July 1946. It is unusually hot in Woodbury, Connecticut, suffering from a heat wave and a drought. A thirty-eight-year-old man is outside digging a trench, hunting down an old hidden pipe that runs from a spring, yet he is hearing sleigh bells. The rhythm of the piece arrives while he is in the dirt next to the family cottage, where he is staying for the summer with his wife and young daughter. However, this is not a summer retreat, as the postwar housing shortage forced him to temporarily live on this property owned by his mother-in-law as her retirement lot. He just made a terrifying bet by declining a promising diplomatic career to write music, and has nothing yet to show for it. Imagining wintry sleigh bells is a welcome distraction while performing manual labor for the overheated man. He keeps digging, and the bells keep ringing.

The Harvard-Trained Army Captain

Leroy (pronounced Luh-ROY, not LEE-Roy) Anderson (1908-1975) was introduced to music at an early age thanks to his mother who was a church organist and his father who played banjo and mandolin. He received elite compositional training from esteemed American composer Walter Piston while attending Harvard University. Piston wrote core foundational music textbooks on harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration that are still in use today, and he imparted his rigorous structural integrity to Anderson, who would employ this in his seemingly “light” concert pieces. In addition to his musical abilities, Anderson was a genuine linguistic prodigy and was fluent in many languages. These language skills were crucial in his time with the U.S. Army during World War II, where he served as the Chief of the Scandinavian Desk of Military Intelligence.

Musical Onomatopoeia

Anderson began work on “Sleigh Ride” during the heat wave of July 1946, but he did not finish the work until February 10, 1948 in Brooklyn, NY. He was building on the musical tradition of programmatic winter pieces in classical music incorporating sleigh bells which spans back to at least the 1750s. For hundreds of years, sleigh bells have been attached to sleighs for safety reasons as an early audible warning system to pedestrians. Over many generations, the sound of the sleigh bell became inextricably linked to the sensory and emotional experience of winter travel.

Leopold Mozart (Wolfgang’s father), wrote “Die musikalische Schlittenfahrt” (“The Musical Sleigh-Ride”) in 1755 as one of the earliest examples of orchestral onomatopoeia, which is literal sound-painting where the music imitates real-world sounds. This groundbreaking piece incorporated sleigh bells, horse hooves, and a whip to evoke a winter’s journey. Wolfgang followed in his father’s example, using sleigh bells in the third of his Three German Dances in 1791. Two other prominent works with sleigh bells include Frederick Delius’s “Winter Night,” commonly known as “Sleigh Ride” from the second movement of Three Small Tone Poems of 1890, and Sergei Prokofiev’s “Troika” from the Lieutenant Kijé Suite of 1934.

Building the Ride

Anderson brings his musical architecture pedigree to “Sleigh Ride,” as he fits a moderately complex seven-part rondo form (ABACABA) into less than three minutes of music. The A section keeps coming back around like the sleigh ride itself, providing the primary melodic theme. The contrasting B section represents the first material Anderson initially sketched for the work in the sweltering heat of 1946. He wrote this section first but did not feel it was strong enough to start the work, and he later reverse-engineered the rest of the piece around this initial section by building the other parts around it. The middle C section introduces the crack of the whip, and Anderson employs a hint of jazz in the second half of the piece as the energy accelerates towards its exciting conclusion. There are sleigh bells in the score throughout of course, along with temple blocks for the horse’s hooves, and a glockenspiel to bring more bright texture to the music.

As a former orchestral percussionist, I have performed “Sleigh Ride” with an orchestra many times, and I’ve played all of the percussion parts of the score. My favorite part to play by far is the temple blocks that make the horse’s clip-clop sounds throughout, which to me is one of the most fun percussion parts in the entire orchestral repertoire. I’ve seen the wonder in a child’s eyes when hearing the horse’s hooves galloping along for the first time in concert. Playing the whip part is cathartic as well, and this is played on a slapstick which is two wood boards joined together by a hinge that are slapped together.

Anderson’s signature wit is on full display in “Sleigh Ride,” as the music is both playful and surprising, like a well-constructed musical joke. But if a listener has ever heard “Sleigh Ride” before, they are anxiously waiting for just one thing at the very end; the infamous horse whinny that concludes the punchline. It takes an unusual technique to play the whinny, as the trumpeter usually presses the valves down half-way, and performs a glissando while shaking the horn. It can be a trumpeter’s favorite and most terrifying moment of the piece.

