“Drumbeat” might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it isn’t hard to find detractors on social media: In particular, the drumbeat against “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is getting too loud to ignore. In 2017, America woke up to the systemic sexual predation that pervades every corner of society, but some of our Christmas carols are stuck in the past. “Is this the year we finally retire ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’?” wrote USA Today writer Mary Nahorniak toward the end of 2017, a year brimming with revelations of sexual misbehavior by powerful men: “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” occupies a unique spot in the holiday music canon in two respects: one, it’s a call-and-response duet in which one party tries to seduce the other over the latter’s apparent objections and two, it has gone in a few short decades from being a beloved “fireside couch cuddler” (as one reviewer put it) to being reviled as a so-called “date-rape anthem.” At least two of them, besides conjuring up nostalgic scenes of wintriness, are actually love songs: the warm, fuzzy “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” and its naughtier cousin, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”
Some of the best known examples, in fact, are about the weather (“Winter Wonderland,” “Sleigh Ride,” and “Jingle Bells” come to mind). As anyone who has spent the better part of a day listening to Christmas songs while compiling a playlist can attest, not all of them are about Christmas.
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