The Brighton and Hove Museum group claims that Father Christmas reinforces colonial and patriarchal ideas<\/p>\n
A British museum has called for Father Christmas to be \u201cdecolonized,\u201d arguing that the traditional Santa Claus promotes colonial and patriarchal ideas and should instead \u201clearn about different cultures.\u201d
\nOn Sunday, British media outlets drew attention to a blog post by the publicly funded Brighton and Hove Museums group, which claims that the story of a \u201cwhite, Western Santa who judges all children\u2019s behavior\u201d reinforces colonial assumptions of cultural superiority, particularly through the \u201cnaughty or nice\u201d list.
\nThe post, titled \u2018Decolonizing Father Christmas\u2019 and written by the museum\u2019s Joint Head of Culture Change, Simone LaCorbiniere, questions Santa\u2019s role as a moral authority, claiming he cannot fairly assess \u201cIndigenous children practicing their own cultural traditions.\u201d
\nThe museum suggested that the story of Father Christmas threatens to erase indigenous cultural practices and histories and criticized the traditional portrayal of Santa supervising elves, insisting that it reinforces ideas of hierarchy, authority, and marginalization.
\nThe blog urges parents to \u201cchallenge the colonial gaze\u201d by rejecting the naughty and nice list, describing it as a \u201cWestern binary,\u201d and instead proposes reframing Santa as a \u201cmore diverse character who celebrates cultural exchange.\u201d
\nIt also proposes portraying Santa as working alongside elves as an equal, including people from around the world in his workshop, and introducing \u201cMother Christmas\u201d to show that \u201cmen don\u2019t have to be in charge.\u201d
\nThe blog post, originally published in 2023 but still available on the museum\u2019s website, has sparked a fresh wave of backlash, with politicians and commentators ridiculing the proposal to decolonize Santa.<\/p>\n
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Toby Young, founder of the Free Speech Union, described the museum as \u201cpo-faced\u201d while Reform UK MP Sarah Pochin said the ideas reflected a broader pattern of \u201cwoke\u201d activism.
\nAlka Sehgal Cuthbert, director of Don\u2019t Divide Us, told The Telegraph on Sunday that those behind such \u201claughable\u201d proposals are trying to \u201crupture our sense of belonging to a common past and culture\u201d and should not be getting public funding or official endorsements from \u201cwitless museums.\u201d
\nA spokesman for the museum said people were \u201cfree to agree or disagree\u201d with the blog post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Brighton and Hove Museum group claims that Father Christmas reinforces colonial and patriarchal ideas A British museum has called for Father Christmas to be \u201cdecolonized,\u201d arguing that the traditional…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t