Is ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ a cute holiday tune? Or just creepy? — POLL

Indoors, it’s much hotter, chestnuts roasting on the stoked flames of so much fiery rhetoric.

’Tis the season we must get into an annual Christmas debate.

Now, we’re not alluding to the passionate back-and-forth that erupts this time of year about whether the presents under the tree are a reflection of how good or bad you’ve been over the past 12 months or merely a consequence of whether or not Dad was able to hit the over in the Packers game.

No, we’re talking about the second-most-spirited Yuletide argument that’s broken out in recent times: whether seasonal standard “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is an innocuous jazz lite truffle from a bygone era or a song with uncomfortable implications of rape.

Penned in 1944 by songwriter Frank Loesser, who wrote the music for Broadway hits such as “Guys and Dolls” and “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” the song is a call-and-response duet revolving around a man trying to sweet talk a lady into staying at his place just a little longer and her reaction to his advances.

Loesser originally performed the song with his wife, Lynn Garland, at holiday cocktail parties before it became an enduring hit that won him an Academy Award in 1949 after being featured in the film “Neptune’s Daughter.”

Since then, it’s been covered countless times by the likes of Ray Charles and Betty Carter, Rod Stewart and Dolly Parton, Norah Jones and Willie Nelson and, perhaps most memorably, Miss Piggy and Michael Buble.

And yet, despite its lasting popularity, the song has sparked a blaze of controversy in recent years, inspiring think pieces and critical essays in media outlets such as Salon, The Daily Beast, The Washington Post and plenty of other publications.

Why?

On the surface, “Baby” doesn’t elicit the kind of knee-jerk condemnation as Tiny Tim’s well-meaning, but clumsily titled “Santa Claus Has Got the AIDS This Year” or Insane Clown Posse’s minorly less edifying “Santa’s a Fat (Expletive).”

Instead, it’s the tune’s subtext that has caused it to come under fire: “The answer is ‘no,’ ” the song’s female protagonist tells ol’ loverboy at one point when he implores her not to leave, a refusal that he ignores.

We all know that not taking “no” for an answer is a big no-no in itself.

“What’s in my drink?” she also asks, raising the possibility that she’s been slipped a Mickey, in the opinion of some.

This is where things get a little silly.

Granted, a woman posing this question nowadays can have serious implications because of the ugly rise of the date rape drug Rohypnol, but clearly these connotations weren’t intended when the song was written.

Rohypnol didn’t hit shelves until the ’70s and really only became a tool of abuse two decades after that.

Given the circumstances, it’s pretty clear that the woman in the song is commenting on the fact that there’s alcohol in her drink, not a date rape drug that had yet to be invented.

Now, perhaps you could still take issue with a man attempting to weaken a woman’s resolve with booze and also make the point that some of these lyrics could send the wrong message to listeners if stripped of their context.

But while acknowledging that clear intentions can still beget murky results sometimes, there’s a big difference between pointing out pop culture’s sins of the past and attempting to retrofit a modern perspective on the artistic expressions of another era, as is the case here.

All art is a reflection of who we are at a given point in time, and that reflection needs to remain undistorted, to convey an accurate picture of who we were en route to becoming who we are.

To banish “Baby” from the Christmas canon because it’s perceived — accurately or not — as being predatorial is the same as scrubbing “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” of the n-word: It negates the past, which should inform the present, not be shaded into different meanings depending on the times.

Besides, if you really must get in a dither about this song, it’s not the strained implications of sexual assault that should be bothersome; it’s how female sexuality is repressed, stigmatized. In the song, the woman is having a good time and wants to stay (“I wish I knew how to break this spell”) but protests not because she thinks her would-be Casanova is a total creeper, but because she’s concerned how she’ll be viewed if she succumbs to her passions, because of what “the neighbors might think.” “There’s bound to be talk tomorrow / At least there will be plenty implied,” if she follows her desires.

Here’s the deal, though: If something requires re-contextualization to provoke outrage, said outrage is probably not worth provoking.

And that’s what any criticism of the song in question is posited upon.

So, go ahead, baby, sing the tune if you feel like it.

Read more from Jason Bracelin at reviewjournal.com. Contact him at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com and follow @JasonBracelin on Twitter.