Santa

Earlier this week Aisha Harris wrote an article about how confused she was as a child since Santa Claus who was sitting in the malls and who was present in the television shows was white, but the Santa who visited her African-American home was black. She argues that the normative white male Santa is problematic and argues that Santa instead should be a penguin, that people of all colours can relate to. Megan Kelly from ultra-conservative Fox News got frustrated and argued that Santa has to be white and that Jesus was white, which of course He wasn’t.

Initially I liked the idea of a penguin Santa, and there’s already a lot of pictures of her/him, but then I thought – why do we need Santa? Today Santa is king of consumerism, speeding up environmental destruction like crazy in order to give stuff primarily to rich people. As I say in my campaign video Selling Christmas (below), Jesus’ model of generosity was about selling stuff and give the money to the poor, while the Christmas generosity is about buying stuff to give to the rich. An awful way to celebrate the birth of the homeless Saviour.

Santa is thus a not very good represntative for S:t Nicholas either, since he gave gifts to the poor children so that they would survive, not playstations or mascara. So I’d say we kill Santa. Replace him with Jesus, the Middle Eastern version, and share His Gospel about justice and eternal life. And give your money to Unicef or Iris Relief instead of buying unnecessary stuff. Merry Christmas!

Related articles

• Santa Is A Penguin (combine26to28.wordpress.com)
• The (Race) War on Christmas: Megyn Kelly Declares ‘Santa Claus Just Is White’ and So Was Jesus (mediaite.com)
• Really?? Fox News Anchor Tells Black Kids Santa Claus AND Jesus Are White So Stop Complaining (bossip.com)
• Harris: It’s time to give Santa Claus a makeover (newsday.com)