Last week, the McBurney YMCA in the West Village of New York City fired Santa Claus, who traditionally takes gift requests from children at its annual holiday luncheon, in favor of Frosty the Snowman. Why, you ask?
John Rappaport, executive director of the McBurney YMCA, explained, “We realized that change is sometimes good, and that Frosty is a great winter character who would appeal to a broader number of kids.”
Translation: “I do not possess the courage, competence, or common sense oppose politically correct, anti-Christmas, diversity-at-all costs zealots, so I have chosen to spoil the holiday experience of the vast majority of children in favor of a few who are being used as pawns by their parents. In the process, I am snubbing a Christmas tradition that has given joy to generations. Because of my thorough deficits in principle, integrity, and the ability to balance priorities, I have no business running a pretzel stand, much less a community recreation facility.”
Let’s list just a sampling of what is wrong with substituting Frosty for Santa:
- Though he is based on a Christian saint, Santa Claus is not a religious figure, but a thoroughly secular one, with well-established roots in popular culture. He is the symbol of the secular and cultural Christmas holidays, which have never excluded any child by virtue of religion or national origin. Frosty the Snowman, in contrast, is not even a holiday character, though later versions of the Gene Autry song that introduced him incorrectly quote Frosty’s last words as “I’ll be back on Christmas Day!” as opposed to the original, “I’ll be back again some day!” Why Frosty would come back on Christmas is open to conjecture, but if this misreading of his last comment before melting away is the sole justification for substituting him for Santa, then Frosty is also linked, not to generic winter holidays, but Christmas, which is what makes Santa so objectionable to anti-Christmas scolds. His real last words presumably meant that when it snowed again, maybe next year, Frosty would be back to violate more traffic laws. This is nothing to celebrate. Traffic get bad enough when it snows.
- Santa Claus symbolizes many ethical values, such a generosity, kindness, and charity, through his legendary practice of giving gifts to children. He also reinforces moral standards, as only good children receive his gifts in their stockings. Frosty, in stark contrast, has nothing to do with any values whatsoever, did not and does not give anything to anybody but a good scare, and his conduct was nothing to emulate, as it consisted of running amuck. There is, therefore, no nexus between the ideals, aspirations and wishes of children and Frosty the Snowman.
- Santa Claus is a human, and a performer can credibly portray him with sufficient realism to give a child the whimsical illusion that he really meeting Santa Claus. Frosty the Snowman, however, was made out of snow, and any fool, not to mention any child, can tell the difference between a snowman costume and a snowman.
By mollifying those Christmas killjoys who object to their children being exposed to the most benign of all holiday icons, Jolly Old St. Nick, Rappaport and the Y sacrificed tradition and the enjoyment of most of the kids, not to soothe a supposedly oppressed minority of children, but rather for the satisfaction of adults who derive no pleasure from either Santa on Frosty, and whose satisfaction comes from bending spineless administrators to their will.
I was going to wish that Frosty the Snowman would leave two lumps of coal in Rappaport’s Christmas stocking, but remembered that those would be Frosty’s eyes.
And that’s disgusting.
Ethics Alarms 
Saying that Rappaport succumbed to the zealots might give him too much credit. That stance might mean that he objectionably listened to people of the community and decided this was best because of many requests and no one supported Santa.
What is probably more likely, is that there are no zealots and that Rappaport is, himself, the only zealot which shows that he is not objectionable and that he lets his conflicts rule his decisions.
Well, if he did it one his own, I certainly can’t say he lacks guts. Brains and judgment maybe, but not guts. I have a hard time believing anyone would be that tone deaf on his own, but you might be right.
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There is much food for thought here.
1. I find your assertion that Frosty broke traffic laws to be unsupported. In response to the officer’s only recorded command (“Stop!”), Frosty paused, which is what he was supposed to do.
2. More troubling, perhaps, is a veiled but important ethical undercurrent in the Frosty legenda. (Look it up.) The story is emphatically told as a second-hand account; we have only the word of “the children” that any of this happened at all. (The traffic cop’s views, if any, are lost to history.) It seems reasonable to conclude that children are being encouraged to respond to a scientifically baseless argument (“Santa is real, and parents can see him, but children can’t”) with an equally baseless counterargument (“Frosty is real, and children can see him, but parents can’t”). Surely society should teach children to meet a ridiculous paranormal fantasy with reason, observation, and fact, rather than make up a second fantasy that suffers from the same disregard of the scientific method.
3. The strongest part of your argument (there was an argument in there someplace, wasn’t there?) is that Frosty is just as much a Christmas icon as Santa. The song was written a year after “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” as an attempt, acknowledged by the writers, to cash in on the demand for silly and cuddly Christmas songs. The song doesn’t mention Christmas, but then neither do “Jingle Bells” or “Sleigh Ride” (the latter composed, apparently, in honor of the birthday of a mysterious and otherwise unidentified “Farmer Gray”); and you don’t heare them played much in February, or (I suspect) during Southern Hemisphere winters in July and August. Rappaport compounded his initial poor judgement with a bumblingly incompetent attempt to “fix the problem”, which likely ended up pleasing nobody. If we insist on having a secular exemplar of disinterested generosity to children, let’s have Willy Wonka.
4. In any discussion of Frosty the Snowman, points are always awarded for working in the concept of “gutless”.
A provocative response.
I dispute that the second hand account came from a child; the story’s initial telling was by Gene Autry, and Gene never lied: read his Cowboy Code to be found to the left of the home page. If Gene says it happened, it happened. Clearly adults can see Frosty; after all, the traffic cop did tell him to stop. (And as a former prosecutor, I can assure you that to “only pause a moment” in response to a “Halt!’ order by a police officer is asking for trouble. As to the traffic infraction, I’m guessing that the cop thought a walking, dancing snowman was likely to distract drivers and cause a safety problem, much like the bare-chested, tatooed, transexual body-builder/stripper who was breathing fire on top of a billboard a few years ago. She caused quite a few accidents.)
And children certainly CAN see Santa, as many, many drawings—including a very famous one by Norman Rockwell, films and cartoons will attest. Would Norman Rockwell lie? Natalie Wood? Not to mention songs: who saw mommy kissing Santa Claus?
“Frosty the Snowman” is a Christmas song the way “Autumn Leaves” is a Halloween song. It, “Let it snow!”, “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” “Here Comes Suzy Snowflake” and, yes, “Jingle Bells” denote winter atmospherics and nothing more. Except, of course, that Frosty is creepy.
To be thorough, “Baby It’s Cold Outside” is an appallingly unethical song. Lie to your parents, violate their house rules, if you don’t I’ll subtly threaten you with date rape drugs in your drinks.
Dear Jack: That was a masterful thesis by Tom Fuller. Remind me to put his law firm on waivers! Personally, though, I tend to think that it was precisely because Santa Claus (a corruption of the Dutch Sankta Nicklaus) IS based in Christianity, that this director abolished him. This IS Greenwich Village we’re talking about. It’s just unfortunate that the YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association) has degenerated into a snide term for a place where homosexuals can “hook up”. Saints are not welcome in such places.
I was surpised even at the Greenwich Village YMCA that Santa would be unwelcome. Steven Mark has a point about the Christian portion of the name. And you’re right, Jack, no kid wants to sit on a snowman’s lap, fake or real. That IS creepy. And potentially damp.