“Santa Baby” is clearly divisive—a recent survey showed it to be the least loved Christmas song. But “Santa Baby” wasn’t Eartha Kitt’s only Christmas song, and it gains vital context and nuance when heard next to her other holiday tunes.
in 2020, with Julia Cornick writing, “[Kitt] was ahead of her time when it came to sex positivity during the ’50s and ’60s, embracing ‘her persona as a gold-digger who renders men into helpless little boys with her sexual power.’”showed it to be the least loved Christmas song, perhaps because studies show money to be one of the most uncomfortable topics for Americans to talk about. It’s certainly central to “Santa Baby,” which still scandalizes almost 70 years later.
The relationship between wealth and sexuality was the subtext of many of her songs, including “Monotonous,” her signature number from, the Broadway show that launched Kitt. In it, she complained about her humdrum life as rich men bought her elaborate, expensive gifts: “I met a rather amusing fool while on my way to Istanbul / He bought me the Black Sea for my swimming pool. Monotonous.”
As Kitt explained in an NPR interview in 2007, “The song says, ‘Santa Baby, slip a sable under the tree.’ Well, all the men who have done that with me never stayed with me.” “Santa Baby” left these questions hanging, but a year later, we learned that things didn’t work out as planned for our sultry protagonist.
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