Anderson envisioned the work as a general description of winter versus the Christmas designation it was later given. After he finished “Sleigh Ride” in February 1948, it was first performed by the Boston Pops Orchestra under conductor Arthur Fiedler in May 1948 as an extra piece at the end of the concert. The Boston Pops recorded the piece in 1949, and it quickly became synonymous with the Christmas season. The recording also peaked at 24 on Billboard’s Best-Selling Pop Singles chart in December 1949, an extraordinary accomplishment for a purely orchestral piece with no direct Christmas references. Anderson’s wife, Eleanor, recalls hearing “Sleigh Ride” playing in New York City department stores throughout the holiday shopping season of 1949, cementing its status as a Christmas icon. A work begun in the summer and first performed in the spring became one of the biggest Christmas hits of all time.

The Words Came Later

Mills Music was impressed by the success of Fiedler’s recording and wagered that “Sleigh Ride” would become an even greater hit by adding vocal lyrics. It commissioned Tin Pan Alley legend Mitchell Parish to create the lyrics for Anderson’s work. Parish was well-known for his skills at creating a lyrical narrative to an already finished instrumental with songs such as “Stardust” and “Moonlight Serenade.” His words to Anderson’s piece describe the joys of a sleigh ride in a snow wonderland, and they compare the scene to a Currier and Ives print. The lyrics also reference a birthday party, but not a Christmas party. In fact, there is no mention of Santa Claus, no nativity scene, or any other distinctively Christmas content included in the lyrics.

The popular Andrews Sisters recorded “Sleigh Ride” with the new lyrics in 1950, incorporating their signature harmony that suited the work’s kinetic energy. Other artists, such as the Ames Brothers and Perry Como also recorded the song in the 1950s. The closest “Sleigh Ride” would ever become to being a number one Billboard hit would be with The Ronettes recording from 1963 produced by Phil Spector. The album which included this recording, A Christmas Gift for You from Philles Records, featured a mix of artists singing various Christmas songs, and it had the tragic history of releasing on November 22, 1963, the same day U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The album had limited success during its initial run as the country was in mourning, but it became more popular after its re-release in 1972 and debuted in the Billboard Hot 100 in December 2018. After multiple years of climbing higher in the charts, “Sleigh Ride” by The Ronettes rose to its highest ever peak at No. 8 in December 2023, sixty years after its initial release.

The Invented Winter

Leroy Anderson, the man digging outside in a brutal heat wave in 1946, invented a picturesque musical winter scene while drenched in sweat. He had no basis for the music except the title itself. Although his compositional intent was to create a general winter piece, through commercial branding and popular demand, Anderson’s “Sleigh Ride” became one of the most recognizable Christmas standards in the repertoire. Anderson’s version of winter belongs to no one, which is how it came to belong to everyone: the shoppers in 1949, the trumpeter waiting for the end of the piece, the children hearing the horse’s hooves for the first time.

A piece with no Christmas in it became a fixture of the season anyway.

Subscribe now

Sources and Further Reading

Leroy Anderson: A Bio-Bibliography by Burgess Speed, Eleanor Anderson, and Steve Metcalf. A biography on the life and work of Leroy Anderson with his wife Eleanor as one of the authors.

Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops by Harry Ellis Dickson. A look at the long career of conductor Fiedler and his work with the Boston Pops Orchestra.

The Leroy Anderson Foundation Website (www.leroyandersonfoundation.org). The Leroy Anderson Foundation was created by Anderson’s wife, Eleanor, and the website honors the musical legacy of Leroy Anderson.

Listen Along – Recommended Playlist

Listen to “Sleigh Ride” performed by the Boston Pops Orchestra conducted by Arthur Fiedler, as well as a recording with Leroy Anderson conducting, along with “Sleigh Ride” recordings with lyrics including The Ronettes, the Andrews Sisters, and Pentatonix. Also, listen to the sleigh bell predecessors including Leopold Mozart’s “Musical Sleigh Ride,” Wolfgang Mozart’s “Sleigh Ride,” Frederick Delius’s “Winter Night,” and Sergei Prokofiev’s “Troika” from the Lieutenant Kijé Suite.

