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.”
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.
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:
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:
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.
Your argument is fair and nuanced. Her claim, however, was not:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/12/insisting-jesus-was-white-is-bad-history-and-bad-theology/282310/
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.
Understood. As I said, you have a fair and nuanced argument. And the context is appreciated, so thank you.
Racist fanfic cannon is pretty wild.
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
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.
Modern day Israelis are not historical Israelites. They looked more like Palestinians do today.
Bibi Netanyahu is paler than my white ass.
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.
Most Israelis have middle-eastern or north african ancestry. Wikipedia:
Well Jesus is also in the land of mythical beings so why not… 🤣