The Matt Walsh Show - Matt Walsh Gives Parenting Advice: Christmas Edition

Episode Date: December 23, 2022

Matt Walsh takes to reddit to give lost parents advice prior to Christmas. Want more? Check out DailyWire+ here: https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe-plus Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Well, I thought I would like to give a gift to the audience, a little bit of a Christmas gift. I thought about what that gift might be. And part of the problem is I don't want to spend any money because I'm cheap. So I'm going to give a gift that is free, and that is my advice. Pontificating. That's the one thing that I can do. And so we're going to go to Reddit. Oh, God.

No. Help. To find some Christmas-related quandaries, people who are looking for. advice, especially parenting advice, around the holidays, around Christmas, and see if we can't sort through this and just help enlighten some people and the masses. So we'll start with this. Is Christmas gross? I loved Christmas as a kid. It always has been a big deal holiday for me, but I have a two-year-old who doesn't quite get it yet, and explaining things to him is leaving a gross taste in my mouth. It feels like Christmas is so much about wanting for children,

for teaching them to want things, to ask for things, to expect things. Don't get me started on the good versus bad thing. We would never go there. Wait, what? Don't get me started on the good versus bad thing. You would never go there and explaining the difference between good versus bad? Well, maybe you should go there. Maybe that should be the first thing that you do as a parent.

If you're not going to go there as a parent, then you might as well just call it a day now. because you've, there's, that's like your, your number one job as a parent is to help a child understand good versus bad and to walk the path towards good. So, anyway, we'll continue. I don't want to be the Grinch Killjoy parent, but ugh, it's all just so ugh. Like taking him to see Santa who's going to ask him what he wants, it all feels so much like teaching kids to focus their identity and joy on being consumers. You know, there's this concept you hear from liberals sometimes where they say problematize. they talk about problematizing something, and that means making something into a problem when it's not. And this is a specialty of liberals they're very good at. It's the only thing they're good at, problematizing. Now, I don't know if this person is a liberal. The comment about good versus evil certainly makes it sound like she is. Now, I'm not saying that materialism isn't a problem. It is, especially around Christmas. But I am saying that there is no problem with a two-year-old getting excited about getting presents. That's not a problem, okay? That's normal. Now you said yourself,

I loved Christmas as a kid. Well, then let your kid love it too. Don't make a thing out of it. Right? This is so much now of like older generations. This is what they do now where there are things that they enjoyed as kids and it was great and they remember it fondly. But now they're turning back around to make that thing they enjoyed as kids a problem, to make it complicated, to like steal some of that joy that they had. It's like pulling the ladder back up behind you as you climb it. That's kind of what's happening here. Don't let your current adult hangups rob your child of the same joy that you experienced. That's all. Okay, how do you handle a holiday like Christmas? Parents and in-laws' expectations are already stressing us out. We're struggling to plan our first

Christmas with a baby. Pre-baby, my wife would go see your parents for the day while I would go split my time evenly between my divorced parents. Our baby is five months old and we don't want to be hauling her around all day since she naps poorly anywhere but home. We're leaning towards scheduling different days for different households, but we're dreading the pushback and anger from whoever gets told they won't see their grandchild on Christmas. Well, it's a big thing. We went through this for the first several years of our marriage and our two families

lived like an hour apart. And my wife's family, you know, the parents are divorced also. So same sort of situation. everyone's kind of within a one hour vicinity. And that's precisely the worst situation you could possibly be in for the holidays because it's close enough that you're expected to see everybody. But it's far enough away that it's a huge hassle to see everybody. So not an issue for us now because we live like 12 hours away from the nearest set of parents.

Plus we have six kids. So if people want to see us on Christmas, they need to come to us. So maybe that's one of my solutions is just start. start churning out more babies. And then once you've got a bunch of them, then for every holiday, it's like you can't expect me with six kids. You got to come to me. You want to see us on the holidays. We're the staging ground now where we got all the kids and you can come to us. You decide what's best for you, what you and your family want to do. And you let the other members of the family know, like this is what you're doing. And that's it. And if they got an issue, they got an issue with it.

