The highest-charting of the five recordings was released by Art Mooney and His Orchestra, with six-year-old Barry Gordon as lead vocalist.
The song is sung from the perspective of a pre-teen boy reciting a long list of his bad deeds, ranging from benign (tearing his pants while climbing a tree, spilling ink on a rug) to mischievous (making a friend eat a bug, hiding a frog in his sister's bed) to felonies (assaulting an acquaintance with a baseball bat to the head, using a counterfeit "penny slug" to buy gum).
Because of this rap sheet, the singer has angered his parents, and has been placed on Santa Claus's "naughty list," ensuring he will receive nothing for the holiday, to which the boy is further insulted because he believes some unseen person ratted him out for each misdeed.
[1] Other artists who have recorded the song include Less Than Jake, Spike Jones, Eartha Kitt, Homer and Jethro, Relient K, Smash Mouth (featuring Rosie O'Donnell), Sugarland, Tonic Soul-fa, and the Vindictives.
A cover by Plain White T's was featured in the 2011 Disney Christmas special Prep & Landing: Naughty vs. Nice.