Black? White? Brown? Santa Claus is any color you want to make him

By David McElroy · December 14, 2013

Are we really arguing about what color Santa Claus is? Has anyone broken the news to the people arguing that he’s just a fictitious character?

That’s right. Santa doesn’t exist. But that hasn’t stopped culture warriors from trying to turn him into a cause. On Fox News this week, anchor Megyn Kelly started the ball rolling.

“For all you kids watching at home, Santa just is white,” Kelly told viewers. “Santa is what he is…. I wanted to get that straight.”

Other people have struck back, arguing that to claim Santa is white is “oppressive.” In the Los Angeles Times, there was a piece about why “we deserve a Santa for the people, not just white folks.” Over at the progressive left website Think Progress, they were writing about “Megyn Kelly’s fear of a black Santa.” And a blogger at the conservative Washington Times was defending Kelly and writing about “why Santa Claus’ skin color matters.”

One of my friends reports that a very intelligent friend of his believes that “having a white Santa is just cultural dominance over a disenfranchised and unempowered race and we might want to consider transitioning to a less-white Santa and for me to insist that a character keep his image just because said character is and always has been depicted as a white male is oppressive in nature.”

That’s right. Our culture has been reduced to arguing about whether a fictitious character’s ethnicity is “cultural dominance” over “disenfranchised” people and what kind of Santa “we deserve.”

To all of the combatants, I simply say, “Who cares?”

Santa Claus didn’t start in his present form. He’s culturally created and that’s fine. I’m not going to bore you with all of the historical background that led to the current character, but he’s a mixture of bits and pieces of different things — St. Nicholas, Odin, Father Christmas and half a dozen other things. Various people in various places have blended the stories. Different people swear that their version is the real version. The advertising people at Coca Cola have even had a lot to do with our present view of Santa, as have countless Hollywood movies over the years.

At this point, Santa Claus is simply a broad cultural character in the public domain that can be modified (or not) at the whim of the person telling the story. You can make him whatever you want.

Yes, Santa was traditionally a white guy, because he was created by white cultures. In the same way that other fictitious characters can be transformed into something else, Santa can be transformed further, too. As far as I’m concerned, Santa will remain a white guy who looks like someone out of a Coke ad. If someone else wants to show the guy as black or Hispanic or Chinese or whatever, I don’t care, as long as he doesn’t insist that I’m required to conform to his ideas of what the character ought to be.

Stories and characters can survive just fine as they’re transplanted from one culture to another. There’s no need to make it into anything political. It’s not oppressive if Santa remains white for me, but I’m not threatened if you make him a gay African albino with rides a giant yellow banana pulled by miniature unicorns.

Hamlet is sometimes staged with a black Hamlet. Or a gay Hamlet. So what? Santa’s no different. (Former First Lady Nancy Reagan didn’t have any problem with Mr. T as Santa.) Whoever wants to tell the story can tell it as he pleases. You can have a black Santa if you want. Just don’t whine if I don’t go along with your political agenda about it.

For the people who are screaming — on both sides of this issue — Santa isn’t the real issue. The real issue is that they’re angry when other people won’t believe what they want them to believe and act as they want them to act. Santa is just another symbol in a long-running culture war.

I’m a non-combatant in this idiotic culture war. I think other sane and honest people should ignore it, too.

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We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

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