David Grisham, an evangelical street preacher from Anchorage, Alaska, decided to inform a line full of unsuspecting children at a mall in Texas they were being lied to about Santa Claus. "Kids, I want to tell you today that there is no such thing as Santa Claus," Grisham told people waiting in line for Christmas photos at the Westgate Mall in Amarillo, Tex. "Santa Claus does not exist. The Christmas season is about Jesus."
Grisham even recorded his proclamation and posted it on social media, until angry fathers surrounded him and told him to leave the presence of the group.
Grisham and his wife have shouted sermons at people for nearly a decade, whether they want to hear them or not. Saturday, he didn't let parental polite calls to "chill out" stop him, until more tension mounted as affected fathers walked to him to physically halt the preacher's rant.
"Don't lie to your children and tell them there's such a thing as Santa, when you know in reality that there are no flying reindeer, there is no workshop at the North Pole...that you buy all the gifts and put them under the tree," Grisham yelled.
As reported by The Washington Post, one may spoke over top of Grisham, asking him to stop. "Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop," the unidentified man is viewed saying. "Quit talking this mess, you understand me. I got my kids over there, we don't need you coming over here blabbing whatever the hell you're blabbing."
One person, who goes by Austin O on Twitter reacted with the following tweet: "David Grisham, a disturbed Christian, yelled at kids saying 'Santa isn't real, cause Jesus is!" Someone tell him that Jesus isn't real.'"
Grisham is the founder of Last Frontier Evangelism. He told The Washington Post God spoke to him a decade ago while he and his wife were on vacation in Mexico. He's been street-preaching most weekends ever since.
The street preacher has been quoted as saying he hoped a video of this weekend's mall incident would help spread the gospel.
Grisham also said he's planning to do the same thing at other malls before Christmas, but not at this same one in Texas. Usually, he and his wife carry large signs, quoting scripture to let people know God isn't fond of whatever they happen to be doing.
"Most of the unsaved people are not going to church," he said. "My wife and I, we go to gay bars, we go to porn shops. If you're going to be a fisher of men, you've got to go where the fish are."
Grisham told The Post if Santa Claus was a cartoon caricature, such as Mickey Mouse, and everybody knew that it was fake, and no one thought it was real, he'd be fine with it. "But when you start telling kids that Santa Claus is real, it now becomes idolatry. I'm going after it because it's idolatry."
