Many people believe that Santa Claus should be rebranded as female or gender neutral, survey finds

Santa Claus or Father Christmas has been the giver of gifts to good children and coal to the naughty ones for as long as the holiday has been present in history.

Children around the world eagerly send him letters enlisting the presents they desire and hope to catch a glimpse of the man himself riding his sleigh pulled by flying reindeer every time the day comes around. There could be one major change happening to this in the future, however.

A survey conducted recently shows that many people in America and the US, more than 27% to be specific, believe that Santa Claus should be rebranded as a woman or a gender-neutral person.

According to CBS Pittsburg, Graphic Springs, which is a free logo design company, conducted a survey involving hundreds of people to see how they would rebrand Santa and what exactly they would do if they could give the man a more modern image.

The survey took designs from approximately 400 people from the US and UK and then 4,000 people voted on the most popular version of the character that was designed from that initial group.

According to the results, the new "modern" Santa has tattoos, a trimmed beard, skinny jeans, trainers, and a hoverboard. The new Santa is also supposed to be tech-savvy and looks like he could be on the cover of GQ magazine if he wanted to. 

Aside from the redesigned image of Santa, the participants in the survey were also asked one question: "If you could ‘rebrand’ Santa for modern society, what gender would he be?"

About 10% of the participants said that they thought Santa should be female and about 18% said that the popular character should be gender neutral. A staggering 72% of the participants believe that the character should remain as a male.

Claudia Carvell from the LGBT Foundation spoke to UNILAD last year and said that aside from Santa, we need more gender fluid representation in society.

She said: "Gender fluidity is an important issue for everyone, regardless of their gender identity. We have a restrictive idea of what a man or woman is and it assumes women have to be feminine and men masculine – and there’s no room for people who feel they’re both or neither."

"Everyone experiences these gender pressures, whether they’re LGBT or not, so gender fluidity is something we all need to be discussing as part of our everyday lives – whether it’s rejecting a damaging stereotype, using ‘they’ pronouns as well as ‘he’ and ‘she’, or simply not assuming someone’s gender identity based on their appearance."

"The conversation just starts with gender-neutral clothing lines or gender-fluid imagery — we need to be hearing more of the voices and experiences of gender-fluid and non-binary people and genuinely start moving away from binary gender representations and fixed gender roles."