Irina Menzel and Michael Bublé – "Baby, It's Cold Outside" (2014)

I simply must go

(But baby, it's cold outside)

The answer is no 

(But baby, it's cold outside)

Taking your kiddos to visit the local shopping mall to get an overpriced photo with Santa Claus is one of the great American Christmas traditions.

After standing in line for an hour or so, you and your toddler finally get to the front of the line.  You plop cutie-pie on Santa’s lap and step back so a photographer can snap a picture.

But just as he is about to take the photo, your little darling – who is terrified by the hairy and oddly-dressed stranger who is pawing him or her – bursts into tears,  

*     *     *     *     *

The Washington Post recently reported that some nervous Nellies believe that forcing small children to sit on Santa’s lap is not the best way to teach them about consent and unwanted physical contact.  More and more parents are opting to spare their offspring the trauma of being forced to sit on Santa’s lap.  

This could lead to a decline in enrollment at schools like the Charles W. Howard Santa Claus School, which CBS News once called “the Harvard of Santa schools.”

The Howard School, which was founded in 1937, offers three-day classes for wannabe Santa Clauses each October.  The tuition is $525 – or $995 if you want to bring along a Mrs. Claus.

Students learn about the history of Santa Claus, how to apply a wig and beard properly, what the newest toys and gadgets are, and the habits of reindeer (among other things).  They are also given accounting and business tips, and advice on how to market themselves.

Four meals are included at no extra cost – including a dinner at a world-famous chicken restaurant and a graduation banquet.

Click here if you want to sign up for next year’s classes.

*     *     *     *     *

Today’s featured song was written by famed songwriter Frank Loesser, who wrote several Broadway musicals and a number of popular songs, including “Heart and Soul,” “Two Sleepy People,” and “See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have,” which was famously performed by Marlene Dietrich in the 1939 movie, Destry Rides Again).

“Baby, It’s Cold Outside” won the best original song Oscar in 1949, and it’s been a staple on radio stations that play Christmas music for years.

At least it was until a Cleveland station banned it a few weeks ago because “in a world where #MeToo has finally given women the voice they deserve, the song has no place.”

Stations in San Francisco and Denver followed the Cleveland broadcaster’s example – at least until their listeners made their displeasure known.

The Denver station reversed its decision after receiving 15,000 responses to an online poll, the vast majority of which demanded that the song be restored to the station’s playlist.

*     *     *     *     *

“Rape Anthem Masquerading As Christmas Carol” is how one “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” hater characterized it in a tweet several years ago.

But here’s an excerpt from a 2016 Tumblr post by a feminist defender of the song who believes that the tweeter has it all wrong:

Given a cursory glance and applying today’s worldview to the song, yes, you’re right, it absolutely sounds like a rape anthem. 

BUT! Let’s look closer! 

“Hey what’s in this drink” was a stock joke at the time, and the punchline was invariably that there’s actually pretty much nothing in the drink, not even a significant amount of alcohol.

See, this woman is staying late, unchaperoned, at a dude’s house. . . . [S]he’s having a really good time, and she wants to stay, and so she is excusing her uncharacteristically bold behavior (either to the guy or to herself) by blaming it on the drink — unaware that the drink is actually really weak, maybe not even alcoholic at all.  That’s the joke. . . . It is not a joke about how she’s drunk and about to be raped.  It’s a joke about how she’s perfectly sober and about to have awesome consensual sex and use the drink for plausible deniability because she’s living in a society where women aren’t supposed to have sexual agency.

Basically, the song only makes sense in the context of a society in which women are expected to reject men’s advances whether they actually want to or not, and therefore it’s normal and expected for a lady’s gentleman companion to pressure her despite her protests, because . . . if she really wants to stay she won’t be able to justify doing so unless he offers her an excuse other than “I’m staying because I want to.”  (That’s the main theme of the man’s lines in the song, suggesting excuses she can use when people ask later why she spent the night at his house: it was so cold out, there were no cabs available, he simply insisted because he was concerned about my safety in such awful weather, it was perfectly innocent and definitely not about sex at all!) 

So it’s not actually a song about rape – in fact it’s a song about a woman finding a way to exercise sexual agency in a patriarchal society designed to stop her from doing so.

If you say so, sweetie.

*     *     *     *     *

Click here to listen to Irina Menzel and Michael Bublé’s 2014 recording of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”

And click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: