The non-existent War on Christmas vs. actual critical thinking about the holiday season

The "War on Christmas" has become such a cliche that I hope it will fade away. Not likely, I know.

A good introduction to the nonsense behind the non-existent War on Christmas is from 13 years ago: Michelle Goldberg, How the secular humanist grinch didn’t steal Christmas Salon 11/21/2005:

In 1959, the recently formed John Birch Society issued an urgent alert: Christmas was under attack. In a JBS pamphlet titled "There Goes Christmas?!" a writer named Hubert Kregeloh warned, "One of the techniques now being applied by the Reds to weaken the pillar of religion in our country is the drive to take Christ out of Christmas -- to denude the event of its religious meaning." The central front in this perfidious assault was American department stores, where the "Godless UN" was scheming to replace religious decorations with internationalist celebrations of universal brotherhood.

She also notes that Henry Ford was pushing this notion as part of his anti-Semitic conspriacy theory-mongering back in 1921.

But actual critical thinking about Christmas and the cultural rituals that go with it is a good thing. Fantasizing a War on Christmas is not thinking critically.

One song associated with Christmas, though it's technically not about Christmas, is "Baby, It's Cold Outside". As Cammila Collar explains (The Problem with “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” Isn’t Consent. It’s Slut-Shaming. Medium 12/15/2018), "The complaints of skeeviness stem first from the song’s overall tone, in which a man is putting pressure on a woman to engage in assumedly intimate behavior, and second from one now-infamous line in which the woman muses, 'Hey, what’s in this drink?'"

The article embeds this version of the song, which at YouTube carries this description, "Here is composer Frank Loesser (1910-1969) in a duet with his wife Lynn Loesser. The couple original sang the song at Hollywood parties, before it was featured in the Esther Williams film 'Neptune's Daughter'." Frank Loesser-Baby It's Cold Outside

I'll be honest, I've always taken this song as a kind of sophisticated flirtation taking place between two adults - legal drinking age in the US is 21! - who both know what they are doing. And they are indulging in a kind of verbal foreplay. But hearing some critical perspectives on the song has also made me aware of how some people might not see it as quite so cute or harmless.

Cammila Collar uses the song as a way to invite readers to think about the social context which the song implies (emphasis in original):

Well, I’m not the first to point this out, but based on the frequency of people bringing it up, it bears repeating. Consent isn’t actually a problem in “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” because if you pay attention, you’ll notice that the inclination to leave isn’t coming from the woman—it’s coming from the society that wants to control her. ...

What’s happening here isn’t all that hard to figure out, especially if you remember that the song was written in 1944. The woman wants to spend the night with her date. She just knows that if she does, she’ll be scarlet-lettered by her community for having the audacity to make her own premarital sexual choices. She’s not consternating over letting this guy down; she’s consternating over being publicly and privately maligned for doing what she wants. And clearly this is normal for her, as well as for listeners at the time, who were expected to understand all of this and relate. The problem with this song doesn’t have to do with consent. The problem has to do with slut-shaming.

Does it take some of the edge off if the traditional male and female roles are reversed in the song?
Lady Gaga & Joseph Gordon Levitt - Baby, it's cold outside 11/17/2016:

This "morning after" version brings a different dynamic into focus - and highlights a stereotypical post-coital occurrence, even when the romantic evening is fully consensual, Baby, It's Cold Outside: The Morning After (Josh Kessler) 12/19/2018: