Christmas Stories From Jaleel White, Danny DeVito, Jay Glazer, and Denisha Allen

0:01 - There's a great story about you and Strahan making a Christmas special. You wanna share that with our audience? - No, no, it was me and Tiki. Here's what I did, again- - What did you do for Christmas? - There's ways that I knew I could be of service. I think I just got the job at CBS. So that was for 50 grand by the way. And so I went to the post office in New York, the zip code 10001, and when kids send letters to Santa, it goes there, but they actually divide 'em up.

0:29 And you can go in and I would get these letters from these kids. - Oh, they'll give you those. - They'll give you letters. - Christmas letters. - Yeah, yeah. - The Santa letters. Sounds like that would be like a federal crime or something. - Not in the '90s. - But not if it's to Santa. (laughs) - So, listen, Santa's breaking into people's houses anyway through the chimney so it's breaking and entering. - Yeah. - I'm Jewish.

0:48 I'm like, "What's wrong with you people? "You let this guy break and enter in your house?" And I would go there, get these letters, and a lot of them were really heartbreaking. They just want pants with no holes so they don't get made fun of, or a blanket, a lot of 'em are heartbreaking. And I would actually go and I would fulfill, starting with like three of these letters. And then I took my fight team and, 'cause some of these are really bad areas, I couldn't go myself, and we went in there and I would knock on these doors and I would say, "Hey, is there a such and such here?

1:22 "Well, Santa sent to us. "We got your letter." And oh, man, talk about. There's no way to be in the gray when you do something like that. Well, eventually, as people started hearing what I was doing, they all wanted to start doing it. So I started getting more and more and more letters and started giving 'em out to different friends and people who had restaurants and this and that, and started becoming a thing. And then it went back, Tiki would come with me.

1:44 So all of a sudden you had the starting running back of the Giants, he's showing up like. - Yeah, that's pretty awesome. - Yeah, it was pretty awesome. - Did you ever don the Santa Claus outfit? - No, no, no, no. - Not even, kike, not even an elf hat? - No, no, I didn't do that. No. No. - If you could relive one memory with your dad or a father figure, which day would it be?

2:02 - Now I'm using my brother 'cause he's my father figure and he's been there for me. One year we got together at his house to have Christmas. We spent the night, we put cookies out for Santa, cookies and milk out for Santa by the Christmas tree. We grew up poor, so we knew Santa Claus was not real. Like, nobody's gonna give credit to Santa when they struggled to buy these presents. You know, like, no, we bought those.

2:27 And it was so cheesy, 'cause we knew, you know, we already knew like Santa did not give us these gifts. And he was like, "You gotta go to bed. "You gotta, you know, go to sleep "or you're not gonna get any presents." So, and then the next day, one of the first presents we opened were, like, matching sweatsuits. Typical '90s sweatsuits. Like, that material that goes like (imitates material rubbing). - Yep, yep. - Now when I look at those pictures, I remember like, that was so much fun.

2:50 But those sweatsuits were- - Were terrible? - Yeah. They were kind of ugly. - You know, when you're learn that there's no Santa Claus. - Oh yeah, that's a tough one as a parent. It's a transition. - But, like, as the kid, you're just like, "God, of course there's no Santa Claus, like, whatever." And I had two younger siblings who still knew that there was Santa and he let me stay up and do the Santa preparations for when the other kids went to bed, you know?

3:25 - I remember that. Like, it was yesterday. That's amazing. - You know, I got to eat the cookies and make a mess and spill the milk. - Make a mess. - And then we would always put carrots and celery out for the reindeer. - For the reindeer! - Yeah, yeah. - Did you eat those or? - What we'd do, yeah, you tell him. - He was like, "This is what you do." And he like, this was his tutorial, was chewing up carrots and then spitting them out all over the stoop.

4:01 - All over the fireplace. - It was so much fun. (Danny and Lucy imitate carrot munching) Like, just spraying carrots and celery. - [John] Oh, that's great. - Well, 'cause the reindeer, they were sloppy. - Yeah, and they were in a rush. - They were in a hurry. - And so many houses to go to. - Get to the next house. - Yeah. - They're crazy animals. They're not neat. - Yeah. - Yeah. And that's a really, I remember that.

4:21 - Yeah, yeah. - That's really sweet because you are sweet. - Aw. (festive bells jingle) - I was seven years old and that's the best Christmas ever, because my parents pretended they didn't get me anything. And so I saw nothing coming under the tree. And so my dad came in and I was crying in my bunk bed, and my dad came in and gave me a wrapped up can of freaking tennis balls. And I'm like, you know? (John laughs) Really, you just open that (chuckles), "Thanks, bro."

4:50 Right? - So like that's a real head fake right there. - Right? So he and my mom were getting their giggles off at my 7-year-old expense. And then he comes back probably like, about five minutes later, and gets me outta my bunk bed after midnight, and he goes, "I think Santa did bring a little bit more than that though. "You might wanna go check." That was my dad. He was that corny guy that liked to play out every little beat of the story of the prank.

5:15 And I get up and there's more toys under this tree than I just. It was my list times ten. I had piano synthesizers, I had Mr. T dolls. - Yes! - I had a new tennis racket. I had this robot that I wanted called Omnibot. You can look it up. It was the biggest deal. It was $299 and it was like at the top shelf at Toys "R" Us. And it was just nonstop wrapping.

5:48 I'm an only child too, so I have no competition. This is just me going at it with paper. And my parents had filed for bankruptcy. - [John] Oh, man, that's tough. So this is this moment for them where they're like, "You know what, we're gonna let this be special." - That's parenting. (festive music)