We're talking about the jolly, rosy-cheeked, bewhiskered chap in the red suit with white trim who lives at the North Pole with Mrs Claus and a bunch of elves, and each Christmas Eve sets off in a sleigh pulled by eight flying reindeer to deliver presents to kiddies the world over.
When you look at it like that, discussing Santa's skin colour is like debating whether the Fairy Godmother's had a facelift.
The Santa Claus narrative was largely created by American academic and theologian Clement Clarke Moore in his 1823 poem A Visit from St Nicholas. ("Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' the house/Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.")
Our conception of Santa is largely based on an 1881 drawing by the great cartoonist Thomas Nast.
Kelly's response to the ensuing ridicule was to claim her comments were "tongue in cheek".
We hear this line so often from shock jocks and high profile media types who've copped flak for some absurd or offensive outburst that you half-suspect they're taught the "I was only joking" defence at broadcasting school.
It's an article of faith at Fox that attack is the best form of defence, so having gone to some lengths to plant the idea of a white Santa in the collective consciousness of American children, Kelly then accused her critics of "race baiting".
Across the Atlantic Ocean, a different Santa storm blew up after an Anglican vicar "questioned the existence" of Santa Claus in a talk to primary school children.
Well, that was how the Daily Telegraph reported it, but Reverend Simon Tattum-Brown did no such thing.
Rather than suggest that Santa's existence was up for debate, he tipped a large bucket of icy water over the very idea that there was or ever had been such a person.
He told pupils at Charter Primary in Wiltshire that the Santa myth went back to a fourth century bishop in what is now Turkey, who supposedly used the power of prayer to resurrect three children killed by a butcher who planned to cure them in a barrel and sell them as ham.
The children, aged 5 to 11, were apparently left "shell-shocked".
The charitably inclined might point out that at least the vicar didn't introduce Krampus, the Germanic anti-Santa, a goat-demon that appears every yuletide to beat naughty children with a chain and carry them off to the underworld in a sack. And he did manage to get in a reference to traditional Christmas fare - turkey and ham.
Tattum-Brown apologised, explaining that he went off-message because of having to speak off the cuff due to an unspecified technical glitch.
This strikes me as a much more interesting controversy than the row over Santa's ethnicity.
I think most people would take the view that it's up to parents to break it to their kids that Santa isn't a real person or, better yet, let them figure it out for themselves.
But, on the other hand, should parents actively encourage their children to believe in Santa Claus? And if and when they do, to what extent are other adults obliged to play along with the pretence?
And some might ask where a clergyman, who on a weekly basis rehashes biblical tall tales of touch healing, resurrection, turning water into wine and feeding 5000 people with a few loaves and fishes, gets off pouring scorn on the notion of a fat man with a goody bag over his shoulder slipping down chimneys on Christmas Eve.
Whoever and whatever you choose to believe in, I wish you a very happy Christmas.
