Your Christmas Song is Problematic

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Originating from the musical hit Meet Me in St. Louis, Judy Garland’s take was melancholy, bittersweet and aching. Frank Sinatra came along and gutted the sentiment from the song, making it peppy and commercial. The original version is much better, as it strikes a balance between well-wishing and poignancy. Christmas isn’t a happy time for everyone, and sometimes you’ve got to fake it through. Here’s the song–the anthem–to push you through.

Mele Kalikimaka

Mele Kalikimaka is how you say Merry Christmas in Hawai'ian. It is also how you graft a Western holiday tradition onto a kingdom that was aggressively and brutally annexed by the United States. This song is about as sensitive as singing a Fourth of July song in Cherokee.

I’ll Be Home for Christmas

Another bittersweet ditty–this one originating from Bing Crosby–this song grew out of the US being actively engaged in a war. The song is, on a purely technical level, quite the gut punch with its final line:

I’ll be home for Christmas

If only in my dreams

Obviously, our men and women overseas in the European and Japanese theaters of war couldn’t come home for Christmas. Then again, we went on to mercilessly slaughter hundreds of thousands of German and Japanese citizens in questionable campaigns to force fascist governments to capitulate, so I think I care less about being home for Christmas than I do about decades of radiation poisoning.

I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

I understand that it might be shocking to see your childhood hero doing something questionable. Infidelity, on your mother’s part, is going to upset a child–but this sociopath’s gleeful ruminations on the domestic strife to come is beyond upsetting in the song. It makes me wonder if the child is complicit in the abuse heaped upon his mother.



Fairytale of New York

The song itself is delightfully trashy between two drunks running through New York City. However, in the song, they use the slurs slut and faggot which apparently means a lazy person in Ireland. Nonetheless, it is aired unedited in countries where the term does not mean a lazy person, and there was in fact a huge outcry in the UK in 2007 when the BBC tried to censor the term.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

This ditty is based on a coloring book that was written and produced as an in-house giveaway for Montgomery Ward by Robert L. May, a Jewish copywriter from New York. He’s the great-uncle of the ignominious economist Steven Levitt of Freakonomics and abortion-killed-all-black-criminals fame. Conceived solely as a consumer product, it took on a life of its own and Gene Autry penned a tune 10 years later. That in turn spawned specials and other products, which is why corporations battle annually to create new holiday traditions like Elf on the Shelf, Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey, and Olive the Other Reindeer.

The theme is of course problematic enough: you have a latent talent that people simply don’t appreciate, and once you’re recognized for it you will rule them all. This is dark, Ayn Rand shit. Not only that, but Santa openly condoned the reindeer constantly bullying Rudolph. He’s lucky that he didn’t find the poor thing hanging by his neck from the stable rafters one day.

Logistically, it makes no sense. Santa delivers presents to children all over the world in a single night and operates on magic. Does he have no way of seeing through fog?

Do They Know It’s Christmas?

Yes. There are Christians in the continent of Africa. Ethiopia specifically has a large Christian population. So stop your white man’s burden bullshit.

Santa Baby

This is THE worst Christmas song, but not the worst song on this list. Not only is this about an exploitative sugar daddy relationship wherein the singer wants to be rewarded simply for not fucking around on Uncle Pennybags, the demands are almost Bond-like in their exorbitance. Cars, Tiffany ornaments, and checks are one thing, but the songstress demands a platinum mine. I guarantee you that platinum mine is nestled deep in Africa, so now we’re working with conflict minerals. This song is twistedly cynical and nakedly consumerist.

Worse yet, Michael Bublé penned a version that puts the no in no homo. He replaces terms of endearment with pally and buddy, and he asks for more macho gifts–except, of course, for the platinum mine.



Baby, It’s Cold Outside

A non-Christmas seasonal song about date rape is bad enough, of course, but the history of this song makes it take the cake. Not only did Frank Loesser sell this song to MGM in 1948, but he did so over the protestations of his wife, who had performed it numerous times with him and was under the impression it was not for sale.

It also inadvertently birthed Al Qaeda. Sayyid Qutb, upon viewing a party in which the song was performed, returned to Egypt describing Americans as ”numb to faith in religion, faith in art, and faith in spiritual values altogether” which I suppose can pretty well sum up a song about taking sexual advantage of a date during the holidays. His brother spread his ideas as a professor in Saudi Arabia, who taught Ayman al-Zawahiri, otherwise known as Osama bin Laden’s mentor.