And now we continue our collection of conversations about food and the holidays with a story from The Show producer Ayana Hamilton. She’s got a complicated relationship with Santa. We’ll let her explain.
AYANA HAMILTON: Growing up, like all other kids, I believed in Santa Claus and absolutely loved Christmas because, to quote Andy Williams, it was truly “The most wonderful time of the year.” When I became conscious — so let's say around 5 — I would choose the gifts that went in my letter to Santa, and then give all my trust to my parents to safely mail it off to the North Pole, which is definitely in Antarctica.
Since I grew up in a pro-Black household, Santa was Black, and my dad was the most vocal about it. However, I successfully refuted my dad’s claim because I knew — no, believed — that Santa is white. The cultural expectations I absorbed shaped my proof: Christmas cartoons showed a white Santa, and the mall Santa was always white.
So as I got older, my mom would be the victim of this argument. My dad and I would argue back and forth like Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny, but instead of saying rabbit season or duck season, we would yell, “He’s Black,” “No, he’s white!”
However, my belief in Santa began to crumble one day in fourth grade, when a classmate shouted across the room that Santa isn’t real. I pretended I didn’t hear it. I felt a mixture of confusion and loss. This is despite finding my letter to Santa in the back of my dad’s car and unwrapped presents in my parents closet. I clung to the magic because it was easier than accepting that my childhood illusions were ending.
I took the next logical step to prove that Santa is real and left the perfect bait to catch him: chocolate chip cookies and milk. But my dad disagreed, saying he actually prefers oatmeal-raisin cookies. My aunt didn’t agree with any of us and said that Santa would be fine with a bag of chips and a can of Dr. Pepper. I didn’t listen to either of them and went with my original plan, convinced that if Santa showed up at all, he’d recognize the classic setup. I carefully arranged everything, hoping my strategy would finally settle the debate.
It failed, and I tried it again the following year. But I didn’t do it for me; I did it for my younger cousins. I had to put on my best acting face the morning of, so the bite of the cookie surprised me, but made me think, “Oh, so did they forget to do it last year?”
Nonetheless, it was an exciting Christmas anyway because I got Rollerblades, and I already knew it before opening them; I’d found the box sitting unwrapped in my parents’ closet a week earlier.
All week, I kept sneaking back to look at them, imagining how fast I’d be once I finally got outside. Even without the mystery, the joy was real. I learned that the magic of Christmas lived in the anticipation, the small secrets and the stories families choose to believe.
And in the end, my dad won the argument that Santa is Black.
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We continue our collection of conversations about food and the holidays with a story from The Show producer Ayana Hamilton. She’s got a complicated relationship with Santa. -
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