wore.
	That sounds great.
	What's the problem with that?
	If that song doesn't move you, I don't know.
	I don't own a Victrola, so I'll never be able to hear that song.
	But man, that got dark fast.
	It turns bad very quickly, I know.
	Yeah, well, I think clearly the answer is actually slightly different.
	And the clear answer here is Little Drummer Boy.
	Just endlessly into the dark night of eternity.
	It's repetitive.
	It doesn't actually have a bridge.
	It just repeats over and over and over until you die.
	I will say, Ben, that when I was a kid, Little Drummer Boy was by far my least favorite Christmas song.
	I just absolutely despised it for many of the reasons that you just outlined.
	I have to admit, though, that it's grown on me over the years because the sentiment of it is so sweet.
	I always worry at the end when the baby, Jesus, he's a newborn baby and he smiles, and it's probably just gas.
	You know, I think...
	It kind of ruins the song a little bit.
	I'll move past that blasphemy for just a second to get into...
	I actually want to make a preemptive defense.
	One song a lot of people criticize at Christmas, it's a little-known song, maybe it's known more in New York, it's called Dominic the Donkey.
	So I understand that it's not the most lyrically or musically complex song, but I just think in this era of heightened sort of ethnic and racial tensions, as an Italian-American, I would just ask that you leave that song off of the list.
	Matt, what were your other two songs?
	All I Want for Christmas.
	Well, yeah.
	And then what was the other one?
	You mean All I Want for Christmas is my two front teeth?
	No, no.
	Mariah Carey.
	All I Want for Christmas is you.
	Did anyone ever notice that it is the most dismissive song of the person that she wants for Christmas of all time?
	Oh, yeah.
	The actual lyric is, I don't want a lot for Christmas.
	All I want for Christmas is you.
	That is very insulting.
	We haven't yet touched on one of the worst Christmas songs.
	The one about the mother kissing Santa Claus last night.
	This poor husband getting cuckolded by jolly old St.
	Nicholas.
	It's awful.
	This is my least favorite Christmas song.
	It just infuriates me every time.
	Well, I think that we're missing the most horrible of all songs, of course, which is Baby, It's Cold Outside.
	But it's cold outside.
	It's far too sensitive toward women, I think is the big takeaway that I've gotten from the culture.
	Really, it's too politically correct.
	Now you make a fine point.
	It needs to be more politically incorrect.
	It was back in the day when a little seduction went a long way.
	You know, in the movie where it appears, it's sung both by a man to a woman and then reversed.
	The roles are reversed, and there's a woman who seduces a man.
	It's one thing for Matt to be a complete Grinch, but there are some great Christmas songs, too.
	We can agree on that, yeah?
	I mean, I was just trying to think, what's my favorite Christmas song?
	I don't know that I could pick one, because there are so many genres.
	The ones that come to my mind, Holly Jolly Christmas, just because you get Burl Ives.
	No, I mean it.
	If I can get Burl Ives, I'll have that guy sing me the alphabet.
	You've got Angels We Have Heard on High.
	It's a slightly different type.
	I don't know any of the lyrics other than Gloria, but that's pretty good.
	There's only one correct answer to this question.
	It's the best Christmas song, and it is Silent Night.
	Silent Night I agree with Ben completely on this.
	I think, you know, Silent Night is the best old-fashioned Christmas song, and the best, for me, modern Christmas song, always remembering that all songs stop being written in 1959, is Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.
	That's exactly right.
	Exactly right.
	That's exactly where I was going.
	It's settled, right?
	As your fellow octogenarian, Clavin, I will say that that is 100% correct.
	I mean, I would prefer to keep this conversation negative, but if we have to go positive, then I'd say Hark the Herald Angels Sing.
	I think you have to determine the best Christmas song based on what sounds the best when sung by a choir in church on Christmas Day.
	And for me, Hark the Herald Angels Sing.
	I will say that Christmas is the only season in which I wish that I were Anglican, and you could just go to one of those even-song services where the little bitty boys have probably been neutered, you know, in some ancient ritual that we despise as Americans.
