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Santa Is White ...

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sunny-dave | 01:41 Sat 14th Dec 2013 | News
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... and so is Jesus ("that's a verifiable fact" about 1 min 50 seconds in)

http://www.theguardian.com/media/video/2013/dec/13/santa-white-jesus-white-fox-news-megyn-kelly-video

Hmmmm ...

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I actually find the original article that prompted Megyn Kelly's outburst a lot more interesting than Fox's usual idiocy:

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/holidays/2013/12/santa_claus_an_old_white_man_not_anymore_meet_santa_the_penguin_a_new_christmas.html

Does anyone else feel that both sides in this argument are equally idiotic?

Of course it's silly to say that Jesus/Santa must always be white. But isn't it equally idiotic and typical of the kind of pathetic and superficial arguments that's coming to typify mainstream Left politics to say that white Santa 'excludes' or marginalizes ethnic minority/female children?

It just makes me think of that horrid "check your privilege" thing that's been circulating the internet recently. Just a toxic brand of nothingness-politics.
LazyGun

/// So what do you think, AoG? Do you think the portrayal of Jesus as a white caucasian male is historically accurate and can be justified? ///

It can be justified because It is historically accurate in this country even if it is not ethnically correct.

/// Just because something "has always been that way" does not necessarily mean it should "always stay that way". ///

Are you suggesting that the image of Christ as we know it should now be altered, should we remove the 'White Christ' image from our church and cathedral stained glass windows along with those contained in our ancient books and manuscripts, all in the name of ethical correctness?
Surely, AOG, nobody on here suggested that images of a white Caucasian male, representing Christ, should be removed from British churches, but thank you for raising a suggestion which has not been made, even made by innuendo.

It is a convenient fiction to have Christ so represented here. People like to identify with someone who looks like them and the old artists had only white people as models, with no reason to investigate what Christ would have really looked like. In Greek Orthodox churches , Christ is shown as of much more Mediterranean colour and appearance, for the same reasons.

We can leave the truth about Christ's appearance to people who study ethnology.
"Are you suggesting that the image of Christ as we know it should now be altered, should we remove the 'White Christ' image from our church and cathedral stained glass windows along with those contained in our ancient books and manuscripts, all in the name of ethical correctness?"

No, he isn't. He could be suggesting we could start making some different ones, though.
@AoG "It can be justified because It is historically accurate in this country even if it is not ethnically correct."

Well I do not think that is quite right,is it? His depiction as being a white caucasian in western religious art simply cannot be either an historically accurate or correct portrayal if the simply ignore the ethnic roots, can it?

What is true is that, in Northern Europe and the US, western art and western preachers have always portrayed Jesus as being white, presumably to better persuade the broadly white constituency back home that his preachings had some value, one imagines.

So yes, it carries the weight of historical depiction in our culture, but in our sophisticated culture of today for a broadcaster to go on air, as Megyn Kelly did and broadcast -as fact - that "Jesus was white" is simply risible.

It is also a fact that often Jesus is portrayed as black by predominantly black cultures.

The actual truth, always supposing that Jesus existed at all, is that they would have most likely been of mediterranean descent.

And I have no idea where the rest of your post comes from. Lets just suppose for a moment that somehow we were able to provide cast iron uncontestable evidence as to Jesus' ethnicity. Why do you imagine that such a find would necessarily lead to replacing all the stained glass window depictions of Jesus, or historical books? It need do no such thing. So no, I am not suggesting "in the name of political correctness" that anything need be changed.

What I would like is for vapid broadcasters to steer well clear of dogmatic assertions that are just stupid, and sounded more than a little defensive.
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All I was doing was 'shooting fish in a barrel' (aka taking the wotsit out of Fox airheads) ... but I'm enjoying the debate.

Thanks everyone :+)
Jesus was from Palestine. Saint Nicholas from near Syria.
The indigenous peoples of both those places are not white in the the European sense.

White Europeans have changed both characters features to portray them as looking like themselves. You don't really want the son of god to look like someone out of al qaeda, or the fat bloke coming down your chimney to look like Amhet from the Kebab shop.

For some Fox TV bimbo to then slap down an African Ametican writer for pointing out the unlikihood that both characters were 'white' is quite bizarre.

If anyone is trying to change history and change the colour of these two characters, it is western Europeans and the yanks.
the Coca-Cola Santa has a shorter red jacket than the older figure aog has linked to, with the long coat. He came from what is now Turkey, where people aren't that much darker than what Europeans call like to call "white"; so the Fox claim that he was white probably isn't too far off beam.
Although, jno. Jon Stewart [see link above] referred to a reconstruction, based on the skull of the saint, which showed what his face looked like. This work was commissioned by the Vatican.The forensic modeller had made the face dark , far darker than a white American's [q.v]. Stewart contrasted that with the modern image of Santa Claus, a white man of 'Caucasian ' type.
Tsk, you only have to look at me !
how do you reconstruct skin colour from a bone?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_appearance_of_Jesus

Scroll down to the bit about forensics. The descriptions presented on Christian sites turn out to be forgeries [see rest of article ]
As to colour from a bone of a saint, unless they can get DNA from it showing racial origin, or have direct evidence of what Greek people in Turkey looked like, or , rather, didn't then, I don't know.
Don't mean direct evidence. That's from witnesses who saw the individual or the event themselves. I mean evidence.
heaven knows what I'll look like if they reconstruct me with the help of a skull from the other side of town and a picture of a crowd scene from the year 2300. There's a bit of wishful thinking in some of this science.
Interesting. It's never crossed my mind that Jesus might have been white. I suppose, if he's the son of God, his DNA would be 50% mythical spirit. So hard to tell.
Speaking of Santa, Saint Nicholas, I was always told this and will share with ye

http://www.stnicholascenter.org/pages/ireland/
A Muslim would say Jesus was white!
it looks as thought the Fox people are not alone in their dogma

http://www.theguardian.com/world/feedarticle/11110000

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