Abhiroop Das
Helmed by Mike Rohl, Netflix’s ‘My Secret Santa‘ tells the story of Taylor Jacobson, a loving single mother who is unceremoniously fired from her job at the very start of the Christmas season. Just when she is processing this change in her life, her daughter, Zoey, is accepted into the prestigious Sun Peak Snowboarding Academy. However, with the enormous tuition fee feeling like an insurmountable wall, Taylor is forced to get creative. While the academy offers a 50% discount for employees of the neighboring Sun Peak Resorts, the only vacancy they have is that of a professional Santa.
Desperate to make her daughter’s dream a reality, Taylor transforms into Santa herself, complete with a padded body suit, facial prosthetics, and a fake snowy beard. While she pretends to be a male Saint Nicholas, we also learn that she was, at one point, a local music legend, fronting the now-forgotten punk rock band, Screaming Kittens. As her adventures in this Christmas romance movie get more intense, the past comes knocking as well, challenging her to shed her limitations and give her life a fresh start.
A Real-Life Female Kris Kringle Might Have Inspired Taylor’s Story in My Secret Santa
While Taylor Jacobson is a fictional character crafted by writers Ron Oliver and Carley Smale, she is not without historical precedents. In real life, Nancy Fulford made headlines in November of 1979 when she took on the role of a professional Santa at the Morningside Mall in Scarborough, Ontario. She reportedly used a blend of body stuffing, wigs, fake beards, prosthetics, and makeup to achieve the look, along with Santa’s iconic velvet clothes and cap. In an interview with the Toronto Star, she confirmed that most of the parents and children could not tell the difference. However, when some customers and mall operatives took offense at possibly preconceived biases about gender, she was fired two days into the job. In response, Fulford reportedly took up the matter at the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and later that year, was hired by a different store to play Santa once again, this time without any makeup or prosthetics concealing her true identity.
Although Taylor’s journey of pretending to be Santa has a number of similarities with Fulford’s story, given their use of elaborate prosthetics and a body suit, Taylor’s story is tailored to the narrative of ‘My Secret Santa.’ Her reasons to become Santa, as well as her conclusion, are both mapped out by the creative team of the movie, making its connection to the true story superficial at best. As such, it is more likely that Fulford’s story served as a vague reference point for Taylor’s fictional character, potentially influencing the premise, if not its finer details. To that end, actor Alexandra Breckenridge’s own input as an artist was also integral, as she donned the Santa suit for upwards of 13 hours at a time during the filming of the movie. She was reportedly also inspired by ‘The Santa Clause,’ and how actor Tim Allen approached the character of Saint Nicholas and his mannerisms, to which she added her own spin.
Screaming Kittens is Likely a Collage of Various Iconic Teen Bands
Being Santa is just one half of Taylor’s arc in the movie, as her identity as a former punk rockstar also adds an emotional wavelength to the narrative. Taylor’s indie punk band, Screaming Kittens, is a fictional creation by writers Ron Oliver and Carly Smale, specifically designed to enrich the story. However, given what we know about the sleeper hit band, it is possible that real-life music groups of a similar nature were used as a source of inspiration. While Screaming Kittens does appear to share its name with a real-life band by an artist named Jason Bennet, information on the band and its music is scarce. Furthermore, given that the band was conceptualized somewhere around February 2025, it is unlikely to have any link to the fictional band depicted in the movie. Instead, it is more probable that Screaming Kittens is a composite creation based on the aesthetics of indie bands over the years, with no one music group directly influencing it.
In the movie, Screaming Kitten falls apart in part due to Taylor, who is the lead singer, dropping out. While opening up to Matthew, she reveals that while music has always been her true calling, the mounting burdens of adulthood forced her to quit. Later in the story, Taylor’s passion for music is reignited, and she finds herself taking over the stage as a rock star once again. Although this entire beat is most likely created from scratch by the writing team, female-fronted indie punk bands are not an uncommon occurrence. Bands such as Land of Talk, Mother Mother, and Hey Ocean! are amongst the most iconic female-fronted music groups, and they all kicked off when the core members were in their teens. Thus, while Screaming Kittens is a distinctly fictional band, its construction might have been informed by the real-life indie music scene.
Read More: Do Taylor and Matthew End up Together in My Secret Santa?
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