by Brandon Smith, Alt Market:
It happens every year around December, a predictable flurry of pseudo-psychology articles from low-IQ progressives expounding on the negatives of Christmas. On top of that, there’s been a pipeline of anti-Christmas films coming out of Hollywood the past decade, including some real woke bombs depicting Santa as a corporatist, a racist and a woman hater.
It’s been going on so long that in the early 2000s conservatives dubbed the annual practice the “War on Christmas”. However, at that time people on the political right assumed the vitriol was aimed at Christianity in general. What many didn’t realize is that the hatred wasn’t only about religious differences.
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Around 70% of atheists identify as Democrats according to surveys, with 15% identifying as Republican and another 15% having no party affiliation. It makes sense that the majority of Christmas critics are on the political left and that their distaste of the holiday season is driven by their anti-Christian views.
After all, the political left is so obsessed with destroying Christianity that they continue to repeat the false narrative that Christmas is a “pagan holiday” and that all the traditions are stolen and repurposed. This claim is debunked every year and yet every year they keep trying to bring it back.
The pagan celebration of “Yule” often associated with Christmas by ignorant academics has always been a completely separate tradition with separate practices. As Christianity became the dominant religion in Europe, pagan groups would meld elements of their previous traditions with newly introduced Christian holidays. Every serious study of Yule admits the distinct separation between the pagan celebration and Christmas.
The Christmas tree is also a purely Christian idea, based on the stories surrounding Saint Boniface. Boniface sought to convert the pagan tribes of Germany in 725 AD and chopped down what was known as “Odin’s Sacred Oak”, a tree used by the pagans as a site for human sacrifice. A small fir tree grew in its place and was dubbed the “Tree of Christ”.
By extension Santa Claus is often wrongly associated with pagan characters; he is in fact based on the very real Saint Nicholas, a monk who traveled the known world around 280 AD, giving away his wealth and helping children in need. His good deeds became legendary and by the Renaissance he was the most popular saint in Europe. His feast day was celebrated on the day of his death (December 6th), and it was common practice to buy large gifts or get married around this time every year.
The name “Santa Claus” comes from the Dutch, who first brought the celebration of Nicholas over to the American colonies in the 1700s. They called him “Sinter Klaas”, short for Saint Nicholas. And, if you look at some of the very old fresco paintings of Saint Nicholas you’ll find he looks rather similar to the modern day folk character version of Santa Claus.
When the claims of pagan co-option failed to yield any results, leftists turned to more woke methods to undermine the Christmas holiday. Going beyond religion, progressives have even sought to take down Santa Claus.
You would think a guy that goes around giving away his wealth and helping the poor would immediately appeal to socialist leftists who claim to be the guardians of the underclass, but that’s not really the case. They say the biggest problem is that Santa is “white” and that he represents the western world’s habit of making white people the “default”. I would argue that this is a smokescreen for other problems the leftists don’t want to fully admit to, but let’s start with race…
Black Santa Claus
The leftist trend in recent years has been to hijack Santa Claus and make him non-white (as they have tried to do with almost every other icon of the west). They pushed hard to make “Black Santa” a thing over the past few years and it’s not working out for them.
This is not to say that black people can’t dress up as Santa Claus; they can do as they please. However, the idea of taking a centuries old western figure based on a real person and then co-opting their image and pretending like this doesn’t matter – Isn’t this the evil practice of cultural appropriation that leftists accuse white people of doing all the time?
Let’s be clear, the default of western culture IS white. White people created it and built it and so most of our celebrated figures are going to be white people also. Leftists are never going to successfully sell Black Santa as a cultural norm, just as it would be impossible to steal African folk heroes and turn them white.
