{"id":8520,"date":"2016-12-20T03:06:23","date_gmt":"2016-12-20T03:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=8520"},"modified":"2016-12-23T03:10:50","modified_gmt":"2016-12-23T03:10:50","slug":"tell-a-different-story-about-santa-this-holiday-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/tell-a-different-story-about-santa-this-holiday-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Tell a different story about Santa this holiday season"},"content":{"rendered":"

Peggy Albers<\/a>, Georgia State University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

It is that time of year again: People are dusting off their holiday decorations in order to make their homes and public spaces festive. It is also the time when certain stories and songs are being repeated. <\/p>\n

Television holiday shows such as \u201cA Charlie Brown Christmas\u201d are almost iconic, with audiences watching them year after year. And the same is true of holiday songs such as \u201cJingle Bells,\u201d or \u201cSanta Claus is Coming to Town,\u201d that are played at almost all stores.<\/p>\n

Children too are retold the same classic stories like \u201cThe Night Before Christmas<\/a>,\u201d Dr. Seuss\u2019 \u201cHow the Grinch Stole Christmas\u201d<\/a> and \u201cRudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n

For many of us, these stories and songs have come to define the spirit of the holidays. But, as the cultural diversity in the U.S. increases, scholars are exploring how to discuss with children issues of importance, like race and religion, through stories.<\/p>\n

The single story<\/h2>\n

In 2009, Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie gave a talk on the danger of a \u201csingle story<\/a>.\u201d She stated that telling a single story \u2013 defining a race, religion, culture, etc. based on a single experience or characteristic \u2013 contributes to stereotypes. The problem with stereotypes, she said, was that they made the \u201cone story become the only story.\u201d <\/p>\n

Adichie recalled that when she came to the U.S. to study, her roommate remarked that Adichie spoke very good English, and asked if she would play some \u201ctribal music.\u201d Adichie said that the official language of Nigeria was English, and her favorite music was that of American singer Mariah Carey.<\/p>\n

The problem was Adichie\u2019s roommate had a \u201csingle story of Africa\u201d \u2013 one in which she understood Adichie as coming from a place of \u201ccatastrophe.\u201d As Adichie said, her roommate could not imagine she shared any similarities with Adichie, and there was \u201cno possibility of a connection as human equals.\u201d <\/p>\n

Risks of single narratives<\/h2>\n

Adichie\u2019s story is not uncommon. I study children\u2019s literature. In my own study of children\u2019s picture books<\/a>, I found that certain stereotypes of race and culture were repeated over and over again, creating a single story.<\/p>\n

For example, Jewish characters were often portrayed as coming from poor families, their lives filled with tension and chaos, or full of fear of supernatural forces.<\/p>\n

Stories of African families featured characters who were poor, half-naked, and living primitive lifestyles. African-Americans were typically represented in context of their slave past. Asian characters were shown dressed in kimonos and sashes, often learning speci\ufb01c moral lessons from elders.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"
\n Are kids reading narratives that miss diverse perspectives?<\/span>
\n Rod Library<\/a>, CC BY<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The same was true when depicting Muslims. Scholar Heidi Torres<\/a>, for example, found in a study of 56 picture books that Muslims were depicted as living in primarily Muslim<\/a>, rather than diverse, communities. <\/p>\n

When children read these stories, they tend to develop single narratives, whether related to race or religion.<\/p>\n

Torres, for example, suggests that children risk developing<\/a> a negative story about Islam and Muslims rather than understand the multiple ways in which Muslims live across the world.<\/p>\n

Illustrator Molly Bang<\/a> voices similar sentiments when she says that children by the age of five develop a particular way of seeing<\/a> the world after reading such narratives. Noted art historian Ernst Gombrich<\/a> explains how such views of the world leave a deep impression on children\u2019s minds through \u201cmemory images\u201d <\/a> \u2013 familiar and recognizable images that define for children how they understand a race, religion or culture. <\/p>\n

