We came across the posts on the following topic on the social media platform X and YouTube:

The posts show video clips of a speech by the US vice-president and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, with the length of the video and the camera angle differing between posts.

The recurring claim across many of the posts is that Kamala Harris, in her speech had scolded people for saying ‘Merry Christmas’, with the suggestion that she was trying to stop people from saying the Christmas greeting, erase Christmas, or make it illegal.

A phrase quoted from Harris in her speech in several sources that she can be seen to say in all of the clips is ‘how dare we speak Merry Christmas’.

When we conducted a keyword search on the topic, we found that clips of the speech had been surfacing since several months prior in 2024, and that the claims had been factchecked by multiple outlets.

Campaign Trail Disinformation

The earliest factcheck we identified of the clip was in August 2024 by Snopes following a rally by the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Trump told the crowd that Harris ‘doesn’t want anybody saying “Merry Christmas”. Now she’s denying it and then they found the tape last night. She’s such a liar.’

Snopes’ investigation revealed that the video was of a December 2017 speech given by Harris when she was still a senator and Trump in his first term as president. The video had been resurfaced by Fox News Digital on 1 August 2024.

Harris’ speech was a response to the US Congress’ failure to pass the DREAM Act, which would have provided a pathway to citizenship for some immigrants who cam to the US illegally as children.

It also came after Trump, as president, ordered in 2017 the phasing out of DACA, a policy which allowed certain people brought to the US illegally to live and work there and protected them from deportation.

The full quote by Harris in her speech, sections of which appear in the clips, is as follows:

‘And only when they cleared that vet did we give them DACA status. And now we’re talking about taking it away. It is morally wrong. And when we all sing happy tunes and sing “Merry Christmas” and wish each other “Merry Christmas,” these children are not going to have a “Merry Christmas.” How dare we speak “Merry Christmas.” How dare we. They will not have a “Merry Christmas.” They don’t know if they will be here in a matter of days, weeks and months. Since Sept. 5, over 12,000 have lost their status. Each day, 122 lose their status. Each week, 851 lose their status. Each day matters.’

In the context of the full quote, it becomes clear that Harris appears to be attempting to invite empathy for vulnerable children of illegal immigrants during the festive period, when they should not have had to worry.

Fox News’ headline, which reads, ‘Flashback: Harris fumed at Americans for saying ‘Merry Christmas’ before illegal migrants got protections’ may therefore be a distortion of the sentiments in the speech, inviting incensed responses.

Other Fox sources, such as a Fox Business video on YouTube, carried the video title, ‘‘How dare we speak ‘Merry Christmas!’ Kamala fumes over holiday in resurfaced clip #shorts’, misrepresenting the quote by omitting the context.

Despite being widely read, Fox News is rated as a biased and questionable source due to the promotion of propaganda, conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, the use of poor sources, and numerous false claims and failed fact checks, according to the online media bias tracking resource Media Bias Fact Check.

Snopes found that there was no evidence of Harris being against the idea of saying ‘Merry Christmas’, and that she has posted several Christmas messages on her social media in recent years, including days after her speech.

Moreover, there was no evidence that Harris had denied the video’s existence, as claimed by Trump in his rally speech.

The reemergence of clips of Harris’ speech appears to coincide with the arrival of Christmas shortly after the presidential campaign in which she was a candidate.

The quotes by Harris in her speech, while authentic, are presented in a highly misleading and inflammatory manner due to the omission of key context, inviting angry responses and contributing to existing conspiracy theories about agendas to erase Christmas.

As such, we find the claim that Harris had tried to stop people from saying people from saying ‘Merry Christmas’ to be false.

This claim was also factchecked and found to be false by Snopes, Politifact and CheckYourFact.