The people behind the move from Merry Christmas to Happy Holidays are now addressing the iconic character that, up to now, has been known as Santa Claus. The Association for Sensitive Speech (ASS) is now pushing for Santa Claus to be known as Mr. Claus. An spokesperson for ASS explained: “In Spanish and Italian, the word santa is translated as saint. In no way do we want to offend Roman Catholics and other religions that canonize saints by suggesting that a fictional character should be considered a religious saint. We feel the politically correct, logical choice in this situation is to call the character Mr. Claus rather than Santa Claus.”
When pressed about how to make this transition happen, the ASS spokesperson detailed the plan: “We suggest the character, effective immediately, be called Mr. Santa Claus. In time, the Santa portion will be dropped, and Mr. Claus will remain.” Then the spokesperson offered an even more dramatic vision: “Our long term goal will be to get the Mr. part dropped and have the character just be known with the single name Claus. With the singular name of Claus, we feel the character will be gender-neutral, and females will not be offended by Santa Claus being depicted solely as a male.”
The ASS spokesperson added: “We feel that the singular name of Claus will make the character appear to be as important as other celebrities that go by one name like Adelle, Bono, Beyonce, and Sting. If we can get the general public to love Claus as much as Bono loves himself, we will have been successful ASSers by turning Santa Claus into a gender-neutral character that offends nobody.”
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