The Truth About Santa Claus – How Old Were You When You Found Out?

Funny how there’s some much debate over a fictional character.

Megyn Kelly of Fox News sarcastically mentioned to her audience last week that Santa Claus is white - in answer to a blogger’s note that the cherubic white Santa Claus we’ve all grown up with should morph into something more sepia-toned as our society becomes more diverse

Like it matters.

But apparently it does. This after one New Mexico teacher is being disciplined for telling a black student who came to school dressed as Santa Claus that the jolly fat guy is white!

According to this:

A teacher in New Mexico has been disciplined for telling a black student dressed as Santa Claus that Father Christmas is Caucasian.

“Don’t you know Santa Claus is white?” the teacher reportedly asked. “Why are you wearing that?”

Students at Cleveland High School in Rio Rancho, N.M., were allowed to dress as Santa, elves or reindeer. When ninth-grader Christopher Rougier arrived wearing a white beard and red Santa cap, the teacher ridiculed him, the boy’s father, Michael Rougier, told KOB-TV.

“There’s no room for that in the classroom,” Rougier told the station.

The teacher’s clueless comments echoed Kelly’s on-air assertions that Santa is white, and so is Jesus.

“For you kids watching at home, Santa just is white” Kelly said on Wednesday night.

She then claimed people were trying to switch the facts to make themselves feel better.
“Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn’t mean it has to change,” Kelly said. “You know, I mean, Jesus was a white man, too.”

She later defended the remarks as “tongue-in-cheek” and claimed critics were trying to “race bait.”

School officials in Rio Rancho said the teacher admits making a “dumb” mistake and apologized to Rougier’s family.

And according to this,
the school has decided on the course of action to take with the teacher.

A New Mexico high school teacher who questioned an African American student's decision to dress up as Santa Claus on the grounds that the mythical North Pole figure was white has been put on paid administrative leave, according to Reuters.

Regardless, the debate is ridiculous since it’s raging over the ethnic background of a fictional character.

More to the point, you had to, at some point in your childhood, come to the realization that the guy whose lap you’d sit on at Macy’s wasn’t real. The guy was, but the character he played was (and is) a fiction.

How old were you when you came to find that out?

And if you were like me and grew up celebrating the arrival of Santa Claus every Christmas Eve – no doubt someone in the family would don the Santa outfit.

Who was that mystery person?

For the record, I’ve done it a couple of times – although I still get dimed out by the kids who know that I was never able to get the “ho ho ho” part of it down.