Santa Claus may be black, white, male, female - and might not even arrive on Christmas Eve - but somehow the most unlikely variations fail to dent children's trust in this most powerful of fairy tales.
For generations, children have loved to believe. One 80-year-old woman recalls her childhood in rural Aberdeenshire. 'We certainly believed in Santa Claus, but New Year was the big thing for us, and Santa came on Hogmanay.' There's little to choose between that useful blending of Santa into Scottish tradition and the experience of 21st century Muslim children in a Birmingham nursery where, over the past few years, they have had a succession of Asian, Indian, male and female Santas - and been unswervingly convinced by all of them.
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