An early salvo has been fired in the war on Christmas: social media posts suggesting that Disney has sided with Satan instead of Santa Claus.

“Disney pushes ‘We love Satan’ in new family Christmas movie,” reads a screenshot of a headline in a Nov. 29 Instagram post. “They don’t hide their agenda anymore.” 

This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

The headline is from a blog post that includes a clip showing elves moving letters to form the words “We love you Satan.” 

But the truncated video, from an episode of “The Santa Clauses,” a Disney+ TV series that premiered in November, does not tell the whole story. In the series, Tim Allen reprises his role as Scott Calvin, who in the 1994 movie “The Santa Clause,” becomes Santa. In this new series, Calvin is seeking a replacement so he can retire. 

The song-and-dance number in which the elves move the letter signs happens about 25 minutes into the series’ third episode. After the elves form the words “We love you Satan,” then Allen, as Santa, says: “Spelling.” The elves look down and shriek when they realize the typo, and change formation so that the letters spell “We love you Santa.” Allen then gives them a thumbs-up.

In context that’s missing from both the blog and Instagram post, this is clearly a joke. 

We rate claims that Disney is pushing Satan in its new Christmas show False.