Father Christmas is the man synonymous with the globally celebrated festive holiday. The man at the forefront of our childhood memories, causing children up and down the country sleepless nights around the festive period. The man who could possibly be no more…
It seems quite a lot of us feel we should start referring to our beloved Father Christmas by a whole new name – or rather, gender.
According to a recent survey, made up of both UK and American participants, it seems over 27 per cent of people believe Santa Claus should be rebranded as a woman or gender-neutral.
According to CBS Pittsburgh, Graphic Springs – a free logo design company – surveyed hundreds of people to find out how they’d rebrand Santa, and what they’d do to give the beloved character a more modern image.
The survey polled approximately 400 people from the United States and United Kingdom, with 4,000 people then voting on the most popular version of the Santa designed via the survey.
Apparently, the new, ‘modern’ Santa has tattoos, a stylishly-trimmed beard (beard oil from Rudolph maybe for a present?), skinny jeans, trainers, and a hoverboard. This new and improved Santa – supposedly – is also said to be tech-savvy and looks like he could easily feature in GQ magazine.
As well as the redesign, the poll also asked the participants:
If you could ‘rebrand’ Santa for modern society, what gender would he be?
Just over 10 per cent of those surveyed said Santa should be female, while nearly 18 per cent said the character should be gender neutral.
With a majority vote, 72 per cent of those asked believe Santa should continue to be classified as a male.
Claudia Carvell, from the LGBT Foundation, told UNILAD last year, regardless of Santa, we need more gender fluid representation in society:
Gender fluidity is an important issue for everyone, regardless of their gender identity.
We have a restrictive idea of what a man or woman is and it assumes women have to be feminine and men masculine – and there’s no room for people who feel they’re both or neither.
Everyone experiences these gender pressures, whether they’re LGBT or not, so gender fluidity is something we all need to be discussing as part of our everyday lives – whether it’s rejecting a damaging stereotype, using ‘they’ pronouns as well as ‘he’ and ‘she’, or simply not assuming someone’s gender identity based on their appearance.
The conversation just starts with gender-neutral clothing lines or gender-fluid imagery – we need to be hearing more of the voices and experiences of gender-fluid and non-binary people and genuinely start moving away from binary gender representations and fixed gender roles.
What do you think about this possible move for future Christmases? Is Santa in major need of a fresh identity?
Regardless of the Santa issue, we need to see a lot more ‘they’ as opposed to ‘him’ and ‘her’ within society.
Perhaps, rather than scrapping certain characters, we should introduce new ones that can exist alongside, to better reflect the concept of a spectrum.
If you have a story you want to tell send it to UNILAD via stories@unilad.co.uk