The weathered soloist singing “O Holy Night” on Christmas Eve in front of a packed church sanctuary has sung it many times before, and she knows the hardest note, the note everyone is waiting for, is quickly coming. She appears calm on the outside, but her hands are ice cold even though she is beginning to sweat. This high note, the most dramatic single note of any Christmas carol, is the emotional climax of the song. It is the highest note in the loudest section of the piece, and she’s already visualizing it before she is halfway through it. She understands the physical strength and control it takes to perform the note well and with emotional power, towards the end of a demanding work. All of her practicing and training has led her once again to this decisive moment. She steadies her nerves, grounds her feet to the floor, and mentally hears the crucial pitch just before the note is sung. The large congregation goes still, leans in slightly, and holds their breath. The momentous note approaches.

An Unlikely Triumvirate

The creation and translation of “O Holy Night” involves an unlikely trio of characters unique in the Christmas carol repertoire. The poem “Minuit, chrétiens” (Midnight, Christians) which “O Holy Night” was adapted from, was written by Placide Cappeau, a French wine merchant, part-time poet, and a socialist freethinker, who turned more radical towards the end of his life. Cappeau, who had no known theological training, was asked to write the poem in 1847 by the local parish priest in Roquemaure, Cappeau’s hometown, for the upcoming Christmas Midnight Mass. The church was celebrating either the renovation of their pipe organ or the restoration of their stained-glass windows (accounts differ; the two events may have been the same occasion). According to Cappeau’s own account, he completed the poem in a stagecoach en route to Paris on December 3, 1847, and the text invokes a wrathful God who cleanses the original sin of man.

The connection from Cappeau to Adolphe Adam, the composer of “O Holy Night,” was made by retired opera singer Emily Laurey, who knew Cappeau and was a friend of Adam’s wife. By 1847, Adam was at the height of his musical career and had recently composed his ballet masterwork Giselle in 1841, which is still performed today and remains a cornerstone of the classical ballet repertoire. Adam’s religious background has been a source of historical controversy, as some sources describe him as Jewish, while others cite the Jewish claim as a fabrication invented by a jealous fellow composer.

Although Adam composed primarily for the theatre including numerous operas and ballets, he agreed to write the music for Cappeau’s poem. Adam, who was a very prolific composer, quickly wrote the music “Cantique de Noël” utilizing Cappeau’s words, and the work was premiered by Emily Laurey for the Christmas Midnight Mass in 1847. As the popularity of the song grew, so did the resistance to it by the French Catholic Church, who deemed it too theatrical for the solemnity of the Mass. The church was also suspicious of Cappeau’s socialist tendencies during a time of French civil unrest following the 1848 French Revolution, and they feared the song’s metaphorical call to break free from shackles and felt the tone was too militant. Adam died in 1856 before realizing the ongoing legacy of what he might have considered a minor work, compared to his major theatrical compositions.

The third man who would complete the unlikely trio of contributors for “O Holy Night” is John Sullivan Dwight, an American Unitarian minister and Transcendentalist. Dwight, who was also one of the first prominent music critics in America, translated the song into English in 1855 and turned “Cantique de Noël” into “O Holy Night.” However, he did not simply provide a literal translation of Cappeau’s words. Dwight was a committed abolitionist who was shaped by his Unitarian theology and Transcendentalist convictions, and he made significant revisions to the original text to fit his worldview of social justice and human equality. He shifted the theology from Cappeau’s original sin to his own emphasis on the divine value of the human soul, and he completely omitted any reference to Christ’s suffering and death.

The most significant revisions Dwight made were in the third and final verse that is rarely heard today, which he transformed into an active demand for emancipation. He changed the original text about universal brotherhood where Christ “sees a brother where there was only a slave, love unites those whom iron had chained,” and rendered it to “Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother, and in His name all oppression shall cease.” Dwight’s addition of “for the slave is our brother,” is the translation’s most important theological and political act, and this English version quickly became popular with abolitionist audiences.

The Architecture of Arrival

Adolphe Adam approached the composition of the music for “O Holy Night” through his style of structural sophistication prominently found in his operatic works. Most popular Christmas carols and hymns adhere to a simpler repeatable structure with predictable four-measure or eight-measure phrases that prioritize congregational accessibility. Adam brings a more dramatic and theatrical approach to “O Holy Night”, as each verse is through-composed avoiding a standard repetitive structure, it incorporates five-measure phrases throughout, and each of the three verses feels like a distinct movement. He stages the emotion of each verse to gradually build to a grand climax, carrying the listener through an operatic-like emotional journey.

