Cracking the Ginger Gene

Red Hair. It has been mystified, vilified and sometimes revered over the centuries. It's rarity and charm almost always makes people turn around and catch another glimpse of someone with red hair passing by. They say red haired people only make up about 2% of the population, which makes me lucky, because I have two red haired sons. Many people forget that although rare, there are many different shades of red from many different places on our planet. Being red haired doesn't necessarily mean the lightest shade of pale skin. My oldest son has deep brown eyes and copper colored hair with skin that tans easily. My youngest has strawberry red hair with light brown eyes and slightly lighter skin that burns easier in the sun. There are black people, east Asian, southeast Asian, and Middle eastern, Mediterranean people with red hair. Very often, people see my children and tell us they also had red hair when they were young or that they know someone who has a child with red hair when neither parent does. They always ask us where the red hair comes from.

Let's delve deeper into the facts about red hair then. Unlike other hair colors, red hair comes from a mutation of the Melanocortin 1 receptor gene (MC1R) which both parents have to have in order to pass it down to their offspring. In our case, my husband has both darker hair and skin but the red hair is very clear in his beard and freckles. My own hair is a lighter brown tinged with red, paired with pale skin with freckles that burns easily in the sun. Eastern and south eastern Asians as well as Middle eastern and Mediterranean people can have red hair since many carry the mutation MC1R. This is because red hair actually originated from Central Asia almost 100 000 years ago. These people then migrated to other areas due to the rise of herding. The further north they went through the mountains, the less light they had from the sun to develop vitamin D and so their skin and hair adapted and became lighter. That is when the mutated gene MC1R occurred and their hair became a vibrant red. These red haired tribes continued to migrate through the ages through the Balkans and central to western Europe where they have become concentrated in larger numbers where the climate suits their melanin challenged skin.

After further research on this I looked into people of African descent with red hair. For those parents where the MC1R gene is not present, it is most likely another mutation that in basic terms is a form of albinism. This means there is a mutation in a gene called TYRP1 (which brings all enzymes together to make brown melanin) and the result is red hair.

Unfortunately, red haired people are traditionally made fun of and historically were even deemed as witches, vampires and just plain bringers of bad luck in many different cultures. In fact, many of those who were persecuted in the middle ages and afterwards, and condemned to the fires or drowned, had red hair. Ancient Egyptians buried them alive as a sacrifice to the gods to avoid bad luck, even though studies show red pgiment in the hair of some mummified pharaohs. Ancient Greeks, though celebrated in life, burned the corpses of redheads believing after death they would turn into fanged demons or vampires. The Catholic church also had an aversion to red haired people and as a result, rarely did they ever accept them into the order (which really, in light of all the controversies, doesn't sound like such a punishment). Judas was often depicted as red haired and legends began of him becoming the first vampire after committing suicide following his betrayal of Jesus. Later on during the Spanish Inquisition, red haired people were labelled "Red Jews" and were persecuted in the idea that they were descendants of Judas. Even various other groups of people throughout Europe such as the Ashkenazi Jewish people and Turkic Khazars (who had adopted Judaism) where redheads were fairly common, were also labelled as "Red Jews". In contrast, the Ancient Romans considered red haired slaves to be lucky and Thracians, which were an Indo-European tribe and predominantly red haired, celebrated red hair.

Also, we simply can't talk about redheads without looking at all the names that have been used to describe them. The first that comes to mind is "Ginger". The verdict is still out on if Ginger has a negative connotation or not and it all just boils down to geography and of course and more importantly, intent. Some even say calling red haired people Ginger might have started from Britain's occupation of Malaysia where a certain plant called the Red Ginger plant grows. British visitors to the area were impressed and fascinated by the plant's bright red color and used it to nickname red haired people. Then there is also the idea that it might have been the influence of the character Ginger from the 1960's American television show Gilligan's Island who was a beautiful red head. In any case, it seems more acceptable to use than a host of other derogatory words that we won't mention out of sensitivity to our redhead friends who have already gone through enough.

Although my boys do not possess the rarest color combination of red hair with blue eyes (aka red hair unicorn), my little red haired lovelies follow a few of the habitual traits associated with red hair. Little freckles sprinkled all over their noses and cheeks, a tolerance to pain and anesthesia that exceeds the norm and feisty personalities (though this particular point has not been proven anyway) that test my patience and cause my own somewhat red tinged hair to go white. Apparently, if I was a full on red head then I would not have to worry so much about going grey. It seems that red hair takes longer to go white!

Finally, to my last point. Although red hair is rare, it is not disappearing. As long as red heads and their red-headed recessive gene carriers keep spreading the love around they will not go extinct contrary to some people's belief. And this makes me happy because although I may be biased, I think red hair is beautiful AND lucky!