Decolonising Father Christmas - let's do it!

[IdaGlossop]

So much heartache over what I have learnt from reading this blog post 🤣 Seriously? https://brightonmuseums.org.uk/discovery/history-stories/decolonising-father-christmas/ I love Brighton but this post poanders to its superwoke stereotype.

YABU = parents should follow the guidance given in this post and decolonise Father Christmas, introduce Mother Christmas to challenge the patriarchy, do away with the patriarchal, colonised dichotomy of naughty/nice children, point out that we owe thanks to Sami people for reindeer, and have Santa muck in with the elves to show no-one is better than anyone else.

YANBU = Father Christmas provides harmless fun for small children and is part of the magic of Christmas. It's one of our traditions and is fine just as it is.

I saw that reported in the usual culture war news outlets this morning - GB News, Telegraph - and hoped it was a joke. Surely it's tongue in cheek? But Brighton and Hove museums may regret publishing it. It will just be used as more proof that the dreaded forces of wokeness are trying to cancel Christmas.

Do you need to post this divisive bollocks on Christmas?

Is that a satire from 2023? 🙈
I am from country without Santa so... I don't feel judged by him in any way😂

I do. For the purposes of merriment.

I think it's serious, I'm afraid.

I don’t see the big deal. Do it, don’t do it - who cares.

Have always thought the ‘naughty/nice’ was unpleasant with so many children in poverty. Rest has to be a wind-up!

I thought there were some quite nice ideas in the article. I dont think they were suggesting an all out assault on the traditional Father Christmas.

I always hoped to get a lump of coal, when I never got one I felt I needed to up my game the next year...

Jesus wept cant they leave anything alone?
😡😡

I thought you meant we should clean out his colon 🫢

Oh I agree. I previously worked as an early years teacher in a very deprived area where many of our children did not receive Christmas gifts, or if they did they were small tokens. It used to break my heart to think that these small children would ever be made to think this was because they were naughty or not nice.

In our house and I'm sure in many, the assumption is that Father Christmas will come regardless. I'm careful to talk about naughty behaviour rather than the child bring naughty.

I dress up as Santa Clausperson, a non-binary festive figure. I have tried to include everyone in a land acknowledgment before we eat Christmas dinner but that got us barred from Toby Carvery so I’ve given up on that for now.

This is why i think it's bollocks.
Some woke idiot thinking the entire world sees Santa the same way we do.
They don't obviously.
Also i never told my kids they had to be good to get gifts, they had to be good because that's just what you do. I also never told them some random bloke was watching what they did. That's another reason to detest that fucking elf.
Yes we still did Santa stuff.

When DS was younger he was desperate for a lump of coal because he was convinced it would also contain a diamond.

It’s a post by one person, presumably okayed by one or 2 other people. It doesn’t represent a huge population of “the woke” and it’s dumb as fuck to suggest it does. It also has an interesting perspective you’re welcome to consider or not. Merry Christmas.

Hardly surprising 🤣

The closest I have come to the mindset displayed in the blog post is using vegetarian mincemeat for my mincemeat so my Muslim neighbours don't have to eat suet.

It's Brighton and Hove. Of course they're decolonising Santa. No doubt they leave him a little snack of tofu and quinoa by their artisan hand-knitted Peruvian yak wool stockings.

I was born in the 1960s. I recall as a very small child being very excited to be read a story by our class teacher in about 1968 called ‘Mother Christmas’. It was about all the wonderful things she did.

Oh, those woke 1960s …

Did Brighton council? All OP has done is share it, which is surely what the council wants. Nice attempt to reframe the blame - not.

Anyway, there's nothing wrong with the Western cultural tradition of Father Christmas. The more these nihilist twonks are laughed at and shamed the better.

Most people are fine with Santa being as he is. I am from a Muslim family and we love celebrating the cultural aspects of Christmas and have no issue with the current Father Christmas situation.

The problem is, these kind of threads and articles just invite bigots to pipe up and say how outraged they are.

I'm fine with Santa as he is. We never did presents contingent on behaviour. As a small child I found the idea of being watched by a bearded old man very creepy. Christmas is a day of togetherness and putting your best foot forward, I didn't want my kids feeling anxious on the run up.

We never pushed Santa as a concept really or talked about Santa. They were free to believe what they wanted, so they believed for a bit then dropped it easily.

They knew presents were from parents and different families had different budgets. I've seen preachy posts this year to buy your own children less so that other children don't feel less loved by Santa, or that they've done something wrong. I find that really irritating and maybe we could drop the concept of using Santa as behaviour control. That doesn't get away from the fact that some children would still have much less at Christmas and all that brings with it.

I love all the different myths around Santa, different traditions etc. It's nice to learn about those for no reason other than it's interesting.

I'm not even going to Google what the term 'decolonise' means in the context of Santa.

Exactly. Talk about colonising there, eh😂