Santa Claus: Must he be white?

The war on Christmas has reached the North Pole, said Elias Isquith in Salon.com. On Fox News last week, host Megyn Kelly weighed in on the most important question of our age: “Whether or not Santa Claus—who does not exist—is a white man.” Responding to a Slate.com article that proposed making Santa more appealing to black kids, Kelly insisted, “Santa just is white.” That was a historical truth, she said, as was the fact that “Jesus was a white man.” “How many problems are wrapped up in that?” said Jeffrey Weiss in WashingtonPost.com. First of all, Santa is an imaginary character. Insisting he remain white “is like insisting that unicorns can only be one color.” Then there’s the small matter that his historical inspiration, the 4th-century Bishop Nicholas, was from Turkey, so he likely had olive skin. As for Jesus, he wasn’t the pale-skinned, blue-eyed WASP of European art, but a swarthy Middle Eastern Jew who probably looked “like Yasser Arafat.”

So “the real St. Nicholas probably wasn’t fat, didn’t wear a red costume, and most certainly didn’t have flying reindeer,” said Matt Lewis in DailyCaller.com. Madison Avenue created that image of Santa in the 1930s. But we’ve portrayed Santa as a bearded, chunky white guy for decades. Can’t we just leave this cultural institution as he is? Black or Hispanic or Asian parents are free to tell their kids Santa is whatever race they’d like. “Just don’t try to indoctrinate everyone else with your own personal Santa.’’

It’s telling that conservatives are so threatened by a non-white Santa, said Joel Silberman in LATimes.com. For the Fox News crowd, this is “a proxy issue” for how they feel about an America in which all the bedrock institutions—churches, government, and businesses—have crumbled or lost credibility. A white Kris Kringle is one of the “last tethers” to an idealized, Norman Rockwell past. But as a Jew who dresses up like Santa every year to give out presents to poor kids, along with dozens of other Santas—white, Latino, black, Asian—I can assure you that what makes America—and Santa—great transcends race. “As the old motto says, e pluribus unum: out of many, one. Or as Santa would put it: ‘Ho ho ho.’”

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