AS EXPECTED, FOX NEWS ONLY RECOGNIZES WHITE SANTA’S

 

…This is becoming a much more common example of America’s Santa Claus

 

As with many on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News channel, Megyn Kelly obviously came from a predominately white community.

Well, being it’s that time of year, I guess I might as well weigh in on the latest event in the conservatives, “War on Christmas”, brouhaha.

But instead of going after Fox News and Bill O’Reilly’s crusade against those people that say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”, I will instead go after Fox News’, Megyn Kelly, when she declared that both Santa Claus and Jesus were obviously “White”.

Now, this whole issue started when the internet Slate’s key blogger, Aisha Harris, wrote that Santa should be a black & white penguin instead of a “fat white guy.” Harris recounted growing up with two Santa’s, one black and one white, but felt bad that her Santa was overshadowed by the more broadly accepted, default, fat, white Santa.

Megyn’s particular comments that caused what became such a viral internet stir were: “Santa is what he is,” she said. “Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn’t mean it has to change. You know, I mean, Jesus was a white man, too.”

My first comment would be , “Really?”

For once, I think I agree with the conservative columnist Kathleen Parker, who recently wrote, “Seriously, he [Jesus] probably wasn’t [white]. A Jew living in the Middle East, 2,000 years ago — pre-sunscreen, not to mention at least 40 days wandering in the desert — Jesus probably wasn’t the light-skinned, brown-haired, sometimes blue-eyed lad most Americans of an older age thought they knew.”

And as to my Santa, my mother, who was raised in the south, was a very wise woman when it came to fantasy items such as Santa Claus. 

Now, my mother was not an enlightened southern woman.  In fact, until my father had taken the family out of Virginia and eventually moved us to the West Coast, my mother’s views on all the different races were very conventional.  However, after being exposed to our neighbors in California of all colors and languages, she came to the point that Santa was whatever color the family decided he should be.  A black family can have a black Santa, Asian kids can have an Asian Santa  and so on, and so forth.

Of course, Megyn Kelly’s commentary has earned her massive ridicule, mockery and a full-scale national cable TV debate as well as the expected charges of racism.

But what really set off the event to go so viral, was Ms. Kelly’s response to the initial ridicule she received.

Kelly’s response was, “I did say [Santa and] Jesus were white,” Kelly acknowledged. “As I learned in the last two days, that is far from settled. For me, the fact that an off-hand jest I made during a segment about whether Santa should be replaced by a penguin has now become a national firestorm says two things. Race is still an incredibly volatile issue in this country, and Fox News, and yours truly are big targets for many people.”

First, it amazes me that Megyn has the gall to say it was an “off-hand jest”, and to make a statement of apparent surprise about herself and Fox being such big targets.  The miss-information that Fox News and Ms. Kelly distributes is what makes Fox and Ms. Kelly such huge targets, and I’m sure that it’s not a very big surprise.

But since the issue first came up, it appears that my mom had it right in the first place.

As it is with very young children, they tend to be oblivious to skin color, so young children could care less what color the Santa’s skin is that they crawl up on when they go to ask for their favorite toys. 

 

On the other hand, as parents, we have all been there when the big guy in the big red suit scares the hell out of the little kids, no matter what the color is of the Santa’s skin.

In addition, since this whole thing has gone viral, more and more individuals have gotten on Twitter and commented on various blogs and they have said that their Santa’s were whatever nationality and coloring that was of the family’s origin.  Chinese kids that celebrated Christmas had Chinese Santas, Korean kids had their own Santa’s, and so on for the other cultures. 

Actually, Megyn’s white Santa was because, that for so many years, white Caucasian’s were the predominate skin color in the US, so we all had white Santa’s.   Megyn was also born and raised in a very white, New York state region.  However, today that is not the case.

In fact, in Washington DC, there is a black Santa that has been at a major department store for years.  Due to the predominance of a black population in the DC area, the store continually gets calls asking if the, “Black Santa is still there to see their kids?”  For many DC kids, they have only known of that black Santa.

My hope is that this is what predominates for all future Santa’s for the different American kids of all colors and nationalities.  They should have the Santa that makes them feel the most comfortable.  Remember folks, it’s a fantasy, and the key to Christmas is for everyone to feel the love of family and togetherness, not divisiveness. 

And as they said on the Colbert show, “Instead of saying “Happy Holidays”, you should instead be saying, “Feliz Navidad” or “Mele Kalikimaka”.

Nuff-said, and Merry Christmas or............

Copyright G.Ater  2013