The vocal range that “O Holy Night” demands is extraordinary for a carol, spanning an octave and a half in some arrangements. The melody begins each verse within a smaller range, but as the verses progress the leaps become larger and the range begins to climb higher. The dramatic high note towards the end of the verses (on the words “O night divine” for the first verse, which is the most commonly heard verse), is a challenging leap of either a sixth or an entire octave depending on the specific arrangement, and it is one of the most striking moments in Christmas music. It is also one of the most exposed and technically demanding notes in all of the sacred literature, and it is the strongest possible musical assertion of arrival.

As legend has it, “O Holy Night” was also reportedly part of the first ever musical performance on the radio by Reginald Aubrey Fessenden. According to a letter written by Fessenden decades after the event, the Canadian engineer and radio pioneer demonstrated his new technology on Christmas Eve, 1906, by performing “O Holy Night” on the violin. The story of course rests entirely on Fessenden’s own memory, recorded twenty-six years after the fact, as no record of the broadcast survives. If the story is true, imagine how astonished the wireless operators in the nearby area would have been, hearing live music for the first time on a radio transmission. Historians still debate whether the event happened, but when radio needed an origin myth, it reached for the song built around a single unmistakable arrival.

Hope Fulfilled

Hope fulfilled is the moment hope changes tense. Hope changes from longing to recognition, from the not yet to now. Through an emotional arc where hope was recalled, questioned, willed, weathered, and anticipated, hope is finally answered at the moment of arrival. This moment is when the weary world looks up and finally finds what it was waiting for and rejoices. And yet, hope fulfilled is not the conclusion of hope, but its inauguration. Hope itself is not completed or extinguished, it is transformed into a new mode.

Seven songs and five essays ago at the beginning of this Hope series, we found hope hiding inside a single note. In “White Christmas” the melody suspends on a chromatic F sharp on the first syllable of “Christmas,” a splinter of dissonance that resolves in less than a second. Hope remembered was the name of that suspended note, and the tension between the ache and the longing has been hanging over every song within this collection ever since. The bells of Longfellow rang against that longing despite his own rage and doubt. The boy standing in front of the departing train chose hope despite his growing cynicism. The music box was a symbol of hope and persevering in times of suffering. The monks in the cold, dark cathedral stretched hope across centuries of waiting.

“O Holy Night” provides the answer. Where Berlin masked the tension within less than a heartbeat, Adam builds the entire piece towards a single exposed note which is held out loud for everyone to hear. One song quickly suspends and resolves at its beginning before the listener can register what happened. The other song spends several minutes building the tension and climbing the vocal range, until finally placing the arrival on the highest, loudest, most demanding note in the carol repertoire. The sliver of dissonance has become the drawn-out proclamation.

Finally, the singer approaches the crucial moment with the highest note in the most impactful section of “O Holy Night.” She drops her jaw, closes her eyes, and skillfully lands the high note with an emotional power that takes the congregation’s breath away. As the piece ends, an awestruck silence pervades the room as the singer takes a deep breath and slightly smiles. We rejoice not because the waiting is finished, but because the morning we stood in the dark waiting for has, at last, unmistakably begun.

Hope fulfilled is “a new and glorious morn.”

Sources and Further Reading

The Christmas Carol Reader by William Studwell. Comprehensive guide to the historical and cultural contexts of a wide collection of Christmas carols.

Fessenden: Builder of Tomorrows by Helen M. Fessenden. A biography of radio pioneer Reginald Aubrey Fessenden, written by his wife, Helen.

Dwight’s Journal of Music by John Sullivan Dwight. A respected American music journal which was published from 1852 to 1881.

Listen Along – Recommended Playlist

Listen to Luciano Pavarotti sing “O Holy Night” / “Cantique de Noël” in English then French in the same arrangement with the dramatic octave leap at the end, as well as other artists singing English or French renditions such as Nat King Cole, Andrea Bocelli, and Andy Williams.

