Here is a piece of prime mockery. It sends up the numerous primitives amongst us whose self-imposed offense-taking is driving them to an early grave of self-righteous apoplexy. It must be a terrible thing to live in a bubble of self-imposed outrage over manufactured and artificial "causes".
Claus out for Cultural Appropriation
Karl Du Fresne
Stuff
A couple of weeks ago, I took part in a flagrant act of cultural appropriation. So did several thousand other people. We watched a Christmas parade. Santa Claus was in it, complete with mock reindeer.
Most of the floats were decorated with Christmas symbols: fake snow, tinsel, stuff like that. A brass band played traditional English carols.
How did we get away with it? It could only be because the simple provincial folk in the town where I live are ignorant of, or callously indifferent to, sensitivities surrounding cultural ownership. Santa Claus is a figure derived from northern European folklore. What right do we in the remote Southwest Pacific have to place him at the centre of our Christmas celebrations? Sleighs? Ditto. Christmas trees and holly too.
These are the cultural property of people from distant lands.