	It's the reason that we actually left England and formed our own country was to get away from this.
	But my God, it's beautiful when they sing Christmas songs.
	Christmas is here, bringing the shit to young and old.
	Me, come the boat, ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong.
	All right.
	Well, I mean, I think we've covered pretty much every Christmas song ever written.
	That's probably not fair.
	There are so many Christmas songs, and none of us have yet made fun of Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer or anything.
	But I think that the segment's definitely gone on long enough.
	So why don't we just go around the horn one time, real quick.
	Best and worst, Drew.
	Best is Silent Night.
	Worst, I'm sticking with The Happy Snowman with a runner-up for Mele Kalikimaka, which was the Feliz Navidad of its day.
	Oh, that's a great one!
	All right, Benjamin.
	All right, best, Silent Night, worst.
	I'm gonna stick with my pick.
	Little Drummer Boy remains the worst.
	It is so supremely irritating and also happens to be an earworm that will drill directly into your brain for eons.
	Michael.
	I'm going to say Best Angels We Have Heard on I with a very close runner-up to Wonderful Christmas Time.
	And the worst of all time probably has to be the one where Mommy cucks her husband with Santa Claus.
	That's just, for all the reasons you explained, Jeremy, it's absolutely unacceptable.
	It's very rare that I agree on any one thing with Michael, and in this case, I agree with two.
	So I'm just going to say ditto to that list.
	Angels We Have Heard on High and the Cuckolding Song are my list as well.
	And Matt, why don't you round this out, since you're the one who brought us down this dark and miserable journey.
	You can just tell us your two least favorite if it'll make you happier.
	I'll reiterate Hark the Angels for best.
	And worst has to, again, be wonderful Christmas time.
	It's a war on Christmas in and of itself.
	It's so bad that it makes me want to renounce my faith and become Jewish almost every time I hear it.
	And it doesn't get worse than that.
	It has to be wonderful Christmas time.
	Why did we invite this guy?
	Why did we invite this guy?
	So now is the time for our next festive partaking.
	This year we've played Secret Santa, which for the kids at home who may never have heard of the Secret Santa because, I don't know, you've lived under a rock your entire life, is where we don't know what we're getting, but we're each secretly assigned another one of us to buy a gift for, and so now we'll each get the opportunity to open said gift and find out who loves us and how much.
	I'm going to go first.
	So it's roughly the size of...
	I don't know, maybe like a small, very small box of cigars if someone loved me.
	But it would be quite a small box of cigars.
	I don't know.
	Nobody likes the bow.
	So, not a box of cigars.
	The Catechism of the Catholic Church.
	Second edition.
	Revised in accordance with the official Latin text, promulgated by Pope John Paul II. That's great reading.
	So no one loves me.
	That's the answer.
	No one loves me.
	That's good reading.
	Dare I ask who thought that the Catechism of the Catholic Church, second edition, would be a good gift for me?
	You know, shockingly, it wasn't me.
	Is this one of those, you know, you show up to a party and you don't have anything and you say, this is from us?
	This is from us.
	Whoever got you that?
	I don't...
	I can't imagine it was...
	Oh, but it was.
	Benjamin.
	Well, I mean, if you're going to play Secret Santa, you really go full Secret Santa.
	And also, I just figured I'd give him something that...
	I mean, for Jeremy, he needs a doorstop, right?
	I mean, like, he has a new house and everything, and...
	That's fair.
	I like to check in on what the papists are saying every now and then.
	Thank you, Benjamin.
	You're welcome.
	Oh, wait.
	It was very important to them that we go in a particular order.
	I think it's you.
	Is it me?
	Okay.
	Wow.
	This is a large gift.
	This is certainly a horse.
	A catechism.
	From my favorite company, Amazon?
	Okay, so first of all, I'm super excited.
	Because if it's from Amazon, it's good.
	And all you Amazon haters like AOC, you can stick it.
	Amazon can come to my hometown anytime.
	Amazon is the greatest company in all the land.
	Does that narrow it down, though?
	Like, oh, yes, something from Amazon.
