The endless salvos in the American cultural war normally
give me a headache and are usually beneath the dignity of comment. But the
latest jeremiad against a Fox News host about the race of Santa Claus was
informative.
Megyn
Kelly, on her program The Kelly File,
remarked that Santa Claus is white. (She mentioned that Jesus Christ was white
too, and while I’d love to discuss the colorful variations among the 12 tribes
of Israel, I’ll instead point out that white people handed over the name Jesus
to the Latinos a while ago.)
Kelly was
of course buried in a brouhaha of accusations of racism and “look what she
said” type coverage, but if you actually watch the damn video, her piece is actually discussing an article on Slate that advocates
doing without a white Santa, or a human Santa entirely, and replace him with a
penguin in the name of helping nonwhite children love Christmas. Slate’s
cultural blogger Aisha Harris recounts her childhood angst at the ubiquity of
peckerwood Santa Clauses and thinks that a penguin Santa is a win-win for
everyone.
When I was
a kid growing up in Yonkers, my brother and I were sent to an afterschool
center on weekday afternoons in nearby Eastchester. The kids at the daycare
center were mostly white, but sometimes our center would get together with a
nearby black organization called CAP (Community Action Program). We would take
trips with them and every year we went to their Christmas party.
At every
CAP Christmas party Santa Claus appeared and gave out presents, and at CAP,
Santa was black. Not only was their Santa black, but he was someone that worked
there that the black kids all knew. They laughed hilariously at the black Santa, in part because it was someone they knew and also
because it was so obviously NOT Santa Claus.
Like Aisha Harris
mentions in her piece on Slate, a non-white Santa doesn’t look quite right,
even to a sympathetic non-white audience. It’s an obviously pandering variation
awkwardly hammered into place. And children, ever suspicious of adult
manipulation into their world, resent such obvious engineering. Harris was
right to take umbrage at the black Santa. Even though the adults in her life
were doing it for her perceived benefit, it was too much adult interference and
that just ain’t right.
Us white
kids resented the black Santa, not because we were racist or hated blacks but
because we were treated to a needless maiming of a cultural icon that was
supposed to be race-neutral.
And this fear of a white Santa is a
very telling sign on the part of the multicultural left that’s calling for the head of Megyn Kelly on a charger. Wanting
to get rid of white Santa is a tacit acknowledgement of the failure and
hopelessness of multiculturalism itself.
If you buy
into the belief of Santa Claus and believe that he’s a kindly, saintly man who
loves good children, then he certainly loves all the good children of the world
and brings them all gifts. That nonwhite children are automatically aggrieved
at the sight of a white Santa Claus means that the hopes of fostering an
integrated, diverse society is hopeless. If all the races should be equally
valued and accepted by everyone, then the traditional white Santa is for
everyone too.
If my kids have to stand for a
black President, why can’t black kids accept gifts from a white Santa Claus? If
multiculturalism is for real, then it’s not a one-way street. If non-white children can’t accept a
benevolent white saint who gives them presents out of love, then there’s not much racial harmony in America’s future.
Santa Claus, like many other
holiday trappings, developed from European traditions that were adapted to
Christianity as it spread westward from the Middle East. Saint Nicholas, the
Catholic patron saint of children and sailors and generally agreed to as the
basis of Santa Claus, was Greek. If white people invented Santa Claus, then it
makes sense he’d be white.
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