Sex merchants have hijacked Christmas. Does Santa really need to be ‘weirdly hot’?

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Another X user asks Target if Santa can do tours so mums can sit on his lap, I guess so that they can admit they’ve been naughty and have a few cobwebs to clean out in places other than the dusty tinsel in the cupboard.

If “weirdly hot” Santa broke into my house on Christmas night while I was nursing a food coma and asked if I’d been a good girl, I would call the police to report a sexual predator. Santa’s not meant to be hot; he’s a kindly, rotund old man, a mystical figure living in old folk tales, unlike us mere mortals hankering after some hanky-panky.

I’m no prude; I know there’s always been an element of sexiness in Christmas, ever since Nicolette Scorsese flicked her red swimmers in Chevy Chase’s National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation fantasy or Eartha Kitt’s sultry Santa Baby.

But they at least pretend to be innocent. Even the song I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus, with all its monogamous, heteronormative undertones, is told through the eyes of a naive child. We’re yet to reach “I Saw Santa on OnlyFans”, but I’m sure it’s not far off.

I wouldn’t say Christmas is the unsexiest time of the year, but it’s probably up there with Anzac Day, bank holidays and COVID lockdowns. When I hear “Christmas”, the first words that comes to mind are “stress”, “debt” or, if I’m feeling optimistically festive, “joy” and “celebration”, not “shirtless man hunks” and “weirdly hot” Santas. I’m aware that our culture’s first commandment, “sex sells”, infiltrates almost every facet of our lives, but can we leave Christmas alone?

Maybe I’m being unreasonable, and we’ve reached peak stress post-COVID, and like Jack in Hot Frosty, we’re all just letting off some steam. But there are so few things left in the world that are truly innocent. While we’re gorging our base instincts for gluttony around the Christmas table, can we at least try to put our instinct for the horizontal happy hour on ice? At least until Boxing Day, when off-duty lumberjack Santa is no longer tracking whether you’re being naughty or nice.

Cherie Gilmour is a freelance writer.

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