Comic Jefferies believes in Santa’s magic

Atheists usually don't teach their children to believe in God. But quite a few atheists prop up Santa Claus to their kids. That seems odd to some of us who haven't multiplied.

Can Jim Jefferies explain this atheist-Santa thing to us?

Jefferies (performing at the Hard Rock Hotel on Saturday) rocketed to fame partly for his very funny jokes about religions. He's an atheist's hero.

But on Christmas, Jefferies muddies his boots and walks across marble floor, from chimney to tree, to make his 2-year-old believe in the gift-bearing elf.

"It's an elaborate lie, of course. The thing is, I like it. He's so excited. It's beautiful. It really doesn't hurt anybody," he said.

Jefferies, 38 (30 years beyond his Santa youth) sees the Santa-to-God connection like this:

" 'If you behave, you'll get gifts from a guy who drives a sled. If you behave as an adult, you get to go to a special utopia because a man on a cloud thinks you're a good fella."

Jefferies had a relative ask him to stop doing religious jokes, because the relative's kid listens to Jefferies' act, and "they still wanted him to have fear as a child."

"They still wanted to hold heaven and hell over him. It's the same thing as using Santa to make kids be good," Jefferies said.

And yet Jefferies is committed to Kris Kringle.

"You know what I do like in this world? I like a little bit of magic," he explained.

"I'll just say, as soon as he is of age, 'I lied to you, because I thought it would bring your childhood a little bit of magic,' in the same way I lied to my nieces and nephews when they were little kids about sporting achievements I never achieved, because that's what you do — you bull---- the children, because they enjoy it."

If you're a fan of Jefferies, you probably can't believe this interview isn't all about guns, because Jefferies' 15-minute bit on guns is this year's most impactful viral video about the subject. https://www.youtube.com/embed/ML4iIiRHcJY

The video is a literate, iron-clad comedy routine about how gun fetishes seem crazy, and how riddled-with-holes their arguments are for having guns as protection against home intruders and government fascists.

Jefferies, the world's funniest comedian, says he wrote his gun routine after being shocked by the Sandy Hook massacre, the day when 20 6-year-olds and 7-year-olds, and six adults, breathed their last breaths into the barrel end of the sacred Second Amendment.

Jefferies was on the set of his FX show, "Legit," at the time. He heard some crew members say, "When are we going to let teachers have guns? This whole thing could have been avoided."

"I was just, like, 'Oh my god, these people are out of their (expletive) minds,'" Jefferies says.

When he was living in Australia, Jefferies knew Americans rah-rah'ed their gun rights, but he thought we had some kind of gun controls.

"I really thought you did have to have psychological tests, and wait a few months" to buy a gun, he said. "I didn't realize you could just go to a gun show and get it. It really took me by surprise."

Here are some more points:

"Having lived in Britain and Australia, I've never met a foreign person who has holidayed in America and gone, 'They know what they're doing when it comes to guns.'

"There's not one other country that looks at American laws and goes, 'Why don't we do that in our country?' "

People sometimes write Jefferies, saying, "Your bit on depression helped me out," or, "Your bit on guns made me think differently about having guns."

But Jefferies' main goal isn't to make anyone an anti-gun atheist.

"I'm doing it purely for comedy," he said, and added: "Hopefully, you give people who agree with you better arguments they can use in their own lives."

So Jefferies doesn't hold out hope of changing the world. But he also doesn't hold much regard for the let's-give-everyone-guns arguments of, say, libertarians.

"Libertarians, they're the worst," he said. "They say, 'We should all be allowed to do anything.' That's a tricky one."

He doesn't even want guns for the zombie apocalypse, he jokes.

"People (ask), 'What are you going to do when the apocalypse happens, or nuclear warfare?' I'm of the theory that I want to die if that happens," he says.

"If I live, I'll have to hang around with all the people that prepared for it, and they're always (expletives). You don't want to be alive with the doomsday preppers, like, 'You were right. Now I've got to chat with you?' "