Is Santa black? Or does it matter?
If kids ask the race question about Santa, what's your response?
For the life of me, I don’t know how my parents got away with the story of Santa Claus for so long. In college, there was a guy who called me “Why?” instead of my real name. Why? Because he just could not understand how one person could ask so many questions and have so much skepticism in every conversation. It worked out well for me professionally, but it was certainly a personality trait that friends and family had to get used to over the years. So if I’m doing internal fact-checking every single time someone talks to me as an adult, imagine what I was like as a child.
I knew who Santa Claus was — the reindeer, the North Pole, the chimney, the gifts, the outfit, the “fluffy” body, the beard, the freshly baked cookies and all. But there were some negotiations that my parents had to make. For one, since I was old enough to walk, presents were opened at midnight on the dot. At 39, I’m still not letting that one go. When the clock hits 11:59 p.m., I’m walking to somebody’s Christmas tree and I don’t care what you were doing before then. Stop long enough to hand me a gift. As a kid though, I could open a “few gifts from my parents” and then I was told that I had to go to sleep so Santa Claus could “deliver” the rest. I obliged, feeling like this was a bonus. And my gawd, the gifts from Santa Claus were five times better than what my parents gave me.
Recommended Read: “Black Santa has his ear to the street ~ What does Santa do the rest of the year?”
My parents never seemed to mind my much bigger reaction to Santa’s gifts versus theirs, nor were they phased by my line of questions each year. They had planned out their answers beforehand. And one question that started to build up as I got older was why didn’t Santa look the same on Christmas cards taped all over our living room or each time we went to their holiday parties.
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When I’d go to my father’s holiday work parties, Santa Claus was almost always bespectacled, rosy-cheeked and white. I greeted him warmly and got ready to share my thoughts. I had my Christmas list on my mind first, then any kind of chocolate my parents allowed me to eat, and then I moved on to playing with Angie and Sarah (the daughters of one of my father’s co-workers) — in that order.
But I noticed that when I went to Evergreen Plaza (South Side Chicago residents know this mall well), Christmas was totally different than my father’s mainly white bank parties. R&B and family-friendly rap music blasted through the speakers. Black parents were zooming from one store to the next, with the kids running alongside them and black retailers smiling at me as I entered each store entrance. And Santa Claus sat in the middle of the main floor, smiling and “ho-ho-ho”ing away. He was a brown-skinned African-American man with (optional) glasses on.
The explanation I got from my parents about his appearance was that since Santa Claus was busy preparing for the big day, he would send assistants around to take notes. I wondered why these assistants never had paper with them because, as an aspiring writer, I was never without pen and paper. My parents told me these assistants had excellent memories, but I should give them my lists just in case. Then I asked about the purpose of the elves. If they were helping out, why couldn’t they just take my letter to him? My parents asked me if I liked chatting with the Santa Claus “assistants” more or the elves. Touche. So off I went to pose for photos and talk to Santa’s representatives.