The war on “wokeness” has crept down the chimney and into the season of wonder and light, with right-wingers causing a spat over a British Christmas commercial that portrays Mrs. Claus as an elegant Black woman who runs the roost as her husband rests with his feet up by the fire.
In case you haven’t seen this ad for the company Boots, a massive health and beauty retailer known for extravagantly produced Christmas ads, let me explain. This year’s commercial, called “Making Magic,” takes the viewers inside Santa’s workshop, with a quick pit stop in Santa’s home chalet. Mrs. Claus, portrayed by Adjoa Andoh, known for her role as Lady Danbury in the Netflix romance series “Bridgerton,” stomps through the door to see her husband snoozing in his red suit.
The war on ‘wokeness’ has crept down the chimney and into the season of wonder and light.
After letting out an impatient “There he goes again” gasp, Mrs. Claus whips off her sunglasses, applies some lipstick and gets down to business with a very British “Shall we?!”
She is fit, festive and fashionable. Big earrings. Toned arms. Short Afro. Long gown. It really is worth watching the spot so you can see for yourself how she swans about surrounded by a glittery swirl of worker bees and werk-it-gurl elves who help her put the finishing sparkle on gifts that will be delivered by her husband after his cat nap. When Santa wakes up (finally!) and takes off on his appointed rounds, Mrs. Claus cheekily turns to the camera and says, “You thought it was all him?”
The whole scene is like a fever dream fantasy with Eve’s hit song “Who’s That Girl?” as the thumping soundtrack. But right-wing critics in Britain said the ad was a nightmare, and some turned to X to call for a boycott, claiming the ad was “woke on steroids” and “anti-white racism.”
Some noted that at one point Mrs. Claus used them/they pronouns, and a conservative British Catholic cleric speaking on a podcast said, “Santa Claus was portrayed as some big, fat, lazy oaf.” Critics from the U.K. were particularly offended by the casting of Andoh, who stirred up a bit of controversy while serving as a commentator for ITV’s coverage of the coronation of King Charles when she referred to the royal family as being “terribly white” in contrast to the “rich diversity” of the people present in Westminster Abbey during the event.
Because Boots is a part of the Walgreens global pharmacy conglomerate, the #boycottboots hashtag has drifted across the Atlantic, where some right-leaning consumers in the U.S. say they might shop somewhere other than Walgreens.
This feels like performative umbrage. People are that deep in their hackles about a commercial that satirizes a fictional character who rides on a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer and mythically squeezes himself down chimneys all the over the world to deliver gifts to millions of children (of all colors) on a single night? Really?
I understand that tradition is important, but sometimes it seems obvious the people who insist on gatekeeping a traditional retrograde world order are looking for reasons to stoke division instead of just letting people do their own things in their own lanes.
Did they completely miss the advertiser blowing a kiss to all the women who do the bulk of the physical work during the holidays that fall at the end of the year?
And here is what I find most mystifying: Did they completely miss the cheeky undercurrent where the advertiser was blowing a kiss to all the women — regardless of color, class, religion or geography — who do the bulk of the physical work during the religious and cultural holidays that fall at the end of the year?
And that doesn’t even include all the emotional labor.
At the end of the commercial, when “Who’s That Girl?” is cranked up, there is a hat tip to the women who do most of the cooking, cleaning, planning, shopping, organizing, decorating, deconstructing, entertaining, elevating, hand-holding, shipping, wrapping, refereeing and general whirligig sprinting at full tilt, until they can finally kind of, sort of relax on the unofficial Dec. 26 holiday known as “don’t ask Mama for a darn thing all day or else you might just get your feelings hurt.”
Advertisements are designed to work on several levels. Of course, the first order is to get consumers to open their wallets. But the pathway to a purchase often means tugging on some emotion or making a potential consumer feel seen, understood or empowered in some way. This is where the diversity, gender and culture wars can create a landmine. Creating a sense of belonging for a group that is not respected or accepted by another group can stir up vertigo, anger or an excuse to go on the attack.









