Gender Neutral Santa? A Surprising Amount Of Americans Call For ‘Rebranding’ Of Saint Nick
According to reporting from Fox 5 (New York), a rather surprising percentage of American respondents to a recent poll were in favor of rebranding jolly old Saint Nicholas in a variety of different ways. Graphic design operation GraphicSprings recently took it upon themselves to offer up a poll surrounding the question of whether Santa Claus was in need of a paint job — posing the question to both U.S. and U.K. respondents — and the results may be shocking to some.
Four thousand people participated in the brief questionnaire, which offered up questions regarding such modern-day considerations as to whether or not Kris Kringle should get some ink done, should shave off his trademark snowy white beard, or should become “more hipster.” A bevy of culturally divisive questions were posed by the logo purveyors at GraphicSprings, likely in a marketing move to produce a higher public profile, and to attract headlines from around the world.
It worked, apparently. Townhall, ABC News, and CBS are just a few of the media outlets that have made comment of the story, each interpreting the data in their own way. One of the more contentious results, however, centers around the question of whether Santa Claus should be revamped to be female — or gender neutral.
More than a quarter of people think Santa should be female or gender neutral, according to new survey https://t.co/cJsUHqyGYx pic.twitter.com/OakNUXSdO6
— CBS News (@CBSNews) December 14, 2018
In the raw data presented by GraphicSprings in the form of a Google Docs spreadsheet, it is revealed that fully 28 percent of Americans polled — and over 26 percent of U.K. citizens polled — believe that Santa Claus should be “rebranded” as something other than male. Around 10 percent of respondents from the U.S. believed that the big man at the North Pole should be reincarnated as female, and 18.64 percent of those polled believed that he should be born again as an individual who is gender neutral. Coming to a rough total of 29 percent — as compared with an approximate sum of 26 percent of those asked in the United Kingdom — it appears that a sizable minority of survey respondents want to see a drastic change for the spirit in charge of Christmas Eve.
Some other questions on the spreadsheet are a bit lighter in their subject matter. As it turns out, just over 6 percent of Americans asked would prefer that Santa ditch the milk in favor of beer, and just over 7 percent believe that Santa might look a little sleeker with some tattoos inked into his skin.
It looks like a fair few of those polled would like to see Mr. Claus adopt some serious style changes, too. Over 4 percent of U.S. respondents think that he should trade in the staid hairdo for some dreadlocks, and an unimaginative 16.53 percent say that Santa should do business over Amazon Prime rather than to employ his time-honored tradition of magical reindeer.
The poll was comprised of 400 respondents, and the most interesting answers were then voted on by 4,000 persons.
