Fairytale of New York has been censored over the years.
(Picture: The Pogues)What would Christmas be without our favourite festive tunes?
Everyone loves the classics like Last Christmas and All I Want for Christmas is You, but a few Christmas hits are sure to spark a debate around the holidays.
Three classics in particular have caused major uproar in the past, and are still debated to this day.
What are the three Christmas hits which were almost banned?
Frank Loesser’s Baby, It’s Cold Outside (1944)
Composer Frank Loesser originally wrote the song Baby, It’s Cold Outside to perform with his wife at a party.
It featured in the romantic comedy Neptune’s Daughter (1949), and has since been covered by the likes of Tom Jones, Michael Buble, and the Glee cast.
The song has been criticised due to its lyrics suggesting that a man is persuading a woman to stay at his place, depsite her protests.
The Pogues’ Fairytale of New York (1988)
The popular song from The Pogues tells a tale of a man waking up in a prison cell after a heavy night of drinking.
Nostalgia takes hold as he begins to reminisce with his love interest about the past. A call and response between the couple ensues, as they bicker back and forth on Christmas Eve.
The song has been censorsed a number of times, with more family-friendly terms used in place of vitriolic insults and homophobic slurs.
Alongside the song’s dark lyrics, numerous rewrites and delayed recordings meant it almost never hit the music scene.
Jimmy Boyd’s I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus (1950)
Jimmy Boyd was only 13 when he first performed I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus, which regales a story of a young boy catching his mum kissing Father Christmas.
The innocent-sounding lyrics take on a more adult meaning when the listener realises the song is in fact about an extramarital affair.
The song sparked outrage from the Boston arm of the Roman Catholic Church, which disliked that the song linked adultery and Christmas.
A number of radio stations boycotted the song until Columbia Records had Boyd explain that the Santa in the song is actually his father in disguise. As a result, the radio ban was lifted.
