Everyone deserves to feel like a kid at Christmas. But during the busy holiday season, it’s difficult for adults to embrace their inner child who couldn’t wait to wake up on Christmas morning and tear open presents. 

Walmart is dedicated to helping busy families have a more joyful Christmas. So with the help of celebrity hypnotist Chris Jones, we created a video to run on social media networks where we helped real adults re-live Christmas like a kid again.

Chris Jones, known for his appearance on America’s Got Talent, used the power of hypnosis to take real stressed-out Walmart shoppers back in time to when they were 5 years old, to experience the abject joy of Christmas morning. In the end, we gave these shoppers and millions on social media an incredible Christmas gift – we showed them that there’s still a kid inside all of us.

Real Walmart shoppers participated in an experiment where they were hypnotized to believe they were waking up on Christmas morning as 5-year-olds. We invited real adults to tell us about Christmas. Many found it to be stressful. Several were invited back right before Christmas to a house we set up to recreate their favorite holiday memories. Here, celebrity hypnotist Chris Jones hypnotized them to think they were kids waking up Christmas morning. Under deep hypnosis, these grown-ups tore open presents, looked for Rudolph, even made snow angels with Chris. When we showed them video footage of how they acted under hypnosis, the results were instant, raw and emotional. And they were reminded that that kid still exists inside them.

We featured our experiment on Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube the week before Christmas, so busy shoppers could forget the stress and remember the joy the holiday season brings.

• Positive sentiment increased by 300% - the third highest in Walmart’s history

• 112M total views

• 222M impressions

• 42,000 shares