The holidays are meant to be a time of joy, and, arguably, no one is a better symbol of Christmas merriment than Santa Claus.
However, one young boy didn't have such a heartwarming experience with Santa. Nine-year-old Anthony Mayse left his annual visit with Santa in tears after being fat-shamed, WLOS reports.
After Mayse sat on Santa's lap in Forest City, NC, on Saturday, he asked for an iPod Touch and a drone before the local Santa apparently told the boy to "lay off the hamburgers and French fries."
"That really just disrespected me, and I felt awful," Mayse told WLOS, the local news station. "It affected me so bad that I was crying until I went to bed that night."
"I was just mind-blown," his mother, Ashley Mayse, told the station. "I wished a million times that we never went."
HEARTBREAKER: Anthony says Forest City Santa made him cry when he told him to "lay off the burgers & french fries." @WLOS_13 pic.twitter.com/U5ABOf3hSj
— John Le Reporter (@AbsoluteLe) December 6, 2016
Though the Santa in question apologized for his comment, Mayse told WLOS that "when he went to apologize to me, he didn't even mean it."
"I want to say to him, 'You don't want to disrespect a 9-year-old,'" he said. "'Even though what shape and size you are, it doesn't matter.'"
Body-shaming is never okay, and it's baffling that a person whose job it is to spread cheer would spend his time putting down others — not to mention, children. But we're glad to see that Mayse is keeping his head up and knows that he deserves way more respect than this Santa was capable of showing.