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While many applauded the Mall of America for hiring its first Black Santa in its 24-year-history, as expected, salty white tears were shed all over the Internet for the blackening of the iconic holiday legend.

Folks were so appalled by the mall tapping Larry Jefferson-Gamble to serve as Santa for a mere four days that the Minneapolis Star-Tribune had to turn off the comments section in an earlier report about Gamble’s hiring.

Looks like we had to turn comments off on story about Mall of America’s first black Santa. Merry Christmas everyone!” Scott Gillespie wrote.

But the misplaced anger didn’t stop with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s article—it bubbled over onto Twitter and other forms of social media.

Raw Story recently collected some of the worst of the worst tweets that included folks screaming that “SANTA IS WHITE,” that the very idea of reimagining of Santa as Black is in fact “racist” and that this is all some leftist conspiracy.  A boycott of the mall has even been called.

Yeah—they really tried it.

As HelloBeautiful previously reported, Jefferson-Gamble said that he just “[enjoys] making people smile and be happy. During the holidays, people go through a lot.”

He added that he understands what his very presence means to children of color.

Just Saturday, I was doing an event, and one child said, ‘Santa, you’re brown,’” he recently recalled on CBS Minnesota. “And I said, ‘Yes, I am, but Santa comes in many different colors.’ He said, ‘Oh,’ so I gave him a candy cane, he ran off with other kids.”

It gives them something to identity with,” Jefferson-Gambler says, “but Santa is still just Santa…kids love Santa no matter what color you are.

Seriously, how you cannot just love this man!

Thankfully, there was a backlash to the backlash brilliantly played out on Twitter:

 

In the end, this Tweet perfectly sums this entire fake controversy:

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