If you happen to tune to WCME 900AM starting at noon Christmas Eve, you can hear James Taylor and Natalie Cole’s cover of “Baby It’s Cold Outside.” Stay tuned and you’ll hear another version, and then another, and yet another.

The Brunswick-based station has announced it has gathered as many versions of Frank Loesser’s duet as possible to air back to back.

“Baby It’s Cold Outside” is a call and response duet. Though it has nothing to do with Christmas, the song has become a staple this time of year. Recently, it’s been the subject of controversy, due to lyrics that, depending on one’s point of view, seem mischievous yet innocuous, creepy or worse.

Consider some of the lyrics: “(I really can’t stay) But, baby, it’s cold outside/(I’ve got to go away) But, baby, it’s cold outside/(This evening has been) Been hoping that you’d drop in/(So very nice) I’ll hold your hands they’re just like ice.”

Or: “(I simply must go) Baby, it’s cold outside/(The answer is no) Baby, it’s cold outside.”

The woman states she must go, the male still pursues, and at some point she asks, “What’s in this drink?”

The ending is nebulous, but it sounds like the male persuades her to stay.

Some find the song a cheeky bit of nostalgia and a callback to simpler time. Others have accused it of enabling the sociological concept known in some circles as “rape culture.”

That men in power are frequently being taken down every day due to sexual harassment allegations have us pause in considering the wisdom of playing a “Baby It’s Cold Outside” marathon. Just what, we wondered, was going through the mind of WCME’s Jim Bleikamp?

Well, we asked him, and he was kind enough to respond.

Bleikamp said he had recalled a memo circulated at other radio stations, “urging that they go easy on ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’ in the wake of the sexual harassment stuff.”

“While I certainly agree that sexual harassment is a problem and should be dealt with — I fully endorse the #MeToo movement — I think to go after ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’ is, in my view, an absurd overreaction,” Bleikamp told us.

To Bleikamp, “Baby It’s Cold Outside” is a “very innocent song” about men wooing women, of which there are more than 100 recorded versions.

“We are not trying to strike back at anybody who might be offended by the song,” Bleikamp said. “We’re just trying to have some fun during the holidays… . Men and women are going to continue to get together and have relationships, even in the aftermath of all that has happened. Wooing and courtship are a part of that.”

Still, considering the accusations leveled against powerful men such as Harvey Weinstein, Dustin Hoffman, Sylvester Stallone, Garrison Keillor, Donald J. Trump, George Takei, Bill Cosby, Kevin Spacey, Morgan Spurlock, Tavis Smiley, Bill O’Reilly, Mario Batali, James Levine, Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Jeffrey Tambor, Al Franken, Roy Moore, Louis C.K., Steven Seagal, Jeremy Piven, George H.W. Bush, Oliver Stone… jeesh, do we have to go on? … doesn’t seem a little, well, wrong to air a marathon of “Baby It’s Cold Outside?”

We’re not musical historians, nor are we experts in gender issues. So we reached out to Bowdoin College for some perspective, which put us in touch with Assistant Professor of Music Tracy McMullen.

McMullen wrote: “The lyrics to ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’ perpetuate the idea that what women say is not to be taken seriously. That when a woman says no she is just ‘flirting.’ That her resistance is a type of foreplay, part of ‘the chase’ that is still leading toward sex. It is problematic because both young men and women get this message about desire and how it should operate: That the woman is the mouse and the man is the wolf, which is how the two characters in Loesser’s lyrics are coded.” We do believe the song (composed in 1944) is clearly a product of its time — gender and courtship were thought of differently then.

However, the “product-of-its time” argument doesn’t hold water for McMullen, who wrote: “People often make excuses saying things like ‘it was a different time,’ but music is especially powerful in sustaining those values when the songs stick around. Young people today will be culturally trained by those lyrics just as they were back in the 1940s.”

“I don’t think we should ban this or any other song,” McMullen wrote. “But playing a marathon of it is definitely tone deaf, if I may, at this point in time. Unless, they are making some statement, which may happen if they allow callers!”

We get where Bleikamp is coming from, but we also understand McMullen’s point of view.

Our take: If you do want to listen to several hours of “Baby It’s Cold Outside” for the sheer enjoyment of the song, have at it — but take a minute and consider the song from all points of view. Be mindful that not everyone listening may interpret the song the same. If Christmas is truly a time for giving, then it’s also a time for thinking of others before oneself — even when you turn on the radio.