tributary

The song “Santa Baby” enjoys the world’s record for the creepiest Christmas song extant. I shan’t argue the point. One can hardly imagine an ickier song coming along to disturb posterity.

I have not researched who exactly claims responsibility for this song. The less said about the perps the better. Somebody, clearly, consciously or not, had thoughts to the tune of “I have some weird, creepy feelings about Christmas. I think I will write a song.” Nothing along the way came to the point of examination.

“Santa Baby”, both in its words and its performance, oozes from a cultural cue of utter unrefinement. It packs a sexuality that completely lacks circumspection. The damn song advances a gross demand with the purest disregard for the social embrace.

Do you say “What?” Listen to the song. The characters in it nestle in an infantile release that resembles, really, the easy action of wetting diapers. Do I overblow the situation? I don’t think so.

For most people, Christmas presents a spiritual opportunity. I don’t mean in the religious sense severely, but certainly a cultural connection exists for many. I’m not ignoring the advancing downside of the holiday, just marking the general positive push it wants to establish, however bludgeonly. The holiday’s primitive (so called) antecedents attempted to satisfy an important, dire even, need, facing death and disintegration. And it did so in a way recognizable and acceptable to the many.

“Santa Baby” suggests something verging on psychotic. It can express nothing but need of the narrowest focus, unencumbered by regard. It pictures a hell just as devastating as Dante could imagine. There, I said it.

The song excises all moral tendering for the excitement of greed. And the song’s perps expect auditors to laugh at the empty cause. Most people, I imagine, just want to say: don’t be silly. It is a silliness that cannot meet your eyes.