Baby, there are whiny snowflakes outside...
THANK goodness that’s over. Time to put away the Halloween costumes, chop up the pumpkins for a nice pot of soup and quietly scoff the rest of the miniature Snickers in front of Strictly.
Once upon a time, there was something of a pregnant pause around this time of year. There would be the odd bonfire maybe, and a lot of muttering about the nights drawing in. But Christmas? Pfft. That was ages away.
No longer. Somewhere in a shop near you, a string of pumpkin-shaped bunting is being packed away in a box, only to be replaced by a garish string of laughing Santas and a neon flashing tree that plays Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree on a continuous loop.
I’ve seen it already. Only yesterday I walked past a popular Glasgow watering hole that has decorated its entire entrance with baubles, wreaths and tinsel, despite its outdoor tables still inexplicably cluttering up the pavement. Make up your minds, chaps.
Yet strangely, while Christmas seems to come earlier each year, what we’re allowed to celebrate as part of the festivities appears to be narrowing.
Exhibit A: Baby It’s Cold Outside, a classic Christmas song that has been on regular festive playlists since it was written back in 1944. So far, so what, you may think.
Except that in recent years, the track has been deemed problematic. Its lyrics could be read as a man coercing a woman into a sexual encounter she is uncomfortable with, you see. And in this day and age, that is verboten.
The line that is particularly getting people’s backs up is, ‘Say what’s in this drink?’, with the man’s response, ‘No cabs to be had out there’, the insinuation being that the woman has had her drink spiked.
One writer even went so far in 2012 to describe it as a ‘date-rape anthem’.
I have a number of issues with this, the first being that it’s complete rubbish. Leaving aside the fact that Rohypnol wasn’t even invented until the 1960s, and that drink spiking is a modern phenomenon unheard of in the 1940s, Baby It’s Cold Outside was actually rather ahead of its time.
Most interpretations suggest that the woman actually wanted to stay, but knew that society would deem her a ‘loose’ woman were she to do so. Her resistance then, is token, and in the song, rather knowing. If anything it’s a song about female empowerment, over-riding the norms of the day.
None of that has stopped singer-songwriter John Legend from rewriting the song for Generation Woke, however.
In a duet with American Idol singer Kelly Clarkson the ‘problematic’ line has been replaced with: ‘If I have one more drink?... It’s your body, and your choice.’
Sigh. Last year, the daughter of Dean Martin criticised the decision by a number of radio stations to take his version of Baby It’s Cold Outside off the air, saying: ‘It’s a sweet, flirty, fun holiday song... I know my dad would be going insane right now.’
HE’S not the only one. But to be honest, I don’t know why I’m surprised. Only yesterday a 22-year-old Instagrammer called Freddie Bentley (nope, me neither) appeared on Good Morning Britain to declare that learning about the Second World War in school could affect young people’s mental health and teachers should scale it back.
Really? Is this where we are now? Because much as these young millennials might try to tell us this is all about respect and mental health, what we’re really talking about is censorship.
And surely in a woke, liberal world, that is far more problematic.