A Santa like you

Ruddy cheeks are optional as St. Nicks diversify

This year, Santa Claus has shed his snowflake-white persona for a hodgepodge of holiday color.

Check out the jolly old elf on sale at Walgreen's, a black jazzman figure complete with saxophone and shades.

Then there's the Mexican Santa doll selling online, a 5-inch doll smiling under a sombrero. Even white Santas come in varieties: the Scottish Santa blowing on bagpipes, and the Polish Santa wearing a tall green-feathered hat.

As the country's racial identity grows, Santa, too, evolves beyond his traditional white skin, white beard and candy-colored cheeks.

"The idea that Santa has to look one way is being challenged," said Charles Gallagher, a sociologist at LaSalle University in Philadelphia. "I think this kind of Nordic Santa is a fiction. And if it's a fiction, it can be replaced with your cultural identity."

Mary Overby, whose East Raleigh home has a 4-foot dark-skinned Santa doll on the front porch, said it's important for black children to know that toys don't come from a white-bearded man at the mall. Parents pay the bills and make the sacrifices, she said, and if Christmas gifts are going to come from a magical being such as Santa, children ought to see a magical being who looks like they do.

June Ross agreed. Her Southeast Raleigh roof features a brown-skinned Claus, puffing a pipe with an overloaded sleigh.

"Growing up as a black kid, I always thought Santa was a black man," she said.

Overby's black Santa, a model with wire-frame spectacles, came from New York. In the past, she said, it wasn't that easy to buy a black Santa in North Carolina.

But around the Triangle this year, nonwhite Santas sit on shelves alongside tan-colored wise men and giant Feliz Navidad displays.

On Sunday, the Hispanic holiday celebration at the State Fairgrounds will feature a Santa Claus born in Argentina.

"If you can give it a personal touch, it does make it better," said Santa's portrayer, Diego Aisenberg, who normally works in sales.

And if you can't find the exact ethnic Santa you're seeking in a Triangle store, just look online, where Santa Claus comes with a paint-by-numbers skin tone. Russian Santa. Swedish Santa.

One California company that sells Santa in eight nationalities has sold out of the Mexican variety.

"Nowadays, probably in the last five years, it seems to be more ethnocentric," said Kerri Cursi, operations manager at Seasonal Reflections in California. "This year, I had a Girl Scout leader buy one of each for the girls in her troop. Even our angels are African-American."

Where's Santa from?

On Craigslist, a Garner man conducted an online poll, trying to decide the ancestry of the light-brown inflatable Santa he bought on sale at Lowe's. By Friday's final tally, 40 people had voted, and black led the ballot with 30 percent of the vote. Hispanic was a close second; Alaskan native a distant sixth.

Gallagher, the sociologist, suspects that the evolution of holiday images accelerated this year, after Barack Obama was elected as the country's first black president.

Overby, who runs a day-care business out of her home, initially worried whether white parents would be bothered by the idea of an black Santa. She saw one parent flinch, but his toddler was fascinated by the sight.

"I told myself 'I'm going to do this. I'm not going to deny my race,' " Overby said. "And I didn't lose anybody."

Somewhere overhead, Santa let out a jolly laugh, tooted his saxophone, and flew out of sight.