Looking for Mrs Santa Claus

It’s that (second) most wonderful time of the year for another slew of “sexy lady” costumes. Around the country, women are being flogged some fairly ghastly red (or perhaps even pink) and white ensembles in the name of festive fun.

Spot the difference with this classy 'couple's costume' from onlinejokeshop.co.uk

Seriously, look at this shit.

Right, now I’ve shared my pain I feel ready to move on. Also, we’ve already covered this topic in some depth with our Halloween posts, so I won’t go over it again, but if you really want to experience some more truly awful costume fails, then by all means, do type “mrs santa costume” into Google.

Just don’t blame me for the results.

But looking at all those dresses (and bikinis, and crop tops – seriously, crop tops – you come from the NORTH POLE!), once I’d finished washing my eyeballs, made me think about the female version of that jolly Christmas avatar…

Mrs Santa Claus, step on down in all your glory.

The origin of Santa Claus himself is a (turkey) bone of contention, with some camps claiming antecendents from folklore around 4th century saint St Nicholas via Sinterklaas.

Some (including the brand itself) claim parts of the modern incarnation are entirely the creation of the Coca-Cola company, especially the red and white costume.

What we can see is that as the Christmas holidays start to move from a solemn religious event to being increasingly secular and perhaps commercial, we lose the holy charitable man and get a fat jolly gift-giving man.

Mr and Mrs Santa Claus on a greetings card, image source wikipedia

Possibly because it is not a good idea for single chaps to be portrayed as climbing into houses where small children lie sleeping, Santa gets a wife along with heteronormativity and a slew of other “traditional” family values that put the whole breaking and entering thing into a context of good, clean fun.

As a side note, I’d like to add that my father (also a fan of BadRep – hi Dad!) is currently being Santa for a local charity, so I’m not knocking the concepts of chaps who have families, fun or even enjoy climbing down chimneys. Though Dad, if you are reading, please don’t.

The closest thing I could find to a bio for our Mrs Claus online is here on Wikipedia. She arrives in what passes for the social media sphere of the mid to late 1800s, roughly the same time that we get The Night Before Christmas and the drawings of Thomas Nast, premiering as the unamed wife in Katherine Lee Bates’s poem Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh Ride.

Wiki’s entry on Santa himself says:

The 1956 popular song by George Melachrino, Mrs. Santa Claus, and the 1963 children’s book How Mrs. Santa Claus Saved Christmas, by Phyllis McGinley, helped standardize and establish the character and role of Mrs Claus in the popular imagination.

Modern Santa is almost always presented in one way: as an old, fat white bearded man, although Billy Bob Thornton in Bad Santa certainly gave us at least a refreshingly dishonest take on things. Mrs Santa comes in two, perhaps three distinct forms. The two key ones are old, fat white haired woman and the attractive, buxom younger model.

Mrs Santa Claus fights repression and wraps up warm for winter. No exposed flesh for Angela Lansbury!

There’s also a rarer type. This one is neither young nor old, glamour model nor well-rounded jolly lady. You have to do a bit of digging, but she could almost be a normal woman (gasp!), albeit a bit mumsy. I am chosing to term this The Angela Lansbury Option for reasons that will become apparent (and awesome) later.

Hmmm. Three different depictions across some rather familiar age ranges – maiden, mother, crone anyone? Although looking (if we must) at those cheeky¹ Mrs Santa costumes, I’m less sure about whether advertisers had “maidens” in mind as opposed to “ho ho ho”.

So, who are these Mrs Clauses and what are they doing?

The original version is simply a female counterpart to Santa. She’s a “goodwife” and the grandmother to his grandfather role, where all the children of the world are their beloved grandkids – once a year, at least.

This is the Mrs Santa Claus you would choose to fight crime? Really? In those shoes?

It’s good to see positive depictions of old women in circulation amidst all the other negative presentations of “wicked witches”. So far, so good, but how is she used in the media? Like her husband, she seems to be a vehicle for “sell, sell, sell” especially in marketing for women. She is, however, pretty much welded to the kitchen.

Over at northpole.com and claus.com you can find her making cakes in the kitchen. Not that I’m against women in kitchens (obviously not), and those gingerbread men look tasty, but are there alternatives for festive octogenarian females?

Well, in her first appearance in Bates’s poem – which is an interesting read in and of itself with its portrayal of the feminine sphere – we find her blagging her way onto hubby’s sleigh to mend the stockings of poor children so that they too can share the presents.

But I’ll mend that sock so nearly it shall hold your gifts completely.
Take the reins and let me show you what a woman’s wit can do.

If we skip a few generations along, she gets even more awesome, and we find “Mrs North”, in the film Mrs. Santa Claus, crash landing in New York in 1910 and getting involved in the women’s suffrage movement.

Don’t knock the Angela Lansbury option, bitches.

“Sexy” Mrs Santas, meanwhile (and note how that automotically means young and beautiful), are sadly confined to selling a lot of ill-advised and probably itchy costumes, including some truly dreadful underwear.

My most strange discovery is that they are also allegedly comic book heroes – this one is especially odd, given that the main image on this webpage should be of the older version. (However, I’m not that surprised at the choice of image given much of the comic industry’s ongoing campaign these days to replace all women with fembot boobtastic sexed up versions of themselves.)

But to end on two positive notes, first up are five woman who I want to see as Mrs Santa Claus:

• Helen Mirren. Let’s try and get over this idea that older can’t be sexy, please?
• Dawn French. She’d get the “jolly” vote, but she’s also pretty damn cool.
• Dame Judi Dench. Bonus points if this occurs during the next Bond film. Extra bonus points if Daniel Craig takes his top off and a Christmas related joke is uttered. We deserve this following the Bond girl whose name was Christmas.
• Tilda Swinton. I do not believe this needs any reason.
• Margaret Thatcher. Oh come on. It would be hilarious, and the MOST IRONIC THING EVER.

And finally, here’s a video of our newest, and perhaps most interestingly political heroine: Mrs Claus. Here she gives her opinion on the world and spreads a message of peace, tolerance, environmental activism and joy. Certainly an improvement on the Queen’s Speech in my opinion: Mrs Claus Speaks Up.

1. As an aside, I hate this use of word “cheeky”. It’s a ghastly conflation of “cute” and “sexy” which manages to objectify, infantilise AND sexualise women to within an inch of their lives whilst wrapping it all up into a joke that we’re all meant to laugh along to. For the record, fuck off.

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