A fake news article about a San Francisco elementary school suspending a child for saying "Merry Christmas" to an atheist teacher created a lot of real headaches for a similarly-named Bay Area school after the fake report went viral.

The school received "e-mail tirades," more than 75 phone complaints, and veiled threats of violence, according to district Assistant Superintendent Leticia Salinas.

The article appeared on a "satirical" website called the National Report (the same site that tripped up Fox News last month), and purportedly took place at "Argon" elementary school. It was later changed to "Anon," but that didn't protect Argonne elementary school from the internet's wrath.

According to SFGate, the original link was tweeted more than 400 times and liked more than 20,000 times on Facebook. And people took it very seriously.

The school's been doing damage control, dealing with "irate callers," and letting them know the report was a hoax. Argonne's school secretary said most were surprised and just hung up.

"You don't expect to have to deal with this at this time of year," Salinas said. "What was mostly upsetting was some of the references of what people should do to the teacher."

[image via Shutterstock]