How does Santa enter homes without a chimney? Growing up, we always had a chimney, so it wasn't an issue. My husband's family didn't, but he never questioned it, and his parents never said anything to him about it. I've heard from other people that Santa gets a special key that you leave outside for him on Christmas Eve. We just bought a new house without a chimney, and I'm at a loss. He's magic. Once again, don't complicate this. That's it. If your kid asks, how does he get in the house, he's magic. We didn't have a chimney either when I was a, when I was a kid. We'd have the same question. How does he get? It's just magic. That's it. He just does. You're still

You're still. Next one says, I need help with the talk. Yeah, that's right. I need advice on how to bring up the whole Santa issue. My son is in third grade and still believes in Santa. I'm surprised we've made it this long. I want him to hear it from me, not his friends, so I need to do it quick before the kids start talking about the holidays.

Well, you sit your kid down and you say, listen, son, we lied to you. Your whole life is a lie. nothing is real, all is lost. Have a great Christmas, son. No, you just tell him, Santa was a game that parents play with little kids. It's just, it's a game, it's a fun game.

It's make-believe. You weren't lying to them any more than you were lying back when your child believed in fairies and dragons and leprechauns and your kid will be fine. Okay, people make such a big thing. big deal out of this thing with Santa and telling kids and how they're going to be traumatized? And so if a kid will get over it, okay? Another one says, how to keep it going after they know about Santa?

Is there a good non-religious way to explain the Christmas season magic when the kids no longer believe Santa flies in the sleigh and comes down the chimney? No, the answer is no. Is there a good non-religious way to explain the magic of Christmas? No, there isn't. We love Christmas for non-religious, wholesome reason, so I think we can sort of explain the magic. of Christmas season to them. No, you can't. I'd like to see you try. You know what Christmas, know where that word comes from? Christ Mass. Christ Mass. It's not a coincidence.

And it is very specifically to celebrate the birth of Jesus. It's like, imagine saying this about your neighbor Gary. How can I explain the magic of Gary's birthday without including anything about Gary himself? You can't do that with Gary, the neighbor, and you can't do that with Jesus. Sorry. Finally, kids opening all their gifts at once versus kids taking turns opening. So I decided to forego gift wrapping all together this year and decided to only use reusable gift bags. Maybe one of the top five greatest inventions in history of mankind. Think of all the labor hours that it saves.

Throw it in a bag, maybe put a little bit of decorative tissue paper you put in there. Boom, you're done. Anyway, so I usually film my kids opening gifts and we would all take turns as I'd film each person opening their gift. This year I'm debating on filming one person at a time, just opening all their gifts at once. Kind of like how you watch someone open gifts on their birthday and everyone is focused on them. Just embrace the chaos, man. That's it. Just embrace the chaos. There's no good way to do this. There is no orderly way. Every family has spent years and years trying to solve this problem, trying to figure out the calculus on Christmas morning. What's the best way to open all the gifts and to avoid the chaos and kids getting bored or getting antsy or whatever, jealous?

you know, you can't do it. This is the same speech I've tried to give my wife so many times. It's just, it is what it is, and it's going to be chaos. Just accept it. Who are you? The one thing I will say, what disturbed me the most from this question, is you saying that you film everyone open every single gift. Stop doing that.

When are you ever going to watch this? So you're filming the whole Christmas morning deal. When are you ever going to go back? Are you going to go on some random afternoon in March and just sit there and watch 57 minutes of people opening Christmas presents several months ago? Just be in the moment. Rather than experiencing the moment in this little box, okay, you're in a whole room, experience the entire moment. So that's it. Everyone who cares about this is in the room.

Put the camera down, live in the chaos. That is my advice. Follow all of this advice. And you will have yourself a Merry Christmas.