Santa has always been a dad-type of sorts.
Father Christmas, if you will.
But after two women volunteered to play Santa as a part of a festive tour in Netwon Aycliffe, County Durham — folks were not too pleased to say the least.
Arun Chandran, Labour Councillor, did not like the fact that Santa was being played by a woman, and stated:
“There is no shortage of male volunteers to act as Santa Claus, so we should not permit a female volunteer to perform the role.
“My understanding is that Santa Claus, otherwise called Father Christmas, is a male role.”
Piers Morgan also commented, and did so fervently on Good Morning Britain, stating: “Father Christmas, as his name suggests, is male. Father Christmas, for all of time, has been Father Christmas.”
“He’s called Father Christmas!” he shouted. “The world’s gone nuts.”
And now, people don’t believe that Santa shouldn’t be a male — but rather he be a female or have no gender at all
GraphicSprings, a logo creation company, polled 400 people from both the US and the UK on how Santa potentially could be modernized before using the top suggestions to poll an additional 4,000 people.
6 ABC shared that 27 percent of those asked believed that Santa should be rebranded as female or gender neutral. So maybe to understand Santa’s future, we should take a look at his past..
Santa, or the person he was based on, St. Nicholas, was a Bishop who lived in Myra in Asia Minor (which is now known as Turkey) back in the fourth century.
St. Nicholas was very well off because when he was young, his parents passed away and left him a huge amount of money.
He was also known to be a very giving and considerate man and was known to give secret gifts to those who needed it. And while there are many legends about the kind saint, like most legends go, we are not sure which ones are true. But one of the most famous stories about St. Nicholas was one that started the tradition in the U.S. which was hanging stocking for St. Nick to pack presents into.
After the reformation in the 16th Century in northern Europe — stories and traditions about St. Nicholas started to become unpopular. But in the UK, someone needed to fulfill the role of delivering presents to children so in England — he became known as ‘Father Christmas’ or ‘Old Man Christmas.’
This was derived from an old character in the UK as well as parts of northern Europe from stories and plays during the middle ages. While in France, he was known as ‘Père Nöel’.
While in some parts of Austria and Germany, the present deliverer became the ‘Christkind’ — which was a golden-haired baby with wings who symbolized the new born baby Jesus.
From the name ‘Christkind,’ his name was ‘Kris Kringle’ in the early USA.
Then, when Dutch settlers in the USA stole stories from St. Nicholas — they combined the two and he became known as ‘Sinterklaas’ — or as we know him today as ‘Santa Claus.’
…So being as Santa was already a concoction of other people and how people also get their gifts delivered by a baby, maybe a female Santa isn’t that hard to believe in after all.
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