I recently stumbled across a penetrating article by Latham Hunter, a Canadian professor of cultural studies and communications, entitled: “It’s a holly jolly feminist Christmas – filled with one patriarchal construct after another.”
Christmas has become considerably more problematic as a discourse since the publication of the article in 2014. It has long been noted that the personal is political. For Hunter, the seasonal is also political.
She points out that carols such as O Come, All Ye Faithful are imprinted with patriarchal stereotypes. She notes that all the Christmas movies have male protagonists – from It’s a Wonderful Life to Home Alone to The Polar Express to Elf. Even secular Christmas songs are problematic and reinforce the dominant paradigm. Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Santa himself, “a white male who gets all the credit for labour overwhelmingly done by women”. I was shocked when I read this as I had not realised that Santa’s work was done by women. Then, there is much that is groundbreaking in the article.
For instance – and this had never occurred to me – it is always “Father” Christmas. My 11-year-old daughter has speculated about a “Mrs” Claus, or “Mary” Christmas, which, as Mr Claus is posited as a cisnormative construction, is understandable. But no such counternarrative exists.
“The holiday feminist challenge extends to every Christmas category,” writes Hunter. This is true. The only problem is that she does not go far enough. There are tropes lodged within this celebrational superstructure that escape her gaze.
She fails to make any mention of intersectional concerns. Surely reindeer deserve better than being forced to haul an impossibly heavy sleigh full of “gifts” built by forced labour into the polar wastes, rather than remaining in the forgiving tundra to which they are more adapted? As for the stigmatisation of one of the reindeer, Rudolph, for his facial disfigurement, this is both ableist and speciesist. You might argue that these creatures are purely “imaginary”, but this is to fall prey to literalism. The messages generated are the same whatever the nominal status in terms of reality of the groups represented.
Likewise, there is a marginalisation of the debate about the “elves” – as they are pejoratively characterised. It is as if, politically, they are invisible. But what are they, essentially? A slave army. A signifier for sweatshops and the exploitation of globalisation. What are they paid? What are their conditions? And what do they do the rest of the year? Mr Claus remains tight-lipped. Why? Can it have anything to do with the huge oil deposits discovered under the ice and the need for cheap labour to extract it?
I thank Professor Hunter for perspectivising this latest example of an implicit power structure and a concomitant system of retrogressive ideologies that have been in place for far too long. I, too, am tired of “Santa” and the way this dominant paradigm is reinforced. I am weary of the Christmas “cracker” – obviously phallocentric as surely as the Christmas wreath represents the male projection of the vagina, evergreen and indiscriminately welcoming. I am tired of the injunctions of “goodwill to all men”, disgusted by the uniform whiteness of snow, repelled by the farce of that flagrant invitation to sexual abuse, the mistletoe sprig.
Together, men and women can and must do better. Together, we can end Christmas in its current form once and for all. In the end, we have nothing to lose but our paperchains, our archaic and regressive preconceptions and, of course, our minds. And I feel that on this issue Professor Hunter is, once again, well ahead of the rest of us.
