In today's Friday Know-It-All, Editor Ira dives into the origins of the divisive Christmas classic “Santa Baby.”

The odds are that you don't particularly like the song “Santa Baby.” Polls regularly place it amongst the most hated of Christmas songs, and that's a hotly contested category. Something about an adult delivering a suggestively materialistic ode to a cultural embodiment of childhood innocence just seems to hit people the wrong way.

If you're not a fan, you're not alone. Even the fellow who wrote the music didn't much care for it. Personally, I’ve always found it to be a fun, sardonic detour away from the sanctimonious goodwill and jolliness of the rest of the Christmas canon. But like it or not, you're going to hear it multiple times over the coming weeks, so you might as well know a few things about it.

“Santa Baby” wasn’t exactly a work of profound inspiration. It was a paycheck gig for young composer Philip Springer and lyricist Joan Javits in 1953. Springer had recently scored a hit with Connie Haines’ rendition of his song “Teasin’,” with lyrics by future “Damn Yankees” writer Richard Adler. Javits had yet to pen a hit, but she was a staff writer in the Brill Building, New York’s most legendary songwriting hub. Springer had admired Javits’ playful lyrics for Eddy Arnold’s “Second Fling” and was able to talk her into joining up with him as a songwriting duo.

One of their first assignments from the RCA Victor label was to come up with a potential Christmas hit for up-and-coming vocalist Eartha Kitt. It seemed an odd fit on several levels. For one thing, Springer was Jewish. That wasn’t too big a deal, as many classic Christmas tunes have been penned by Jewish songwriters. The larger hurdle in Springer’s mind was that Eartha Kitt had cultivated a sultry, sexually charged image (one of her earliest records was titled “That Bad Eartha”) that clashed with the cozy, family-friendly imagery he associated with Christmas music.

Once Javits landed on a perfect title, though, the pair was off and running. Springer had sought her out as a writing partner because of her knack for sly, suggestive humor. That instinct served them both well as they crafted a sassy story of a bold young woman penning a flirtatious list of luxurious demands from Santa Claus. When it was finished, Springer and Javits agreed that they’d written a Christmas song uniquely suited to Eartha Kitt’s performance persona. They had no illusions that they’d created a hit, let alone an enduring classic.

The folks at RCA, however, recognized what a perfect pairing of artist and material they had on their hands. The label’s in-house arranger Henri René put together some orchestration, Kitt laid down some steamy vocals, and the single was on the shelves in time for the 1953 Christmas season.

“Santa Baby” became a massive hit in spite of — or assisted by — a fair bit of controversy about its unapologetic sexuality. In late 1953, Kitt performed the song at a New York reception for Greece’s royal family. That led to some hand-wringing in the press about presenting such a tawdry performance to such esteemed visitors, which in turn led to a number of radio stations banning the song from the airwaves for the rest of the holiday season. As usual in these stories, that only made it that much more popular.

“Santa Baby” had a massive impact both on American Christmas culture and on the artists who made it. Eartha Kitt was instantly established as a multi-talented performer who could inject sex appeal into even the most wholesome of holidays. She went on to be one of her era’s most celebrated stars of stage and screen. She scored six top 25 hits throughout the ’50s, earned multiple Tony Award nominations, won an Annie for her voice acting in “The Emperor’s New Groove,” and established herself as a fierce voice for equal rights and against the Vietnam War.

Modern audiences may know her best as the third — and best! — Catwoman on the ’60s “Batman” series, but she’s also the only actor to both star in an “Ernest” movie and be labeled a “sadistic nymphomaniac” by the CIA and effectively exiled from the U.S. for making the first lady cry. Honestly, though, Eartha Kitt would be an icon even if the only thing she’d ever made was this video.

Philip Springer, meanwhile, got hired on as a staff songwriter for Joy Music, one of the most prolific publishers in the Brill Building. None of his subsequent output had the staying power of “Santa Baby,” but he built a resume that would be the envy of any composer. While many of his 1950s contemporaries were rendered obsolete by the rise of rock and roll, Springer pivoted cleanly into the new era. He’s composed iconic tunes for crooners like Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, and Frankie Laine as well as soft numbers for rockers like Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard, and Kiki Dee.

Springer never stopped growing and evolving as a composer, either. He went back to college in his 40s to earn a Ph.D. in composition from UCLA, where his dissertation was one of the first-ever orchestral pieces to incorporate the cutting-edge ARP 2600 synthesizer. He’s composed film and theater scores, classical requiems, and experimental electronica albums. He spent a decade as a college professor, taught Paul Simon how to transcribe music, and co-wrote songs with Senator Orrin Hatch. He even went viral during the pandemic (at the time of this writing, he’s still alive and very active at 98) with a stirring solo performance of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.”

Unlike the outgoing Springer, who’s been interviewed about “Santa Baby” and his later career dozens of times, Joan Javits appears to be more of an enigma. Other than a brief interview with a Palm Beach community newspaper that’s mostly about her pets and an even briefer one from a Madonna fanblog, I can’t find many firsthand accounts of her time in the music game. That’s a shame, as her songwriting credits paint a fascinating picture.
Javits also wrote songs for the stage, most notably writing lyrics to the Broadway musical “Young Abe Lincoln.” For the most part, though, she seems to have specialized in comedy and novelty songs, a rare niche for a woman in the world of 1950s songwriting. Along with straightforward numbers for vocalists like Jaye P. Morgan and Hawkshaw Hawkins, she’s credited as the lyricist on such goofy tunes as “That's How the Yodel Was Born,” “I Want Eddie Fisher for Christmas,” and “Crazy Mixed Up Song.” Javits likewise is still writing songs in her 90s, including children’s tunes like “Pauline the Pumpkin,” and seems to be a mainstay on the Palm Beach social scene.

As for “Santa Baby,” it’s been covered hundreds of times by everyone from Taylor Swift to Michael Bublé to the Pussycat Dolls to Laufey. Its popularity waned a bit in the 1970s, when Kitt’s double-entendres felt quaint and outdated, but had a resurgence when Madonna recorded an over-the-top, baby-voiced version in 1987 for the best-selling “A Very Special Christmas” charity compilation.

As befits one of the most divisive songs in the Great American Holiday Songbook, Madonna’s take had just as many detractors as supporters. The former included Eartha Kitt, who once told an audience, “I used to have a lot of fun with this song. And then Madonna sang it.” Everybody’s a critic, obviously, but I’ll go on record as #TeamEartha.