With the holiday season less than a month away, social media posts say Vice President Kamala Harris doesn’t want people saying “Merry Christmas.” But Harris is no Grinch: A clip of her from years ago was taken out of context.

“How dare we say ‘Merry Christmas’? How dare we?” says Harris, the 2024 Democratic presidential candidate, in a video clip in a Nov. 4 Instagram post. The post also shows a clip of former President Donald Trump saying, “We’re saying Merry Christmas again.”

The video shows different images of Trump and former first lady Melania Trump, around Christmas decorations and even images of Trump in the movie “Home Alone,” which focused on a Christmas setting. But Harris doesn’t want to ban saying “Merry Christmas.”

Matt Wallacea conservative political commentator, and according to the conservative version End waking up He also shared the same video on X.

The Instagram post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat fake news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our association with goalowner of Facebook, Instagram and Threads).

PolitiFact did a reverse image search for the video of Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, and discovered that this video is from 2017 and was taken out of context.

fox news republished the video from August with the headline: “Flashback: Harris told Americans not to say ‘Merry Christmas’ until DACA is fixed.”

Harris made her comment during a press conference on December 19, 2017 at the United Methodist Building in Washington, D.C., near the United States Capitol, when she was a Democratic senator representing California. Harris was referring to how people could say “Merry Christmas” to each other if Congress did not pass the DREAM Act, which stands for Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors. The law would have provided a path to citizenship for some immigrants who came to the United States illegally as children. according to NBC News.

The first version of the DREAM Act was introduced in 2001, and over the past 20 years, at least 20 versions have been introduced in Congress. But so far none have passed, according to the American Immigration Council, an immigrant rights advocacy group. He 2010 version of the bill. came closest to being fully approved when it passed the House, but fell just five votes shy of the 60 needed to proceed in the Senate.

Harris made his comments after Trump, as president, ordered in the fall of 2017 the gradual elimination of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivalsor DACA, which allowed certain people brought illegally to the United States as children to live and work in the United States and temporarily protected them from deportation.

“It’s morally wrong, and when we’re all singing happy tunes and singing ‘Merry Christmas’ and wishing each other ‘Merry Christmas,’ these kids are not going to have a Merry Christmas,” Harris said. says during the 58-second video. “How dare we talk ‘Merry Christmas’? How dare we? You won’t have a Merry Christmas, you don’t know if you’ll be here in a matter of days, weeks and months.”

NBC Latino published Harris’ quote in 2017 x publicationsaying he was at a DREAM Act rally. PolitiFact was unable to find the original video of Harris’ speech at the press conference.

Harris also posted on December 20, 2017 on her Facebook an image of a person holding a sign that reads, “I need to be able to tell my kids I didn’t stay silent!!” He the title says: “DACA is an urgent issue and something we must address immediately. Every day in limbo in the lives of these young Dreamers is a very long time. We cannot remain silent. We must pass the Dream Act now.”

But Harris is not opposed to Christmas.

We searched Google and the Nexis news database and found no statements from Harris saying she wants to ban Christmas or that she opposes the holiday.

Political fact also found multiple occasions of 2017 to 2023 when Harris posted on her social media wishing people “Merry Christmas.”

For example, its December 25, 2023, instagram post says: “Merry Christmas everyone. May your day be filled with love, family and good food.”

This 2017 video of Harris saying, “How dare we say ‘Merry Christmas’?” was taken out of context. There’s no evidence he wants to stop people from saying “Merry Christmas.” We rate this statement as false.