	Yes.
	It doesn't matter what it is.
	If it comes from Lord Jeff Bezos, if he has bestowed it upon me.
	It could only be anything.
	Okay, let's see.
	Guys, I don't know who did this, but this is really meaningful, and I just want...
	I'm going to cry, I think.
	It is, indeed.
	It is a sweatshirt.
	Wow.
	My fellow platinum award-winning rap artist, Cardi B. Someone knew you.
	I'm glad you like it, Ben.
	Thank you so much, Matt Walsh.
	And coming from you, it means so much.
	Yeah, I know.
	We both are big fans of Cardi B, so I thought...
	Mutual admiration.
	Apparently, there's something else in the box as well, I've been told.
	By the voice in my ear.
	And it is indeed a Cardi B CD. You can put that in your disc, put your Sony Discman rollerblading.
	Now, I've been told, I haven't heard this album.
	I have been told, and it has excellent songs like Get Up 10, Drip, Bickenhead, Bodak Yellow, Be Careful, Best Life, I Like It, Ring featuring Kehlani, Moneybag, Bartier Cardi, I assume that's a pun on Cartier.
	She Bad, through your phone.
	And I do.
	So at the end, she gets married.
	It's a happy CD. At the end, she gets married.
	She Bad is the best track on the album, in my opinion.
	But I'd be interested to see what you think about it.
	I appreciate that.
	The words of Shakespeare.
	Thank you so much.
	You're welcome.
	I'll wear it every never day.
	All right.
	I've never had a gift I like, so...
	It's going to be a first time for everything.
	Did you also get something for this?
	I need a knife to open this thing.
	It might have a key.
	How is this supposed to work?
	This is a production failure.
	It's wrapped again, so good.
	There's a story with this, so it's sort of like...
	I love the gift in the gift.
	What if it's just endless gifts and at the end it's just a note that says convert?
	My nightmare is opening gifts from people.
	So...
	What could it possibly be?
	For my shiny, bald head.
	Yeah, like...
	Oh, wait.
	I know what happened.
	No, well, no, I just, I thought, you know, knowing that you would be here, that someday maybe you could go...
	Just don't know.
	You could, yeah, I... Oh.
	Sure, I mean, yeah, this was meant, this was totally meant for me, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay, yeah.
	Yeah.
	It's not like I was forgotten enough.
	This is why I hate these.
	See what happened for the folks at home?
	Yeah.
	It's our very own Andrew Clavin was supposed to be here tonight, but he managed to successfully pass his genetic line down to the next generation.
	And today, unto him was born a happy and healthy grandson.
	And in a pinch...
	Because he was hanging out in the coat closet.
	We got Matt Walsh to sit down and do the show.
	That's awkward.
	I am going to keep this, though, anyway.
	Hey, look, someday maybe it'll come into play.
	Or you can barter with Drew.
	Who knows?
	He's got a good head of hair, I suppose.
	He does.
	He does.
	For now.
	For now.
	Michael, you're up left.
	I guess it's no surprise who the gift is from.
	Oh, great.
	Okay.
	Oh, man.
	What did Jeremy get me?
	Well, tis the season and ho ho ho and all that.
	Okay.
	Please tell me it's not.
	Okay.
	I kind of like where this is going.
	Yeah.
	It's the most wonderful time of the year.
	Is this...
	Oh my gosh.
	Is this truly the gift that I most wanted?
	Is this a giant meatball?
	It's a giant meatball.
	Oh my gosh.
	I know it's a gag and everything, but you know me so well.
	This is the present that I most wanted.
	Wow.
	Merry Christmas, buddy.
	Am I the only guy who got something he actually wanted?
	No, no, no.
	I've always wanted a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
	Friends, thank you for joining us for this holiday edition of Backstage.
	It's been a wonderful 2020.
	I actually have to say, I know 2020's been hard.
	For a lot of people in this country, this is a time of celebration, and we hope that you'll take the time to spend with your family and reflect on the blessings that we still have and the things that are still worth fighting for.
	We look forward to seeing you again in 2021.

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