"WHITE CHRISTMAS" (1940)

In the late 1930s Irving Berlin initially conceived "White Christmas" as the first-act finale of a vaudeville-style Broadway revue featuring skits ranging from juggling acrobats to trained dogs. Jody Rosen, in his book White Christmas, the Story of an American Song (Scribner 2002), describes Berlin’s original intent for the song: "It is difficult to imagine the "White Christmas" we know today as showstopper in a revue filled with dog tricks and pratfalls. Yet the song that reached the world in 1942 as a hymn was, in its inventor’s initial conception, something else entirely: wry, parodic, lighthearted – a novelty tune. We glimpse Berlin’s original vision for "White Christmas" in the six lines of its verse. Where the chorus evokes a distant yesteryear (the Christmases "I used to know"), the verse is set in the modern present: on Christmas Eve Day in Los Angeles. …According to biographer Philip Furia, Berlin pictured it being performed by "a group of sophisticates gathered around a Hollywood pool," pining for a rustic, snowbound Christmas with "cocktails in hand" – a preposterous tableau sure to tickle New York audiences." Rosen goes on to say that "Berlin had little idea that beneath his Christmas-in-Beverly-Hills Lampoon – stirring in the homesick ‘longing’ of the verse’s last line – the Great American Christmas Carol was waiting to emerge."

The Broadway revue was never produced, but Berlin clearly liked the song and finished it in 1940. In the meantime, he had developed a different vision for how he would use the song. In 1941 he convinced Paramount Pictures to do a "holiday" musical, Holiday Inn, in which the major holidays would be celebrated with a song. Paramount saw the film as a vehicle for its current musical star, Bing Crosby, and agreed to produce it. The plot was slim; Bing Crosby played a homespun character who saved his money and bought a Connecticut farm. When he couldn’t make a success of farming, he decided to turn the farm into an inn that would be open only on holidays. Berlin wrote the film score that included eleven new songs for the various holidays, but he still considered "White Christmas" to be his showpiece. Shortly after he completed it, he said, "Not only is it the best song I ever wrote, it’s the best song anybody ever wrote." In Holiday Inn "White Christmas" was transformed from a comedic parody to a tender ballad that was introduced as a love duet between Crosby and the female costar, Marjorie Reynolds. In May of 1942 Crosby made a recording of the film score on the Decca Records label.

Holiday Inn was released in August 1942 and was an immediate success, becoming the highest grossing film musical to date. However, the recording of the film score, and "White Christmas" especially, had not received much attention from the critics or fans. Berlin was disappointed with the response to the score and decided to push it with radio executives and bandleaders. He chose "Be Careful with My Heart", the film’s Valentine’s Day tune, as the first song to plug, and his efforts paid off with it entering the Hit Parade when Holiday Inn premiered. However, it didn’t reach first place and was never a smash hit. Unexpectedly, in September of 1942, without any plugging, "White Christmas" started to climb in the charts and by October 1942 Billboard magazine called it "one of the most phenomenal hits in the music business." The reason for its popularity was that Crosby’s Decca recording had reached American troops overseas via Armed Forces Radio, jukeboxes in USO halls and PX stores. For GIs from North Africa to Guadalcanal, "White Christmas" was a nostalgic reminder of what they were fighting for and it became the anthem of World War II. Crosby made frequent trips overseas to entertain the troops and, no matter the season, he was always asked to sing "White Christmas."

The popularity of "White Christmas" spread from the war front to the home front. Bing Crosby’s Decca recording entered the Hit Parade in November of 1942 and held first place for ten consecutive weeks. It re-entered the charts every December for the next twenty years. It also won the 1942 Academy Award for Best Song. Crosby’s recording, still the signature version of the song, has sold over 31 million copies. He began "White Christmas" with the chorus and did not sing the satirical introductory verse in either the film or on the recording. In December of 1942, when Berlin realized that the introductory verse was out of synch with the aura of tender nostalgia that the chorus generated, he demanded that the verse no longer be included in published sheet music. Crosby’s "White Christmas" was unseated from its place as all-time top selling single only by Sir Elton John’s "Candle in the Wind ’97," his tribute to Princess Diana. However, additional millions of Crosby’s recording have been sold as part of albums.

Most of us think we know "White Christmas" only too well, but Jody Rosen recommends that the next time we hear "White Christmas," we should open our ears and our minds. He says, "Familiarity has made "White Christmas" remote: we know the song so well that we barely know it all. Bing Crosby begins singing, and we hum along, or flee the room; in any case, our ears are closed. But listen again: "White Christmas" is an oddity, whose melody meanders chromatically and is filled with unexpected moments, somber near-dissonances. Strangest of all is the song’s underlying sadness, its wistful ache for the bygone, which – in contrast to chirpy seasonal standards like "Jingle Bells" and "Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town" – marks "White Christmas" as the darkest, bluest tune ever to masquerade as a Christmas carol."

"WHITE CHRISTMAS"
by Irving Berlin

VERSE
The sun is shining, the grass is green,
The orange and palm trees sway.
There's never been such a day
In Beverly Hills, L.A.
But it's December the twenty-fourth,
And I'm longing to be up north.

CHORUS
I'm dreaming of a white Christmas
Just like the ones I used to know,
Where the treetops glisten
And children listen
To hear sleigh bells in the snow.

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas
With every Christmas card I write:
"May your days be merry and bright
And may all your Christmases be white."