As a family we are about as white as you can get. Both my husband and I can trace our ancestors back to the early colonial period. We have just enough Native American thrown in to be truly American. How can a family like ours celebrate a black Santa? Blame that on my daughter.
It started when she was very young and her day care badgered one of the parents into putting on a red suit and jolly attitude and giving out gifts. Joe had two attributes not usually associated with Santa, he was thin as a rail and of African descent. So my daughter knows for sure that Santa is a skinny black man.
We first discovered her belief when, a year or so later, we took her to the mall to visit Santa. She screamed her lungs out and refused to have anything to do with him. This wasn't an unusual reaction. The store was full of screaming kids. We didn't think much of it until, on the way home she told us that he wasn't the real Santa because he was white.
The next year we were downtown looking at the decorations in the store windows. She watched the foot traffic carefully, and noted the Santa bell ringers on every corner. She asked how could there be so many, wasn't there only one? She took my hand and went up to one.
"You're the real Santa."
"What makes you think that?" he asked.
"Because you are the only one who is black."
We as a family still believe that Santa is black. We have a large collection of ceramic Santas, all black. We use black Santa gift wrap.
A couple of years ago, black Santas became more readily available. I picked up a ceramic Santa for my daughter's collection. When I got to check out, the clerk leaned across the counter and whispered, "You know this Santa is black, don't you?"
"Yes," I answered, rather loudly, "Our family believes Santa is black."
You don't suppose Santa could be a black WOMAN, do you?