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Can Christmas be about gender? Apparently, if the female Saint shortage is something to go through. In fact, there have been instances of Australian women donning the secular red and white Santa Claus garb since 1930, and there is no reason we couldn’t have more Santa Claus today.
In 1935, the Queensland Daily Mercury reported on aviator Nancy Bird Walton, “The Angel of the Interior”, piloting a Santa Claus in the northwestern corner of New South Wales.
Bird was a volunteer with the Far West Children’s Health Scheme, transporting nurses to remote parts of Australia and transporting patients. “A girl was the first Santa Claus for the isolated area,” the article noted.
Before Bird, in 1930, the Daily Pictorial had published a photo titled: “Sydney’s Woman Santa”. The caption described: “Mrs. Thelma Lewis, of Randwick, is believed to be the only woman in Australia, Santa Claus”, fulfilling a role she adored.
These cases from the 1930s in Australia provide a glimpse of women violating the rules of socially accepted female behavior. (Bird was temporarily suspended from flying in 1935 when a state politician declared that women were “not biologically suitable” for the activity).
A ‘thinner and smaller’ war Santa
During the second world war, as in the first, women assumed male roles out of necessity. This included putting on a Santa outfit. In 1942, the Perth Daily News reported: “Woman Santa Claus this year.” The article read: “There will be a subtle change in the persona of Santa Claus this year. It will probably be thinner and smaller, and it probably won’t speak, because its voice won’t be as deep as it should be. Mother will have the difficult job of understudying Santa Claus this year as most of the parents in the camp and on the boats will not be licensed. “
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Women also intervened during the war in the United States, although the response was not so pretty. A 1941 article in the St. Louis Star-Times, insisted, “However, there is a male domain that must be defended at all costs … A female Santa Claus? Heaven forbidden! That would be taking the credulity of innocent little children too far. “
Despite complaints, American women continued to play Santa during the war years, often with little protest.
‘Mother Christmas’
In Australia, the practice also continued after the war. On December 10, 1949, the Brisbane Courier-Mail reported a “Mother Christmas” visiting children in a nursery.
The story was titled, “Santa was a lady.” The caption to the photograph read: “Woman invaded the kingdom of man yesterday when a Mother Christmas (Mrs. EJ Lewis) operated at the Kurilpa Child Care Center. She received the same welcome that Santa Claus receives. “
In 1950, meanwhile, a “Glamorous Girl ‘Santa'” rode her bike to the Christmas party at Freidelle’s, a Wollongong-based children’s clothing manufacturer. The reporter described their arrival thus: “Riding her bicycle furiously and with little regard for traffic regulations, ‘Santa Girl’ arrived on the scene of Freidelle’s Breaking-up Christmas party on Thursday and defiantly announced ‘Well, I’m here!’
Freidelle employed women and was one of the main industries in the region to provide work for migrants. In such a context, his female Saint seems to have made sense.
Resistance
In the last decades of the 20th century, there was more resistance to Saint women. In Australia, Santa was a guy again. In the United States, the few Saint women who worked in department stores were fired or encouraged to seek alternative employment.
In 1999, a Santa woman sued Walmart in Louisville for wrongful termination after a customer complained it was men’s work. She lost.
But the tide may be turning as we enter the new millennium. In 2018, in Gisborne, New Zealand, Santa was a “female, regional, Maori, queer.” Also in 2018, at Park City Mall in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, “Tranta Claus” (a transgender Santa) came to town.
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The future of our beloved Santa Claus, the guy in the red suit that originated in the story of Saint Nicholas in 5th century Turkey, may be increasingly questioned. And since older, overweight men are said to be at higher risk for coronavirus, now is the time to rethink the notion of who can play Santa.
Gender swaps at Christmas are nothing new. In Italy, the Christmas tradition of a magical being who brings gifts has been part of the culture for hundreds of years in the form of a folk witch named La Befana.
First recorded in a poem in 1549, the Befana is old, riding a broom, carrying a sack full of sweets (and charcoal), and wearing a black shawl and a headscarf or top hat. Like Santa, enter houses through chimneys, filling children’s socks or stockings with gifts
Male cross-dressing is part of an ancient pantomime tradition throughout Europe, prevalent around Christmas. So in Italy, the Befana is often performed by men dressed in feminine outfits.
Image Credit: The Telegraph
Marguerite Johnson, Professor of Classics at Newcastle University, first published this article in The Conversation. Opinions expressed are those of the author.
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