No, Virginia, there is nothing intentionally offensive

about “folks dressed up like Eskimos” in Mel Torme’s “The Christmas Song”. The phrase merely and accurately describes how bloody cold it can get on the holidays so that people have to dress much warmer than they do ‘down south’.

Contextually, back in the ’50s and ’60s when people referred to Northern aboriginals, “Eskimos” was the common prevailing term world-wide pretty much.

So, no, I don’t believe Nat King Cole is politically incorrect or some nasty black colonial abuser who is looking down his nose at the people in question when he sings Torme’s song. He is simply being honest, truthful, and perhaps a bit funny in an old saner world far less torturously serious. full-of-itself, and agenda-edly limited than ours now is.