Yeah, that
title sounds pretty bad, but lots of people have already used "Fear of a
Black Santa", and I think it will work with where I'm going with it.
(Clearly
this is building on Megyn Kelly's response to Aisha Harris's Slate piece.
Relevant links are down below, including a Jon Stewart segment that I had a
really hard time finding after the first time I watched it, because now it is
all about Kelly's "obviously that was humorous" response.)
If anyone
has forgotten from last year, I will not support any of the Christmas
deceptions, no matter how cute, so if your child reads this and realizes that
Santa Claus is not real, there will be no retractions and no apologies.
That being
said, I am not going to criticize Megyn Kelly for her "And by the way
kids" stuff. I remember "Good Morning America" getting a ton of
flack for outing the Elf on the Shelf, and that is also a show that is not
specifically targeted to kids, so fine.
It did
underscore the childishness of everything else she was saying, though, because
the need to believe in Santa came across exactly the same as the need to
believe he was white. She appeals to the historical record of St. Nicholas as a
real person, and you can't just arbitrarily change the race of a real person,
but that real person died in 343. Yes, there is a Saint Nicholas, and he is
part of the origins of what we believe about Santa Claus, but there is so much
else that goes into that, pulling from many different histories.
Thinking
about the color issue, a man born 1743 years ago in Greek-ruled Turkey might indeed have had dark skin,
but not all of Santa Claus comes from Saint Nicholas. I started wondering about
the North Pole thing. Could he be a Laplander? They're pretty Caucasian. At the
same time, I recently saw a picture of a little girl whose family were reindeer
herders, and she was Mongolian, so her skin was somewhat dark.
Apparently
the North Pole thing came from stories of Hyperborea, which could be Celts or
Siberians or maybe even Uyghurs, which is a Turkish Ethnic group living in Central Asia including China. I guess with the Saint Nicholas
connection, we should vote for Uyghurs, so still somewhat dark-skinned.
Actually,
the biggest personal thing for me is that I suddenly understood an argument
that has occasionally come up during some of my prison correspondence, with
someone bothered by white Jesus and apostles. I was always thinking, well,
they're Jewish; that's Caucasian, right? Well, maybe not.
And that's
when it started feeling kind of dirty, to get into this argument about white
enough or dark enough. Let's get out a paper bag and check Santa against that!
What a stupid thing to get hung up on!
(Incidentally,
I like the picture they show on Jon Stewart of how Saint Nicholas might have
looked. I like that guy. He looks kind. It's in the screen capture if you don't
want to watch the whole thing.)
One friend
reminded me that it does change. Jews are probably lighter-skinned now than they
were at the time of Christ. (Congratulations Jon; Jews are now white!) In
addition, attitudes change. The scapegoat immigrants used to be the Irish, and
then it was people from Southeastern Europe, and that eventually goes away.
We still
have problems racially, though, and it has repercussions. The Slate piece (if I
am related to Aisha Harris, I don't know it) was humorous about changing Santa
to a penguin, but that feeling of illegitimacy, of not being included is real.
If we had a more inclusive and egalitarian society, Santa's color might not
matter so much. That's worth thinking about.
Remember,
there are many different traditions that have fed into Christmas, and which
ones we have kept and which ones have dropped may have been chosen
unconsciously, but there was still an element of choice, so we can choose.
I was
fascinated to read about Black Peter. Yes, there is a black counterpart, and
that leads to use of blackface in some countries, and often he is the bad one
(though apparently not always), so that can be problematic, but listen to this:
"if
you've been bad then Black Peter will beat you and maybe take you off to be a
Spanish or Barbary
Coast
pirate's moll..." (http://www.milism.net/blackpeter.htm)
I haven't
been a particularly bad girl, but that's an intriguing option! Maybe we can
find a way to work that in.
In all
seriousness, we do have choices about our lore. The names of Santa's reindeer
were made up by one poet, and we accepted them. The way he looks came from a
couple of cartoonists, but there are many cartoonists.
So perhaps
the most important thing to remember about the historical Saint Nicholas is
that his focus was on helping the poor. He was the patron saint of thieves and
pawnbrokers, students and children, and sailors and prostitutes. He was the
patron saint of merchants as well, and for one method of celebrating Christmas,
that may be the only group that matters, and the children, I guess. Oddly, this
is the exact same transformation that we see happening with the perception of
Jesus. Forget about helping the poor; there are sinners to judge!
And that's
where it becomes about faith. For faith to be of any value, it has to be in
something true. Faith takes away fear. Listening to Fox - and this goes so
beyond Megyn Kelly - there is always that undercurrent of fear. There is fear
of dark-skinned people, fear of teenagers, and fear of tyrants (but only if
they belong to the wrong party, otherwise it's they are just strong leaders).
As silly as
it is, I hear fear in Megyn Kelly's insistence on a white Santa. I don't think
she has examined it, but I would guess it is rooted in the fear that things
might not always be the same, and that her place might not be secure. Inclusion
for others might mean less for her. And you would think that bringing on three
talking heads is a step towards examination, though I think she was
dissatisfied with their level of cooperation.
So here is
my faith. I have faith that children can survive seeing a multi-racial Santa
and be better for it. I have faith that the world is big enough for all of us. I
have faith that giving, and fighting poverty, and turning away materialism, is
better, and will lead to increased happiness. I have faith that there is a
world full of beautiful people out there, and the more people I come to know,
the more I know that I am right.
Anyway,
it's the Fox mindset, as voiced by Romney, that called Obama Santa Claus. What
color is your Santa now?
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