Using stories for critical conversations<\/h2>\n

Stories help children make sense of their own and others\u2019 experiences. <\/p>\n

For example, in their study of young children\u2019s retelling of stories, early childhood literacy scholars Judith Lysakar<\/a> and Tiffany Sedberry<\/a> found that children paid attention to the many moral details regarding race: In \u201cThe Other Side<\/a>,\u201d a segregation story involving two characters \u2013 Clover, an African-American girl, and Annie, a white girl \u2013 children wanted to know why a fence always separated<\/a> the two. <\/p>\n

The same researchers found that once children connected with the story, they could actually put themselves in the situation of the main character. After listening to \u201cOne Green Apple<\/a>,\u201d the story of a young Muslim immigrant girl, who after arriving in the U.S. found that she could not make friends as she did not know English, children used their own knowledge and beliefs to make sense of the story.<\/p>\n

In this case, they understood the immigrant girl\u2019s story not as that of a Muslim immigrant, but a refugee, as a result of war and violence. They also used their own experiences to retell what it would mean to learn a new language.<\/p>\n

Research shows this deep emotional engagement with stories can be used for conversations around race and religion.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"
\n Deep engagement with a story can make a difference.<\/span>
\n John Morgan<\/a>, CC BY<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In their study of children\u2019s talk around issues of race, researchers Lee Heffernan<\/a> and Mitzi Lewison<\/a> engaged children<\/a> in conversation on citizenship after reading \u201cWhitewash<\/a>,\u201d a true story of a young African-American girl who is attacked on her way home from school by a gang who spray-paints her face white. <\/p>\n

Children in this third grade class connected this hate crime to crimes in their own community that were racist and anti-Semitic. They wrote a petition to stop all hate speech in their own school and posted it in the front hallway of the school. <\/p>\n

Retelling the same old stories<\/h2>\n

So, what can parents do so children can grow up with multiple perspectives around race and religion?<\/p>\n

Researchers who have studied the role of multiculturalism suggest the importance of reading different versions of traditional stories, so as to move away from the single story. Researchers Jeane Copenhaver-Johnson<\/a>, Joy Bowman and Andrea Johnson, for example, studied the Santa story through an African-American perspective<\/a>. <\/p>\n

These researchers used Melodye Rosale\u2019s \u201c\u2019Twas the Night B\u2019Fore Christmas: An African American Version<\/a>,\u201d a retelling of the familiar \u201c\u2018Twas the Night Before Christmas\u201d poem. <\/p>\n

Initially, children were surprised to know that Santa was black. Some even asked if he was the \u201creal Santa\u2019s helper,\u201d a pejorative perspective. Until this book, children had known only a single story \u2013 that Santa must be white. This discussion of Santa and race led children to research and write about other texts that left out African-Americans. <\/p>\n

Similarly, researchers Stephanie Flores-Koulish<\/a> and Wendy Marie Smith-D\u2019Arezzo<\/a> found that alternative versions of well-known traditional stories helped children challenge stereotypes<\/a>. <\/p>\n

For example, in David Wiesner\u2019s version of \u201cThree Little Pigs<\/a>,\u201d the wolf tells his side of the story. It gets children to think of the pigs as a juicy hamburger and sympathize with the wolf. In the traditional story, the wolf is the villain. <\/p>\n

From reading such alternative versions of traditional stories, children develop alternate points of views and learn to challenge stereotypes. So why not tell Santa and holiday stories from around the world<\/a> this year?<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Peggy Albers<\/a>, Professor of Language and Literacy Education, Georgia State University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peggy Albers, Georgia State University It is that time of year again: People are dusting off their holiday decorations in order to make their homes and public spaces festive. It is also the time when certain stories and songs are being repeated. Television holiday shows such as \u201cA Charlie Brown Christmas\u201d are almost iconic, with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":8521,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[292],"tags":[132,1728,1715],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8520"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8520"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8522,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8520\/revisions\/8522"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}