Talking heads on Fox News established that Santa is White recently. I find this tremendously interesting because last I checked, Santa was a mytho-religious figure who represented the embodiment of all the positive feelings connected to Christmas. Figures like that tend to look like whomever is telling their story. That's why Jesus looks so white in a lot of churches, but looks black in other ones. The idea that one culture can claim, exclusively, one of these figures seems, frankly, outlandish.
Of course, the internet backlash that has sprung up over the issue is even more outlandish. There are a series of blogs, internet posts, and letters to the editor talking about what Santa Claus is. Someone even suggested that Santa should be a penguin. If he were a penguin, he'd be on the wrong pole, but, that's not the issue. The issue is the number of people who, probably thinking that they mean well have pointed out that Santa Claus was based on Saint Nicholas, who was White, specifically, these folks like to point out, St. Nicholas was Greek.
There's a lot to unpack in a statement like that.
Firstly, while St. Nicholas may have been an inspiration for Santa Claus, a description of the two men couldn't sound much less similar. Saint Nicholas is depicted almost exclusively as a skinny man, with a brown or sometimes grey beard. He's balding. He wears the robes of a bishop, came from Turkey, and there is no discussion of what his ride is. Santa is a fat man with a white beard, furry red and white suit, surrounded by elves and rides a sled pulled by elk. Insofar as the one inspired the other, clearly, St. Nicholas's appearance has nothing to do with Mr. Claus's.
Secondly, St. Nicholas was born and died in Turkey. He may have been of Greek descent, but he wasn't from Greece. Further he was a fourth century figure, rebranded in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Those dates matter, because, in 1823, when the poem A Visit from St. Nicholas was penned, Greeks weren't really considered white.
There's this awkward thing about history. It gets more offensive the further away you get from it. In America, we've invented multiple mythologies to conceal the fact that we're a nation founded on slave labor and genocide. For most of our history we were a xenophobic collection of insular communities, only truly united after the civil war, and then only decades later. If you looked at the midwest during the great rail wars, you'd have seen a group calling itself white who oppressed Blacks, Chinese, Irish, "Swede" (often from nowhere near Sweden), and myriad other groups, none of whom were considered white.
The idea that any of those "white" people would have considered a Turkish-born Greek Catholic, "white" would have been offensive. It would have likely been considered fighting words, and may have gotten you shot. But, years later, we don't acknowledge any of those issues. Now, "whiteness" is a more clear issue. It's like a friend of mine once said, that Jews in America aren't really a minority anymore.
I think he's wrong, and if you don't believe me consider the fact that, while we may have elected our first Black President (second by some folks who reserve that title for Bill Clinton), and rumblings certainly suggest that 2016 could the year we elect our first woman President, both the Black(s?) and the Woman will at least pretend to believe in Jesus. The fact Obama still, to this day receives attacks based on him being Muslim, a "fact" that even if it were true would be irrelevant is all you need to know about this country and its insistence that Christianity is our official religion.
Really, the racial identity of Santa Claus is irrelevant. But the discussion isn't about that. It's about racial privilege. It's about the ability to look around and see people who look and think like you. There exists in America, right now, a generation that was raised believing that America is fundamentally white. They weren't intentionally taught that. But they saw it in all their elected officials. They saw it in their neighbors. They saw it in the children with whom they attended school. They saw it in the stores where they shopped, the restaurants where they ate, and the busses that they rode.
And that generation looks around right now and doesn't see that anymore. They see an encroaching number of faces of different colors. They increasingly see their children date people who don't look like that America. They see politicians who aren't part of that America. They see faces of every color in every restaurant, shopping in every store. For some of that generation, the ones who once knew they didn't belong, this America is hopeful, it's something of which we should be proud. But, for another group, this America is frightening. "White" Americans are no longer the majority of the population of the country. In two generations, they may cease to be the plurality. I think we're getting closer to them not being the majorities in Congress and political office.
And while there are those among us who find that hopeful, there are those among us who find that terrifying. This who find it terrifying know that they can't just rail against having to share their lunch tables with these other faces. So, instead, they talk about Santa Claus. But unlike the Joyous Elf who represents the best in us. They represent the worst.
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