On Wednesday night Megyn Kelly declared on her Fox News show that both Santa Claus and Jesus were white. Discussing an article in Slate by Aisha Harris about a Black vs. a white Santa, Kelly said, “just because it makes you feel uncomfortable, it doesn’t mean it has to change.”
“You know, I’ve given her her due. Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn’t mean it has to change,” Kelly said. “Jesus was a white man, too. It’s like we have, he’s a historical figure that’s a verifiable fact, as is Santa, I just want kids to know that. How do you revise it in the middle of the legacy in the story and change Santa from white to Black?”
Santa Claus can be traced to a real life monk named St. Nicholas, who lived in what is today Turkey, according to the History Channel. Jesus Christ was born to a Jewish family in what is now Israel, and his race has long been debated with several scholars saying he likely looked like modern-day people of Middle Eastern descent.
The unusual segment, where the panelists also debated whether Santa Claus should be a penguin as Harris writes in her piece, seemed to be directly contradicting what Kelly said on Monday when she appeared on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”
“I’m a straight news anchor, I’m not one of the opinion hosts,” she told Leno. “The way we do it on the Fox News Channel is the straight news anchors like us give a hard time to both sides.”
It seems as though there may be other issues to debate that are “straight news” beyond whether Santa and Jesus where white.
