This year, I picked up a wrapping paper that included Santas of every color. It was a good reminder that even though he's very often portrayed as being white, that's not necessarily the case. Thanks to one innovative app, families looking for a black Santa Claus to take their children to are in luck.
Jihan Woods raised over $5,000 in just a 10-day period on Kickstarter to create an app that would help families locate black Santas with ease. Currently, it's active and available in 35 states as well as Washington, DC. So how did this app come to be?
"A little over 3 years ago, I gave birth to 2 little boys (yes, twins!) and I literally had no idea what I was doing," Jihan humorously wrote on her Kickstarter. "Honestly, I still don't know what I'm doing. But I did know that I wanted to give the boys ample opportunity to grow, explore and take pride in who they are. In their short lives thus far, they've been to festivals, plays, community celebrations and of course, visits to see Santa Claus. Each year, I searched everywhere to find a Black Santa for my boys and had no luck."
She makes a good point. While Santa is often advertised in malls, they never specify. It can be seen as a good thing, showing that Santa comes in all forms. But for families on the search for a specific type of Santa, it can be chaotic.
"This past Christmas I was even more determined to find Black Santa and scoured the internet for hours," she continued. "Low and behold, I found a community charity event 2 days before Christmas by literally calling and talking to a local Black Santa….But this wasn't enough. I wanted to be able to find a Black Santa with ease every year."
"Why do I care so much about finding Black Santa?" she asked. "Because representation matters." And it's true. Black families should be able to find a Santa Claus that looks like them. Santa Claus is all about love and giving. Santas of all races and colors should be much easier to find than they are.
"Find Black Santa's mission is to present children with positive images of people of color in an effort to play a role in building self-esteem and improving overall wellbeing," Jihan wrote. In the app, she's compiled a long directory of available black Santas so that it shouldn't be so difficult for black families each year.
Even better, within the Kickstarter, she announced that she wanted this app to be free. It's even sweeter that she put in all of the development work without expecting a financial kickback. That's how important the Black Santa mission is to her — she knows that having the resources available is the most important part.
But releasing the app was only stage one. Jihan hopes to be able to hire on a lot of black Santas to make them more prominent. She feels like every area should have one that kids can easily visit without having to travel for a ridiculously long time. She's also selling Black Santa merch to further get the word out.
Jihan's app is the first of its kind, but it's not the only one out there that hopes to connect a child to a black Santa. The Ravenel Agency released an app that shows a prerecorded message of Santa Claus, who appears on the screen much like a FaceTime call, "talking" to your child. "Talk to Santa in the comfort of your own homes, without having to face the madness of the malls," the app page states.
Unfortunately, not everyone is ready to see a black Santa. In 2016, The Mall of America hired on a black Santa to meet with the children, and the hiring was unfortunately met with outrage. But you have to admit, it was a step in the right direction — and for those who were outraged, there's no shortage of white Santas out there, so any other mall would have been a fine location had it mattered.
The people who felt outrage seem to have unwittingly learned how it feels for African American families. Even though they've seen white Santas for years, it's still a nice experience to share something with the character. Why should black families constantly be forced to travel when diversity is so important with moving forward?
Jihan didn't just want to make an app. She wanted to make an app that she could be proud of. She's admitted that the launch was glitchy at first, but she didn't let that stop her from creating a project she could stand behind. "The app had some annoying glitches, but I took it in stride and continue to perfect it. I LOVE the app and appreciate the journey so much more," she said on Instagram.
"I’m learning on the fly and absolutely nothing is perfect," she admitted on another post. "I really have to let some things go and not let it discourage me. Like, when the Apple version of the app wasn’t ready last year in time for Christmas." She added, "Technology has glitches and so I just learned to roll with it." It seems like she knows that patience leads to perfection.
Jihan is inspiring for so many reasons. For one, she's proven how powerful women in technology could be. This isn't even her full-time job, nor her area of expertise. She's actually a child and adult psychiatrist by day, meaning that taking on the app is yet another thing to fit into her already busy schedule.
Her twin boys, who helped inspire the app, are currently 4 years old. That means that they're still a bit of a handful as well. Parenting altogether is an unpaid full-time job, meaning that it's likely rare for Jihan to have much free time to herself. But that's how much this mission means to her. She knows how beneficial her app will be.
If you have a good idea like this one, it's worth a shot to flesh it out and see if it could be possible. For Jihan, it took only one very complicated holiday reason to realize that there was a big issue that needed to be addressed. If she was frustrated, other black mothers likely were as well.
As mentioned, the app is free. It's currently got a five-star rating on Apple and is ranked at No. 91 in the broad category of "Entertainment." It's obvious that Jihan put a lot of love into the app, so updates are common, and minor improvements are made quite often.
