Not necessarily; he could have just been taking a professional interest and trying to drum up a little business. It’s like if they’d imagined the snowman was an insurance salesman and then he asks if they’re insured.
[quote=“Anonymous_Coward, post:15, topic:804843”]
That reminds me of a skit by a Canadian comedy group called “The Frantics”
Everything is a dirty word if you say it right!
[/QUOTE] And don't even get them started on [architecture](https://youtu.be/svLig831Q_o).Jesus. :eek: I’m really sorry to hear that. I hope you have had the opportunity for some serious therapy, or else you are just naturally tough enough to rebound from such an upbringing!
I always took it for date rape, what with roofie mentioned in the song. (Obviously, the line was more intended about him spiking her drink with more booze, but it comes across as roofied now.)
Oh, it was 40 years ago, there was no love lost between us. She was a mean old bird, and most old biddies were like that at the time, and proud of it. I think today she would have been more ‘with it’. (and I think she was secretly jealous of the immoral young, she was resentful that she was a married mother of three, far too young.) I don’t mean to sully the waters here, just whenever I hear the cozy snowed in songs, that’s what I flash back to.
Winking at sex, marital, premarital, extramarital or otherwise, used to be common in song lyrics. Many of Cole Porter’s lyrics did this:
Any Ice Today, Lady?, a novelty song from 1926, did this:
People always find ways to talk about sex, regardless of the mores of the time.
I saw a column where the writer said there’s three ways to listen to the song without thinking it’s creepy.
The way the writer (Frank Loesser) and his wife used to sing it to each other. Their styling made it clear she intended to spend the night all along and they were simply trying out excuses to see which one worked best.
As a simple duet between two people, who aren’t actually singing “at” each other.
Watch this clip with Miss Piggy. You might still think creepy, but it won’t be male on female.
I’ve never considered that the song was about adults, either. The whole part about building a snowman and pretending he’s the parson sounds like the song is about seven to ten-year-olds. This being the case, the question about whether it suggests premarital sex is kind of horrifying to me.
I can’t see it as being about kids. Kids don’t enjoy walking along and looking at the beautiful sights around them. They run and jump and scream and laugh and play. Neither do they conspire by the fire to face plans unafraid. I mean, are these kids weird little mini-adults who listen to NPR and compile their Christmas wishlists from the L.L. Bean catalogue?
Did anybody else ever think the line was: “Later on, we’ll perspire…”
We had a discussion of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” last year:
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=814225
Yes! For years.
Perhaps the choice of words was meant to deceive the listener. The image of outer cold and huddled fire warmth, of lovers entwined in perspire and conspire, of the snow-man rising and getting knocked down, of an authority figure asking about marriage, of erotic glistening…it is all there. And the bells. Oh the bells…
Yes.
With the original lyrics only, I agree. But when you add the line about making a circus clown and the other kids knocking it down, I say that forces it to be about kids: kids who are very committed to getting married when they get older, as kids sometimes get.
I mean, I remember discussing with my “girlfriend” when I was a kid about us having kids and pretending all about that stuff. (This was even before I knew how women got pregnant.) So I could just see it.
However, the original doesn’t have those lines, so that was not the original intent. Without them, I think it’s a straightforward engagement story, as I analyzed above. They got engaged either on the walk or shortly before that.
Oh, I didn’t realize it was a hybrid. Seems the later songwriter(s) didn’t really pay attention to what kind of song it was. Or they should have changed the earlier lyrics to fit their scheme.
I meant to add earlier, BTW, that hearing it sung in that rich baritone doesn’t help it to sound like the perspective of a child.
Totally disagree. Kids do look at a newly fallen snow world as beautiful and enjoy looking at it.
As for conspiring, I always took it to mean planning kid pranks such as tossing snowballs at strangers or playing ding dong ditch. There is nothing inherently sexual about conspiring. That’s a reach.
I’m not saying “conspiring” is sexual, only that those lyrics don’t fit with the idea that the protagonist of the song is a child.
It’s the talk of being asked by the snowman if they are married and saying “no man” and then “later…by the fire” that strikes me as a winking end-around. What is the question about marriage doing in a song about kids playing in the snow?
I’d take the song to be about an adult couple feeling child-like joy after a snowfall rather than actual children, but either way they’re just playing around with the snowman. Even very young children sometimes have pretend weddings. Children (or teens) might also enjoy imagining that the local parson mistook them for grown-ups.
After reading this entire thread, I still don’t understand what about this song you think is sexual. It playfully references the prospect of marriage and the end of the song maybe implies that there was some snuggling going on in front of the fire, but even that you have to read into it.
A beautiful sight
We’re happy tonight
The nighttime happiness is the reason for the song, not the daytime snow.
Any hint at sex is very mild, even by the standards of the time. As I mentioned earlier, songwriters who wanted to hint at sex could be more direct than this, even in 1934 (when Winter Wonderland was written). The closest this song gets is the line about dreaming by the fire (when there might be something else going on, although the lyrics don’t say anything about it). There’s little here except a couple considering their future.
The word “conspire” does carry the hint of indelicate intimacy.