One of the problems with writing critically about stories like this one, where a beloved cultural figure has been re-imagined as having secretly been gay the whole time, is that you’re walking into a rhetorical trap laid by progressive campaigners. The trap is best explained if you imagine the following words, spoken in the most unctuous “Fintan from Clongowes” voice: So what? Do you have a problem with Santa Claus being gay?
The answer to that, of course, is no. Indeed, if an official communication were to issue from Santa’s private office in the North Pole that the great man had finally mustered the courage, in 2021, to come out of the closet, yours truly would be amongst the first to say “well done, Santa, go and live your best life”.
But this, my friends, is not that.
What it is, rather, is the latest example of one of the most annoying modern cultural phenomena: Progressive activists in media and advertising deciding to project their sexual values and preferences onto widely shared cultural touchstones. Santa Claus has never announced that he is gay, nor, I am told, is he likely to. What we have here is a work of fiction, projecting somebody else’s values onto him:
Of course, there are powerful incentives to make Santa Gay: This advert, which was produced by the Norwegian version of An Post, has already been viewed millions of times, and won, as is for all intents and purposes mandatory, fawning press coverage worldwide. That’s a mark of where our culture is, and what people feel it necessary to say, to prove their own normality and decency. A columnist who criticised the Gay Santa ad would not find themselves with many friends amongst the younger recruits to the newsrooms at most major global newspapers.
Modern, progressive people could never dare to openly criticise an advert about Santa being gay, because they run the risk of our friend from Clongowes, in the opening paragraph, wondering openly about where their loyalties lie, and whether they might secretly harbour some kind of homophobic bigotry. There is, therefore, immense social pressure to declare such adverts an unalloyed triumph, and worthy of winning awards.
In turn, that means that there is a huge incentive for advertising executives to produce such ads: Want to have a stunning, successful, globally praised ad on your CV? What better way to improve your chances than to take something, or somebody, famous, and make them retroactively gay?
The other argument, regularly made, even if you get people to concede that this is all entirely unnecessary goes something like this: “so what? why does it bother you? Do we not have bigger things to be worrying about than some television advert?”
After all, what is the active harm being done by an ad that presents ol’ St. Nick as being as gay as the season he represents?
The answer to that is that increasingly, western society lacks cultural spaces and cultural touchstones that are free from the relentless grasping hunger for politicisation and the culture wars. Sports require players to take a knee before kickoffs to prove their ideological purity. Companies and schools effectively require people to take part in pride weeks, and wear rainbow stickers. You can’t even buy a Sally Rooney book these days (if that’s your thing) without it amounting, thanks to the author, to an effective statement about middle eastern politics.
None of this is healthy. Because although the media might praise the Gay Santa ad to death, and although reviewers might, predictably, swoon, a growing number of people across the western world are sick to the back teeth of this nonsense. There is no great political need to advance the cause of gay rights by appropriating Santa: Gay rights have never been more advanced than they are today, and likely never will be. To many people this looks, and feels, much more like the assertion of cultural dominance than an effort to deliver any kind of message: We’re going to make Santa gay, and you’re going to shut up and like it, or face the consequences. It is needlessly, but absolutely intentionally, alienating.
It is, therefore, important that people learn the courage to push back against this rubbish. Already, in Ireland, we’re having to put up with the abject nonsense of state funded organisations declaring that Saint Bridget was, in fact, a lesbian celtic goddess.
Normal people – normal, well balanced people – do not spend a second of their time wondering about the sexuality of Santa Claus, or St. Bridget. But all of us are being forced, daily, to submit ourselves to the weird obsessions of a fringe sect of cultural bullies. It’s growing increasingly intolerable.