Out of the mouths of babes and all that.
For Christmas 2015, someone at an advertising agency thought it’d be a great idea to ask some kids whether a woman could do Santa’s job. The answers are… well, not all that surprising considering who’s being surveyed here.
Take a look for yourself:
The clip’s been described as ‘an eye-opener’. If you ask me, it’s got a lot more to do with faces and palms. Or heads and desks. Where’s that Picard meme when I need it…
“If Santa was a woman, could she do the job?”
This, my friends, is what is commonly known as ‘a leading question’. The kind that’s usually objected to in courtrooms. It’s worded in such a way as to elicit a biased reaction. “Does Santa have to be a man?” would likely have had the same effect.
What was anyone expecting here? We’ve invested considerable time and effort into making sure kids get crazy for Father Christmas. To suddenly introduce the idea of an alternative Mother Christmas is probably too much for them to handle.
And they’re kids! Child logic is no logic at all. We do see one child say that yes, a Ms. Santa would be just fine – but mostly because she could fit down the chimney. Child logic. As if any of them live in a house that still has a functioning chimney.
On top of all that, kids are impressionable. One of the talking points behind the video is where they get their opinions and biases from at an early age. You can hear the misguided parental influences everywhere in that video. That one boy who thinks a female Santa would “get a headache” has clearly overheard too many ‘not tonight, darling’ conversations, the poor little lamb.
