Christmas is almost upon us, and as is customary its musical outriders have now been harrying the airwaves for weeks. Among the most lyrically perplexing of these is ‘Santa Baby’, the classic version of which was sung by Eartha Kitt, although it has been covered many times by artists including Taylor Swift, Wolf Alice and (with a significant reworking of the lyrics) Michael Bublé. Ostensibly the song is a love song addressed to Santa, in which someone who has been a faithful partner to him over the past year demands a series of extravagant gifts and then eventually at least the promise of marriage, with the implication that if he doesn’t stump up then their fidelity can no longer be counted upon. It’s possible that it’s not really addressed to Santa, and this is just a seasonal metaphor in line with the demand for gifts in exchange for good behaviour. Either way, what kind of relationship is this? One of the demands is for the deed to a platinum mine! Surely the surface reading is not the whole story.
The interpretive key to the true meaning is in the title. Who is this “Santa baby”? It’s a Christmas song, and so a natural answer presents itself: the santa baby is the baby Jesus. “Santa” means “holy”, and the Christ child is famously referred to as a “holy infant” in the classic carol ‘Silent Night’; once it is pointed out the connection becomes unignorable. With this interpretation in hand, other lines begin to make more sense. The demand for marriage is a clear reference to the old idea of the Church as the Bride of Christ. “I believe in you” is self-explanatory. “Sign your X on the line” is a reference to Christ’s ultimate gift to humankind on the Cross, “been an angel all year” is not especially deep but offers additional confirmation of the song’s theological meaning for anyone still hesitant. “Think of all the fun I've missed/
Think of all the fellas that I haven't kissed” can be taken literally as a reference to the faithful believer adhering to the church’s teachings regarding sexual ethics but I think a more fruitful interpretation of this line is as a metaphor for all the graven images the singer hasn’t made unto themselves and before which they haven’t been bowing down. In any case, the song is a plea to Jesus from a faithful believer, asking for their reward. To feel hard done by in this way may not be the most noble sentiment but it is a perennially relatable one, having clear resonances with the book of Job.
Equipped with our new understanding of the original, let’s turn to Michael Bublé’s controversial reimagining of the song. The most common complaint against it is that he mostly addresses Santa as “Santa buddy” or “Santa pally” rather than “Santa baby”, which gives the impression that he’s worried that if he, a man, addressed Santa, also a man, as “baby” that would make him seem gay. We expect better than that kind of homophobic cowardice from a song recorded in 2011. Since the song is superficially a love song to Santa and widely read as such, I think this feature of the song was clearly foreseeable and probably intentional, and the standard critique of it is valid. But Bublé is clearly also aware of the true meaning of the song and in his reworking of the lyrics he develops it into the radical theological message that we’ll now explore.
Baby, buddy, pally, Poppy. Do you see where he's going with this? Well, Santa baby is the baby Jesus, as we’ve already established. It doesn’t take any great insight to realize that Santa Poppy is God the Father. This leaves Santa buddy (and its synonym Santa pally) referring to the Holy Spirit. And with this simple reasoning we unlock Bublé’s message: the proper relationship between humans and the Holy Spirit is one of friendship. Norman Greenbaum’s classic contribution to theological pop music “Spirit in the Sky” also says “I’ve got a friend in Jesus”, but it’s a throwaway line that can easily be read as saying that Jesus is on his side, whereas the fact that Bublé really is talking about friendship is hammered home repeatedly throughout the song, including him switching to “pally” for the benefit of the inattentive listeners in the back.
But can one truly be friends with God? It would certainly not be a friendship of equals, and the unequal nature of that friendship is of course laid bare in the song. But even allowing for great inequalities, the relationship of total dependence between God the Father and creation seems to make friendship impossible, and while Jesus had mortal friends during his time on Earth, the inequality is similarly great now that he sits in glory at the right hand of the Father. But the Holy Spirit’s role has always been more mysterious than that of the other two persons, and its proceeding from the Father and the Son gives it a (perhaps undue) sense of being somehow least among equals. Perhaps this is someone we can truly be friends with.
It won’t be easy, but Bublé never said it would be easy. And the potential payoff is high. What’s the payoff? Bublé gives us a further clue with the gifts he mentions in the song. There are seven of them, corresponding to the seven gifts of the spirit:
Gifts for Bublé Gifts of the Spirit
Rolex Wisdom
’65 convertible, steel blue Understanding
Yacht Counsel
Deed to a platinum mine Fortitude
Canucks tickets Knowledge
Mercedes decorations Piety
Cold hard cash Fear of the Lord
I’ve listed Bublé’s gifts in the order they appear in the song and the gifts of the Spirit in their traditional order, but the mapping from one list to the other is other is straightforward and I leave it as an edifying exercise for the reader.
So there we have it: Bublé’s contention is that the Holy Spirit is or at least can and should be truly and literally our friend, and it is in its capacity as our friend that it gives us its gifts. What can we give it in return, poor as we are? Fortunately, since the Holy Spirit is God, it is entirely self-sufficient and has no need of anything we might give it, or indeed of anything else. But we can give it something anyway, and Bublé’s suggestion can’t really be topped. This Christmas, for the Holy Spirit and indeed for all your friends, just be an awful good guy.
