A Little Girl Thought A Big Guy With A White Beard Was Santa So He Decided He Might As Well Play Along

Mashable – If you have a long, white beard, you’re kind of expected to be jolly around Christmas — but this guy is taking it to a whole new level of holiday cheer.

This little girl in a West Virginia Walmart saw an older shopper with a red shirt and a white beard and (understandably) thought he was Santa. Instead of correcting her, the man totally played along, asking if she’d been good this year and what she wanted for Christmas.

This one’s going viral today and it’s honestly pretty adorable. As an adult man without kids or family members in that cute little “Christmas is still exciting” age, it’s easy to get cynical about the holidays (especially when there are people walking around in Hawaiian shirts in 60 degree weather outside). But then you see something like this and it’s like “Oh yeah, this is what the holidays are about”,” a human doing something nice for another human with no ulterior motive. Yeah this guy must get this response all the time given that, you know, he’s a dude with a gut and a white beard consciously also choosing to wear a holiday red shirt out in public. But the way he dealt with her was just so super sweet, very adorable video all around even though this little girl wants to give reindeer chocolate chip cookies that I think might kill them.

Also kind of an obvious joke but given how every single Christmas movie has ever gone, there’s at least a 50% chance this guy is actually Santa Claus and will see this girl while in his full uniform in a week and give her a knowing wink. Can Santa just once keep the gimmick up and not give obvious clues that the kid was right the whole time? Not really a secret identity if you keep telling blabber mouth kids, Santa.