Santa Is White ...

[sunny-dave]

... and so is Jesus ("that's a verifiable fact" about 1 min 50 seconds in)

http://www.theguardian.com/media/video/2013/dec/13/santa-white-jesus-white-fox-news-megyn-kelly-video

Hmmmm ...

[jno]

Santa's beard is definitely white. If he has a black beard he's probably a disguised pirate come to loot your stockings rather than fill them.

[FredPuli43]

Saint Nicholas himself was a Greek born in what is now Turkey. Depends whether you regard a person with that ancestry as white, I suppose. The Coca Cola version of Santa Claus , red coat and all, is definitely white.

It seems a little unlikely that Jesus was Caucasian white, given his human ancestry. The earliest representations of him don't suggest he was.

But Foix News has never been a channel which invited controversy about the accepted beilefs of its target audience !

[Svejk]

///It seems a little unlikely that Jesus was Caucasian white,///

He was in every film I've seen him in.

[gness]

Never mind Jesus.....if they decide Santa is a penguin how am I going to explain forty years of lies to my kids.....they'll never forgive me... :-(

Worse still, how will I explain the large man wandering around my house every Christmas Eve....;-)

[murraymints]

Who's that that's been nicking all the pies and sherry then ?

[gness]

Exactly, Minty.....I once ended up on a coach trip with a sober penquin....imagine a sloshed one!

[Slapshot]

OI leave the Penguins out of this..... Santa has to be white.... how else could he hide at the North Pole

[murraymints]

He hides behind the polar bear !

[LazyGun]

She has "defended" herself, following reaction in the media and by comics, like Jon Steward.

Apparently, her comments were "tongue in cheek", critics were "humourless" for failing to see that, and anyway she "did it for the kids".

The Stupid - it burns :)

[hc4361]

Everyone knows all the goodies are white and the baddies aren't.

:D

[LazyGun]

This clip from Jon Stewart - about the supposed "war on christmas" by those damn godless lefties, and megyn kellys comments, is worth a watch :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdkGA_rgHRY#t=38

[tamborine]

white is right
black is ???? innit

[hc4361]

tambo - errrrr, better?

[anotheoldgit]

This is a white European country, with a history and culture all of our own, if we choose to have a white Jesus and Santa so be it, but if others who have chosen to settle in our country choice to cast them in their own image then no one is stopping them, at least not as far as I know.

[LazyGun]

Ermm - Megyn Kelly is a prominent talking head on Fox News over in the US, AoG, so I am unsure that it relates specifically to the UK except to allow us all to laugh at anyone who states "as a fact" that Santa Clause and Jesus were both "white men". Apart from the fact that Santa is fictional, and Jesus, always supposing he was an actual character, would have been of mediterranean origin rather than being a white male.

[hc4361]

AOG, Santa Claus is a Greek saint who lived in the 4th century. He certainly was not white.

Father Christmas with the beard and red cloak is an American invention (Coca Cola actually).

[anotheoldgit]

hc4361

/// AOG, Santa Claus is a Greek saint who lived in the 4th century. He certainly was not white. ///

That may be correct but that is the Santa as we in this country know him, and that is how it should remain.

/// Father Christmas with the beard and red cloak is an American invention (Coca Cola actually). ///

Not true I'm afraid, the Coca Cola Santa didn't appear until the early 1930s

http://www.coca-colacompany.com/holidays/the-true-history-of-the-modern-day-santa-claus

This is an image circ. 1910

http://0.tqn.com/d/antiques/1/7/N/4/Santa1.jpg

[LazyGun]

@AoG Just because something "has always been that way" does not necessarily mean it should "always stay that way". Things can change. And once again, remember this article relates to a US talking head, nothing to do with the UK except to provide a laugh.

Regardless, Santa is, first and foremost, a fictional character, and whilst the accepted image in the UK and US is of a fat white old bloke with a big white beard, the original actual person that Santa was based upon was St. Nicholas, who would, once again, be someone of a rather more mediterranean origin.

Megyn Kelly also went out of her way in the original piece to assert that Jesus was "white". Leaving aside for a moment the provenance of Jesus, since there is a debate over whether he existed at all, again were he to have existed he would have been derived from mediterranean/middle eastern stock, so extremely unlikely to have been a white caucasian male, which is how he is represented in the USA and Europe.

So what do you think, AoG? Do you think the portrayal of Jesus as a white caucasian male is historically accurate and can be justified?

[douglas9401]

In the story of a man claiming to be the son of God born to a virgin who in later life went on to perform various claimed miracles including but not limited to healing terrible illnesses and feeding throngs from a satchel, skin colour is probably about the last thing up for analysis.