Watch Fox News' Megyn Kelly claim Santa, like Jesus, is a white guy

Santa Claus may not be real, but he sure as heck is white.

At least that's what Fox News host Megyn Kelly claimed Wednesday night on her show, The Kelly File. Addressing a Slate article discussing Santa's depiction as a jolly old white guy, Kelly said Santa "is what he is," which is white.

"Jesus was a white man, too," she added. "He was a historical figure. That's a verifiable fact, as is Santa."

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Kelly is right about one thing: Jesus is a historical figure. But contrary to Kelly and the many, many Western depictions of Jesus as an ethereal, long-haired white man, Jesus almost definitely wasn't white.

About a decade ago, British forensic anthropologists produced this image of a dark-skinned, short-haired Jesus, considered to be one of the more accurate representations around. And Edward J. Blum, author of the book Color of Christ, which explored how different cultures throughout history have portrayed Jesus' skin color in their own image, explained in an interview with NPR last year that Jesus was probably "darkly complected, not pure black, more in a kind of light brownish."

As for Santa — that North Pole-dwelling mythical being who, with his flying reindeer, delivers presents from a bottomless sack to all the children in the world in one night — his real life skin color is...ah, forget it.