Dear Black Santa,
As a small black girl from the South, all I ever saw was white, rosy cheeked Santa Clauses plastered on Christmas posters and gluttonously eating all the milk and biscuits on those propagandized vacation advertisements. I never saw him for more than that which he was – fiction.
He was another white fictional character sent to save the day, bring holiday cheer, and give to the poor small kids. Someone reminiscent of white Jesus, or Batman. !
I didn’t grow up in a family that motivated the entire Santa story, and I wasn’t tormented with the “naughty or fine list.” Maybe my parents disliked the thought of a white man being seen as a superior being or something. My gifts consistently said from Mother, Dad, Auntie, Granny etc. As far as I understood, my gifts weren’t the consequence of some jolly, corpulent, white man shimmying down a chimney but, I digress.
You see, I’ve chose to believe in you Black Santa, not because you also are used as a promotional tool in among the largest capitalist vacations, but because of what you symbolize.
