This holiday season, people have taken to social media to talk about Christmas songs such as “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Baby, it’s Cold Outside” promoting offensive topics.

The Indianapolis Star newspaper website published an article explaining each song that can be deemed offensive, why people think it is offensive and how it is actually harmless.

According to the article, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” promotes bullying because the other reindeer make fun of Rudolph because of his bright red nose.

This song shows people can come out on top because they are different from everyone else.

In the song “Baby, it’s Cold Outside”, the female singer tries to leave the male singers house, but he keeps asking her to stay because it is cold outside.

People have complained about the song on social media saying it is offensive because it promotes a date rape culture. The following lines from the song are the reasons the classical holiday song is being accused: “Say, what’s in this drink?” said by the female, and “Mind if I move in closer?” said by the male.

When this song was written, the intentions of the song were to show a harmless flirtation between two adults. The song has no intentions of showing that the man was trying to do harmful things to the woman. According to the Indianapolis Star, Frank Loesser, the writer of the song intended it to be sung by his wife and himself. He wanted her to stay because no one wants their significant other to leave after spending time together.

In the song “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” people say the song is disrespectful and callous because the grandma had too much to drink and forgot to take her medication, which caused her to wander off.

This is a fun song for families to sing together, and it is a fictional storyline. In the song, the family wears black on Christmas and mourns the loss of the grandmother. The family did care that the grandmother had been ran over.

Overall, I think the complaints against the songs are silly and a waste of time. Harmful intentions are not behind these songs and were not meant to be harmful when they were written. Many of them are decades old and times have changed and feelings have changed on topics. I understand that people could find things offensive now that were not back then, but all in all these songs are harmless, clean and not offensive compared to many songs today that people listen to.