this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2023
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Megyn Kelly went viral when she declared Santa Claus “just is white,” but a decade later the idea of what St. Nick can look like has only expanded.

Aisha Harris had no idea of the uproar she would create when she recommended the Christmas Penguin.

Ten years ago, the writer and journalist published a lighthearted viral essay titled “Santa Claus Should Not Be a White Man Anymore,” in which she questioned the ubiquity of white Santa imagery.

“America is less and less white, but a melanin-deficient Santa remains the default in commercials, mall casting calls, and movies,” Harris wrote. “Isn’t it time that our image of Santa better serve all the children he delights each Christmas?” In fact, she suggests, a Christmas Penguin can represent the holiday instead of a person.

The backlash was swift, especially after anchor Megyn Kelly responded to the piece on her Fox News show “The Kelly File.” “This is so ridiculous, yet another person claiming it’s racist to have a white Santa,” Kelly said. “And by the way, for all you kids watching at home, Santa just is white.”

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[–] FlyingSquid 75 points 1 year ago (5 children)

The part they left out with the Megyn Kelly rant was that she said that Jesus was white too. You know, Jesus, the middle-eastern Jew.

[–] Death_Equity 15 points 1 year ago

Racist fanfic cannon is pretty wild.

[–] kromem 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You know, Jesus, the middle-eastern Jew.

I know it's really popular these days to pretend Jesus for sure looked like a modern middle Eastern person, but it would be more accurate to say that we didn't know what he looked like given the variety in how people in 1st century Judea might have looked.

For example, one of the dead sea scrolls claimed Noah was a redhead.

2 Kings 5:27 talked about how there was a subpopulation who had ancestrally transmitted skin as white as snow:

Therefore the leprosy of Naaman shall cling to you and to your descendants forever." So he went out from his presence a leper, like snow.

In fact, the biblical leprosy may have actually been skin cancer - the extensive focus on skin checks would have made more sense for a paler skinned population such as redheads who have 10-100x the melanoma risk of people without those genes.

It's worth pointing out this all has little to do with the concept of race, given that in antiquity a number of prominent redheads appeared to be prehistory populations from North Africa - so you could have had African ancestry but redhead appearance for people in the Southern Levant.

There's even the only extant sample of 1st century CE Jewish hair so far:

One of the more fascinating finds in this tomb, one that has not received much attention, was the preservation of a sample of Jewish male hair. The hair was lice-free, and was trimmed or cut evenly, probably indicating that the family buried in this tomb practiced good hygiene and grooming. The length of the hair was medium to short, averaging 3-4 inches. The color was reddish.

You had the Nazirite population, some of whom were designated as such from birth, where the vows were taken by the sacrifice of a cow with entirely red hair and one of the prohibitions was not being allowed to cut one's hair.

A population described as having unusually light skin in Lamentations 4:7. And with the tradition of John being a Nazirite from birth and the later tradition of James the brother of Jesus also being a lifelong Nazirite, it's an increasingly muddied picture given our relative ignorance about the unwritten characteristics or traditions of that area and time.

TL;DR: So it's one of these popular but inaccurate pictures of antiquity. There were likely a variety of different appearances in that area in antiquity, and the only real conclusion about Jesus being "a middle Eastern Jew in the 1st century" is that it's an insufficient amount of information to extrapolate any kind of accurate visual depiction without additional information.

[–] FlyingSquid 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Your argument is fair and nuanced. Her claim, however, was not:

"Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn't mean it has to change," Kelly said. "Jesus was a white man, too. It's like we have, he's a historical figure that's a verifiable fact, as is Santa, I just want kids to know that. How do you revise it in the middle of the legacy in the story and change Santa from white to black?"

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/12/insisting-jesus-was-white-is-bad-history-and-bad-theology/282310/

[–] kromem 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Agreed, Kelly is a nutjob. It's just a pet peeve when I see the common reactionary response that often misrepresents our understanding of history and propagates misinformation, so I try to provide a bit more accurate context when I see it.

[–] FlyingSquid 6 points 1 year ago

Understood. As I said, you have a fair and nuanced argument. And the context is appreciated, so thank you.

[–] crystalmerchant 10 points 1 year ago

Ah you must mean Jesus, the anti-establishment hippie anarchist preacher leading a grassroots community resisting Roman occupying forces, who was also anti woke and pro corporate interest and pro tax cuts for the rich and openly advocated for income inequality

[–] billwashere 3 points 11 months ago

Well Jesus is also in the land of mythical beings so why not… 🤣

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That kind of nonsense is to be expected from the far right. But TBF you'll also sometimes see people on the left describe Israel as a white colonial state and Israelis as white, especially now during the whole Gaza thing, despite a clear majority of Israelis having (relatively recent) middle-eastern roots. Eg. Ben-Gvir, the controversial Israeli Minister of National Security and far right nationalist, has Iraqi and Kurdish ancestry.

[–] PopOfAfrica 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Modern day Israelis are not historical Israelites. They looked more like Palestinians do today.

Bibi Netanyahu is paler than my white ass.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
  1. Netenyahu is Ashkenazi. Ignoring the fact that Ashkenazi Jews invariably and historically weren't seen as white, they're a minority in Israel and have been for a while now.

  2. Most Israelis have middle-eastern or north african ancestry. Wikipedia:

Mizrahi Jews ... alternatively referred to as Oriental Jews ... are a grouping of Jewish communities comprising those who remained in the Land of Israel and those who existed in diaspora throughout and around the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) from biblical times into the modern era. ... As of 2005, 61% of Israeli Jews were of full or partial Mizrahi/Sephardi ancestry

  1. There's plenty of evidence to suggest Jews and Palestinians are genetically closely related. Pubmed:

... a study comparing 20 microsatellite markers in Israeli Jewish, Palestinian, and Druze populations demonstrated the proximity of these two non-Jewish populations to Ashkenazi and Iraqi Jews

  1. Back when Israel was founded, a majority of Israelis were Ashkenazi. That hasn't been true for a long time. Many (if not most) modern day Israelis look very similar to modern day Palestinians. It's one of the reasons the Israeli security services traditionally found it easy to infiltrate Palestinian organisations:

“In the Zionist movement in those years — we’re talking about pre-1948 — almost everyone is European or Eastern European. Nine out of every 10 Jews were of European descent." ... "The people who set up the Arab Section ... understand that ethnic impersonation is impossible. ... But the Jews in Palestine offered this incredible opportunity. Jews had people who could pass for anything you want: Polish, German, Arab" ... “We still come to Israel with these very European stories to understand its formation, ... but they don’t explain Israel in 2019. You won’t get very far with these old stories because half of Jews come from the Islamic world.”