Santa or Sandra? Either’s OK
The folks in Orewa are organising their Christmas parade and looking for a Santa. An advert calls for ‘‘a fit and active man – yes, sorry, in the time of equality, Santa will still always be a man’’.
That’s a brave move in a suburb of Auckland, where, just last year, the city’s main Santa Parade was thrown into turmoil when its go-to Santa was sacked after declaring the wearer of the red suit couldn’t have ‘‘boobs’’.
Cue outrage and horror. Neville Baker won overwhelming support for his views – 90 per cent of people
responding to a newspaper poll agreed with him.
Maybe Neville and Orewa were right: Santa couldn’t have ‘‘boobs’’ and he would always be a man.
He is, after all, based on Saint Nicholas, a real, historical figure who was, well, a man.
And the modern version is also married to a woman, named Mrs Claus, which further confirms his traditional status.
The trouble is that Santa, as we know him, is as closely tied to the original St Nick as the Easter Bunny is to Christ’s resurrection.
Santa and his long-suffering wife were marketing creations meant to keep the kids on their toes and the tills turning over.
Mrs Claus was invented to ‘‘greet little girls, learn what they want in their Christmas stockings, teach them how to play with dollies, doll houses, dishes and clothes’’, according to the Charles W. Howard Santa Claus School in New York.
So, the argument for upholding the ‘‘tradition’’ of a male Santa Claus becomes weak.
Rather than say ‘‘why’’ to a woman, maybe we should be saying ‘‘why not?’’
A quick look at history suggests that Santa has often been female, and tradition has been bent or even broken to fit the many challenges of the day.
He was a double act in Wellington in 1905, for what is believed to be the first parade in New Zealand. City store The Economic invited boys and girls to see Mother and Father Christmas.
A manpower shortage during World War II meant that American children often had to make do with a lady in red rather than a bloke with a beard. There were no reports of kids wandering the streets in confusion or consulting counsellors.
In fact, it’s only recently that tinkering with that ‘‘tradition’’ has engendered anger and outrage. In 1995 a female Santa in West Virginia was fired. She sued and lost. Other women were derobed after public backlashes.
There was similar anger in Nelson last year, when the city further tweaked the tradition to bring us a Ma¯ ori Santa.
That suggests we might be
Rather than say ‘‘why’’ to a woman, maybe we should be saying ‘‘why not?’’
missing the point in objections over who dons the thick red suit.
Maybe the real issue is that our own suits have become thin to change, and the greatest gift we could get this Christmas is a little more of the measured perspective of earlier generations.