During a late December evening in the eighth century, a cold winter wind howls outside against the thick stone walls of the cathedral, while inside a serious stillness prevails. The smell of pale incense infuses the bone-chilling air of the vaulted chapel, and a group of monks gather and sing a haunting, contemplative chant in unison. The sound of their desperate cry echoes through the wooden stalls and thick glass windows, as they solemnly sing in Latin, “O Emmanuel, our King and Lawgiver, Hope of the Gentiles, and their Saviour; Come and save us, O Lord our God.”

Hope Awaited

Long before carols and even before Christianity, an ancient Hebrew verb encapsulated the theme of hope awaited. Qavah can be translated to both “wait” and “hope,” and there is a tradition that reads the root as ‘to bind together, twist, or stretch.’ The physical metaphor is the process of making a rope by twisting strands of material together, creating structural tension. The season of Advent carries this tension to the present day, as it is a period of waiting and of “not yet.” The posture of this awaited hope does something different from all other forms of hope. It stands still. It waits in the dark, facing the direction from which light is expected. This waiting is the active, agonizing discipline of enduring the space between a promise being made and a promise being fulfilled.

A Missing Source

Sung through Advent, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” lives in the dark stretch between a promise made and a promise kept. This tune did not originate as a song of waiting for a birth. When Anglican priest John Mason Neale and musical editor Thomas Helmore published “Veni, Veni, Emmanuel” with its now familiar melody in The Hymnal Noted, Part II (1856), it actually began with the words, “Draw nigh, draw nigh, Emmanuel.” Emmanuel means “God with us,” and is the name given to Jesus Christ as the divine presence dwelling among humanity. Neale and Helmore described the tune’s source as, “From a French Missal in the National Library, Lisbon,” but subsequent investigations failed to find the original source of the tune, leading to speculation that the tune might have been adapted from other sources or invented outright.

For a century, musicologists debated the authenticity of the tune’s origins, until 1966 when Mother Thomas More (Mary Berry) discovered a 15th-century processional manuscript in Paris that had belonged to French Franciscan nuns. One of the texts in this collection, “Bone iesu dulcis cunctis,” included a funeral chant which matched the melody of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” The tune the English-speaking world now associates with the coming of Christ’s birth was originally a funeral chant to sing for a dead body. A song of waiting made musicologists wait a century to find its true source.

Seven Cries, One Answer

While the origin of the words of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” is less controversial, they do involve reaching back more than a thousand years of musical history. The text which Neale translated and adapted comes from the “O Antiphons,” a series of seven (although sometimes more) plainchant prayers that have been sung in Western monasteries since at least the 8th century. These seven great cries of longing invoke Christ by a different Messianic title; Sapientia (Wisdom), Adonai (Lord), Radix Jesse (Root of Jesse), Clavis David (Key of David), Oriens (Dayspring), Rex Gentium (King of Nations), Emmanuel (God with Us), and each one ends with the same urgent imperative: “Come.” These Antiphons are still performed today, and they are sung during the final seven evenings of Advent preceding Christmas Eve (December 17 through 23). To sing them is to practice waiting as a daily discipline. The initials of the seven titles, read in reverse (Emmanuel, Rex, Oriens, Clavis, Radix, Adonai, and Sapientia), form the acrostic ERO CRAS, which means “Tomorrow, I will come,” or “Tomorrow, I will be [there]”. This phrase foretells the coming birth of Christ and serves as a direct response to the repeated liturgical cries of Veni (“Come”) throughout the text of the Antiphons. It is unclear if this acrostic was intentional, but it is a quiet liturgical device underscoring the anticipation of Christ’s coming.

The Mode That Will Not Resolve

“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” is the music of exile and longing. Its medieval plainchant origins render the song without a strong pulse driving towards a downbeat. The tune drifts throughout, resisting any attempt to force it into a fixed meter. While modern hymn arrangements set the song in minor, it mostly functions in the Dorian mode which serves as a modal bridge between major and minor tonalities. The Dorian mode lacks a leading tone, which provides the listener with harmonic gravity before a satisfying resolution to the home chord. Without this leading tone, the music keeps stretching the tension. This is qavah in modal form. The song never quite resolves in a traditional way. That withholding feels like an unresolved weight, deepening the longing. The refrain begins with the word “Rejoice!” as a response of assurance on two bright major chords that briefly lift the music before a quick return to the modal ambiguity. This oscillation between the ache of longing and the brief light of the promise breaking in is the already and the “not yet” rendered as sound.

