If yesterday we looked at Santa's dark side as reflective of the Western tendency toward violence, today we address Santa as expression of libido.
The most egregious display of vulgarity is the Christmas classic "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus," a lurid tale of one child's loss of innocence. I can't even bring myself to repeat the scandalous lyrics (and come on, we know them all anyway). I'm even abstaining from linking to the original 1952 version written by 13-year-old Jimmy Boyd and performed by Spike Jones with little-boy vocals by the same guy who sang "All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth," instead giving not one but two lounge-y variants by Eddie Dunstedter and Jimmy McGriff respectively, which are steamy in their own late-Fifties/early-Sixties leisure suit sort of way:
Ever wondered where Run-DMC sampled that honking riff in "Christmas in Hollis" comes from? Look no further than Clarence Carter's 1968 think piece "Back Door Santa," the flipside to the front-door creep Elvis embodied "Santa Claus Is Back in Town" from his seminal 1957 Christmas album. Together they embraced the Santa-as-Lech motif in rock & roll, stealing all the girls' hearts along with their mothers'.
And of course the ladies loved Santa even before they loved Clarence and Elvis. Eartha Kitt was the first to perform the masterfully sexy purr "Santa Baby" in 1953, though I know it more from Madonna's 1987 version. And finally, it feels only fitting in the circular narrative I've woven here to conclude with pretty-much-forgotten girl group Girls Aloud dissing the dreamboat Santa sugar daddy in favor of, you know, that guy they're dating.