Merry Christmas! Mainstream Australian media is right now falling over itself to slam reports that some people are calling for Santa Claus to be renamed the more PC-friendly ‘Person Christmas‘.
First it was the Daily Telegraph, who reported that this trend was in response to mainstream acceptance of gender fluidity. That report – which appears to have been deleted – was republished by News.com.au (another News Corp publication), and now it’s made its way to breakfast television. This morning, Nine‘s Today Show helpfully asked, “Do you think Santa should be called ‘Person Christmas’ instead of ‘Father Christmas?’ and immediately answered its own question: Absolutely not.
Except that, actually, no one thinks we should have a bearded tit called ‘Person Christmas’. The original Daily Tele yarn cited none other than Unilad as its source, which invented the term in response to a handful of tweets that joked about a ‘gender fluid’ Santa.
Here’s what Unilad said:
2017 has seen the rise of the term ‘gender fluid’, a concept some portions of society have continue to be challenged by, but one that has seen great strides in its social and cultural understanding – the idea a person doesn’t necessarily identify as having a fixed gender regardless of their biological make-up.
Problems occasionally arise in society when accepted norms are challenged and people feel their way of life is being threatened. Unfortunately, gender-fluidity falls into the ‘threatening’ category for a lot a people – turns out – there are some who see the idea of Father Christmas being renamed to something more gender fluid like ‘Person Christmas’, as a real threat to their way of life.
And here was its evidence: a titchy number of tweets, posted months apart, that barely made a splash in the empty void of Twitter.
Petition for me to be the new gender-fluid Santa Claus. Cute stockings and a deep hearty belly laugh. https://t.co/1lVIIxApkP
— Suneater (@RosewellAce) October 10, 2017
Santa Claus is gender fluid. https://t.co/ObGsVug45L
— DAYUM (@Optimus_blu) March 29, 2017
https://twitter.com/JoaquinHerr/status/805198861618806785
It was Unilad itself that came up with the concept of ‘Person Christmas’, an idea so cooked it could only be matched by the horrifyingly genderless, ethnicity-less ‘human being’ mascot of Community’s Greendale College.
Maybe Unilad was just trolling, or maybe it was manufacturing outrage for clicks, but either way it’s intensely embarrassing that mainstream Australian media is treating this like something worth talking about.
Do you think Santa should be called ‘Person Christmas’ instead of ‘Father Christmas’? #9Today pic.twitter.com/oCKM3Tq890
— The Today Show (@TheTodayShow) December 21, 2017
At at the end of the day, all this bullshit reporting will do is give ammo to the not-small group of Australians whose hobbies include using homophobic slurs and abusing transgender people. ‘Person Christmas’ isn’t an example of the “lefty loonies’ PC agenda” gone mad, it’s fuelling the non-stop fucking whinge of the socially regressive.
Happy non-denominational holidays, everybody!
