Music threatening children

[youjustcomplain]

I'm sure I'm not the only one here, but I was listening to a christmas song yesterday.. "Santa Claus is coming to town". It's really really awful. Like, the song is a bit catchy, I guess, and I've been singing along with it for the past 40 years of my life without actually thinking of the underlying message. It's a musical threat to children, and parents sing along to it, and teach our kids that it's a nice little christmas song. But is it?

You better watch out
You better not cry
You better not pout
I'm telling you why
Santa Claus is coming to town
He's making a list,
He's checking it twice,
He's gonna find out who's naughty or nice
Santa Claus is coming to town
He sees you when you're sleeping
And he knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake

Santa Claus comes off as a real *bleep*. We want our children to believe in Santa because it's a sweet childhood thing, but the song opens up with threats. Kids cry, but if they do, they have to be scared that they'll get punished by this guy. And the myth is that he breaks into your house at night when you're sleeping. Now kids have to be afraid that this fat dude will break in and punish them while they're asleep in their bed, all because they cried?

But at the end, after all the fear mongering and threats, kids are then told to be good for the sake of being good. ?? what? I believe the underlying message here is to be good or else... That's not the same as doing good things for the sake of being good.

And to think. Last year, "baby it's cold outside" was too offensive.

[AtlantisKelowna]

Are you for real? If anything the songs encourages good behavior

This generation of children need their *bleep* kicked and should be scared that they will be punished for not being good.

Secondly, this is nothing compared to some of the garbage kids are listening to these days that have explicit lyrics about sex, drugs, murder and more. You don't even need to think about the underlying message because the main message is disgusting in its own.

Too many over sensitive people are breeding and should really just stop.

[mexi cali]

When that song and many others were written, that was what the world looked like. It was normal for kids to be "seen and not heard" and to get a good swat upside the side when they cried or fussed. If a child was disrespectful, a spanking and off to your room. No dinner was common and corporal punishment abounded both at school and at home.

No one would have thought twice about those lyrics just as they wouldn't to "Baby it's cold outside".

Today though? The idea of discipline is loathsome to parents. The idea that a man might entice a gal with a drink rather than let her go home is reprehensible to the vocal minority who think that he must have rape on his mind.

You can't even compliment a girl anymore for fear of being thought of as creepy or that you have an ulterior motive.

Why people get so wrapped up in stuff like this is sad too me. They want to forget about the past because it was different than the present.

Lots of bad stuff happened in the world of yore, much like it happens today but today is our bad world. Our parents bad world is to be erased.

And it gets worse when those same people want to see the memories of the past disappear, again because it's different. We judge those times as having been awful without benefit of having lived then. Many people old enough to remember look at the forties and fifties as being some of the best decades ever. Life was simpler and once again, different.

I am old enough, but not that old, to remember the pain of being strapped by the principle. Punishment I deserved for sure and while it stung for a while, I survived and yes, it changed my behavior and it was a deterrent. Not that I never did anything bad anymore, I just did different bad things.

Your children will not be scarred for life because of the lyrics to a Christmas song that is seventy or eighty years old.

[mexi cali]

Are you for real? If anything the songs encourages good behavior

This generation of children need their *bleep* kicked and should be scared that they will be punished for not being good.

Secondly, this is nothing compared to some of the garbage kids are listening to these days that have explicit lyrics about sex, drugs, murder and more. You don't even need to think about the underlying message because the main message is disgusting in its own.

Too many over sensitive people are breeding and should really just stop.

Harsh, but true.

Todays kids don't know the fear of "wait till your father gets home". Or "get down to the Principals office". Those words used to turn my blood cold. Ahhhhhhh, good times.

[TylerM4]

You know how many times a day I "threaten" my children? Me neither, I should track it one day but it's probably around a dozen times between the 2 of them. Consequences for actions (or inactions) need to be communicated (and adhered to) at a young age if you want them to grow into productive members of society.

Some extra warning via a catchy Christmas song is just fine by me.

[BC Landlord]

How soon before the "woke" start claiming that moms and dads are bogeymen to their kids? Oops, .. did I say "mom & dad"?

[Babba_not_Gump]

Well OP, you are living up to your name.

As for little kids learning about consequences, I like to think we raised our kids successfully. Case in point, the first big word my grandkids learned was CONSEQUENCES. And they knew how to spell it by the time they were in grade one.
So yes, I'm proud of the job we did raising our kids.

As for people getting their panties in a knot over harmless little poems, I wonder about how they were raised?

[OKkayak]

Words can not even begin to describe the absurdity of the opening comment, so I'll just leave this here:

[mexi cali]

So be good for goodness sake

Literally means that we should be good simply for the sake of goodness. Achieving goodness. "for the sake of" in this case, good.

[mexi cali]

This is for reals what playgrounds used to look like before the world became afraid to let their kids know what a little pain feels like.

[mexi cali]

In the spirit of that was then, this is now, I present you with lyrics that you really should be concerned about.

Ex-Girlfriend"
Esham
"I used to love her, too bad I had to put a slug through her/Dumped her body in the trash like I never knew her/Blood runnin down the gutter into the sewer/Her body stunk for weeks like horse manure"[/color]

"Shoot 'Em Up"
Nas
"One 44, two 45's/Three loaded clips, four ni...s roll, one n...a drives/500 Benz, six reasons why this kid should die/We shooting every mothaf...a outside/Pulled on his block, jumped out the car/Guns in our hand, at the same time everybody ran/There that ni..a go, hiding in the crowd/Let the trigger blow, seven shots now he lying on the ground"[/color]

"X-Is Coming"
DMX
"Man, if we was up north, ni...s would have been *bleep*...d you/But then we in the streets, ni...s should haven been stuck you/Plucked you like a chicken wit' your head cut off/They'll find you wit' your back open and your legs cut off/And as for your man, don't you ever in your mothafu...n' life/Know when I gotta gun come at me wit' a knife, a'ight?/And forgetting you ever saw me is the best thing to do/Don't give a f..k about your family, they'll be resting with you[/color]

This is mainstream today. The genre has one of the largest followings of any.

But yes, by all means, lets be concerned about Christmas carols and their hidden meanings.

[TylerM4]

This is for reals what playgrounds used to look like before the world became afraid to let their kids know what a little pain feels like.

People don't believe me when I tell them I went to a brand new school for Grade 1 in 1985 and that brand new school's playground equipment was over asphalt. Looked a little similar to that pic, but not as tall. That equipment looks to be about 20' tall where ours was about 15'. But I kid you not - 15' metal latter to the top, metal fire poles to slide on or try to shimmy across and slide down one of the angled supports by the swings, big swings and teeter-totters, etc - all over asphalt.

Someone must have gotten wise tho because by grade 4 they moved the equipment out to the front field and threw some woodchips down.

[mexi cali]

Yup. I think if you're fifty ish or more, you played on those monstrosities. They would heat up like a bee yotch in the summer time and the slides never actually let you slide. You kinda had to inch your way down. Of course the monkey bars was where all the real fun happened and yes, I remember the asphalt landing pads.

[LANDM]

While it’s not a children’s song, "Baby it’s Cold Outside" is such a cool, rapey song. No, I don’t think rape is cool. It is both cool and rapey.....two separate thoughts.

I never even thought about it until it was pointed out a few years ago.

[Symbonite]

Cancer Culture Strikes again.