We spoke to Santa’s Husband – and its author

This tweet about a gay, black Santa became a children’s book in under 18 minutes.

In late 2016, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert writer Daniel Kibblesmith and his then-fiancée, author Jennifer Wright, joked that they had “decided our future child will only know about Black Santa.

“If they see a white one we’ll say ‘That’s his husband’”.

18 minutes later, illustrator A.P. Quach tweeted in reply: “boom. new children’s book.”

In what was a festive miracle of the digital age, it went from a joke to an idea, to a collaboration and concept art to a book deal – and then finally, to an actual children’s book.

All from one Twitter thread.

All in under a year.

And just in time for Christmas.

With Kibblesmith as its author and Quach as its illustrator, Santa’s Husband creates a very different image of Santa. The book is on sale on Amazon UK and Amazon US.

No longer is he the white, bearded, shopping mall-visiting man which most people know him as.

Instead, that’s Santa’s husband.

The real Santa is black and just as bearded, and they’re in a happy relationship together.

Speaking to PinkNews, Kibblesmith said that as he and his literary agent watched the tweet go viral, “we all realised that this was something we could actually make happen for real, and people would be excited about it.”