Santa Deniers

About

Santa Deniers refers to a series of memes which disparage those who don't believe in Santa Claus and imagine their reactions when they are presented with evidence of Santa's existence. Memes about Santa Denial have been a seasonal holiday format since 2019.

Origin

While the exact origin of the meme is unknown, the earliest found post which presented Santa deniers in a negative light was made by iFunny^[1] user CapitalismIsTooClassyUPA on December 19th, 2016. The post, a GIF caption, received 21 smiles (shown below).

The meme did not see viral spread until November 2019, although separate instances of memes about Santa Deniers were posted on iFunny before that. For example, on December 24th, 2017, iFunny^[2] user JoeBurrow posted a meme that gained 51 smiles.

On November 11th, 2019, iFunny^[3] user xmas posted an image macro combining an image of a Christmas stocking filled with coal captioned "Santa deniers be like guess I was wrong." The post (shown below) received over 4,100 smiles in one year.

Spread

On November 13th, 2019, Instagram^[4] user boomer.jim remade the meme, gaining over 3,400 likes.

In late November 2020, both xmas' and boomer.jim's posts received viral spread online. For example, a November 17th, 2019, repost by Instagram^[5] user new.incognito.tab received over 6,100 likes in one year.

The viral spread of the meme started on December 2nd, 2019. On that day, iFunny^[6] user floof posted a GIF caption that gained over 5,300 smiles in one year (shown below, left). On the same day, iFunny^[7] user NotKosher posted another meme that gained over 680 smiles in the same period (shown below, right).

In December 2019, multiple iFunny users posted viral posts which disparaged those who do not believe in Santa. For example, on December 6th, user BigBossLife^[8] posted a meme that gained over 10,800 smiles in one year (shown below, left). Following the viral spread of the format on iFunny, it was spread to other platforms such as Twitter and Instagram via reposts. For example, on December 17th, an unknown Redditor^[9] posted a GIF caption that gained over 4,700 upvotes in six months (shown below, right).

The meme maintained significant popularity on iFunny through the 2019 Christmas day. In the following year, the format saw occasional use online, particularly on Reddit and iFunny.

In mid-November 2020, the format started regaining online popularity ahead of the 2020 Holiday season through repubs of viral 2019 posts as well as new original memes. For example, on November 20th, 2020, iFunny^[10] user BigBthefluffyredneck posted a GIF caption that gained over 3,000 likes in five days. On November 21st, Twitter^[11] user @KremlingKOOL posted a collection of three Santa Denial memes, with the tweet gaining over 8,300 retweets and 50,900 likes in two days.

X Deniers / Must've Been The Wind

The concept of Santa Deniers inspired memes about different types of deniers towards the end of 2021, with some early examples appearing in 2020. On December 8th, 2021, Redditor Nearby-Low-864 posted a meme to /r/196^[12] referencing the concept of "Garfield Nonbelievers." Using an image of an empty lasagna tray, the Redditor captioned the image, "Garfield Nonbelievers Be Like: / 'Must've Been The Wind'". The post (shown below, left) received roughly 6,000 upvotes over the course of one month. It was also reposted to Tumblr^[13] the next day, where it received roughly 31,400 notes. The phrase "must have been the wind" is said by certain enemies in the 2006 video game The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion upon losing the enemy and is used in memes when someone is missing something obvious.

Later that month, on December 28th, Twitter^[14] user Epic_Kevster tweeted a meme that added to the trend (shown below, right). He used an image of small, gold rings with the caption, "Sonic deniers be like: / 'Must've been the wind that got hurt.'" The tweet received roughly 30,900 likes over the course of one week.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References