From Branch to Flower

In a different tradition and a different millennium, another song took root in the same soil of waiting. Centuries after the “O Antiphons” named Jesus as O Radix Jesse, or O Root of Jesse, a German carol watched that root bloom. The text for “Es ist ein Ros entsprungen,” otherwise known as “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming,” first appeared in print in the late 16th century. The text’s authorship and exact date are unknown, although it may have originated as early as the 15th century. Early printed versions of the German hymn featured up to twenty-three stanzas, and the text was an unambiguously Catholic devotional in which the rose was the Virgin Mary. On the cusp of the Thirty Years’ War, which devastated the European population and was partially due to the religious conflicts between Catholics and Protestants, a Lutheran Kapellmeister would take the hymn and change it dramatically.

Michael Praetorius was a leading German scholar and composer of the early 17th century, and he altered the text for “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming” as a Protestant devotional which points the rose to Christ, and includes only two stanzas. He also composed a four-part SATB setting for the song, which he published as part of his monumental collection of over 1,200 settings in the Musae Sioniae (Muses of Zion) in 1609. The song was shared and sung across confessional lines with different theological readings, and it became canonical in both Catholic and Protestant hymnals.

Praetorius’s harmonization for “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming” became the standard for subsequent renditions and is commonly used today. While the setting is in a major key, the melody still retains its modal, stepwise contour, which keeps the music contemplative and calm. The setting reflects the Lutheran values of clarity and balance, and placing the melody in the soprano (rather than the older tenor line as was tradition) makes congregational singing easier. Similar to “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”, “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming” presents a notational ambiguity, as the phrasing alternates between duple and triple groupings, producing a gentle lilt throughout. Praetorius also adds suspensions which hold the resolution open longer than the ear expects, building acoustical friction, and twisting the musical cord before finally resolving. This is qavah in harmonic form.

Conclusion

“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” is the sound a church makes while it waits. “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming” promises a rose which buds “amid the cold of winter, when half-spent was the night.” One hope hymn is built on a chant for the dead. The other holds a flower grown from a cut-down stump. The Antiphon names the root, and the carol watches it bloom in the cold. Both of these songs contain remarkable depth and complexity, and are built around expectation and promise. They are both patient and geological in their sense of time. The waiting that matters most is always the one at the threshold, in the dark, where the light has been promised and has not yet arrived. These two songs symbolize the necessary tension of waiting during the “not yet,” which makes us feel like the rope being stretched.

Hope awaited is qavah.

Subscribe now

Sources and Further Reading

The Liturgical Year: Vol. 1. Advent, Christmas, Epiphany by Adrien Nocent. A theological and pastoral breakdown of the liturgical seasons of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany.

The Carols of Christmas: A Celebration of the Surprising Stories Behind Your Favorite Holiday Songs by Andrew Gant. An account of the the history behind many Christmas carols.

The New Oxford Book of Carols edited by Andrew Parrott and Hugh Keyte. An expansive collection of Christmas carols with notes on historical background and performance.

Listen Along – Recommended Playlist

Listen to “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” in English and Latin, “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming” in English and German, and a version of the ancient “O Antiphons.”

On a cold, dark Christmas Eve, two sisters longingly gaze outside their second story window at the many snow people standing in the yard below. The younger sister is devastated over the family moving away from their beloved home, and the older sister attempts to comfort her. She pulls out a music box, winds it up, and begins to sing. It is a wistful, poignant song about putting on a brave face to make the most of their last Christmas at home together. This musical hug temporarily consoles her grieving sister, but only for a short while. The little girl listens quietly, staring through the window at the snow people, which she will soon go out and knock down in a fit of despair.

Hope Endured

Hope can be an act of survival, a way of persevering in times of suffering. Hope can also be a beacon of light in otherwise dark times. We do not hope to simply wish away our worries, we hope as a form of endurance. Without hope, we may lose heart, and we may lose faith in our future and be swept away by a wave of gloominess and pessimistic fear. Hope endured prepares us for the trying times both now and ahead, gives us the strength to stare straight ahead at what is to come, and helps us to stay strong and persevere. Hope endured is not naive optimism, it is a hard-won, resilient psychological posture during times of crisis. Without this internal fortitude and inner strength to guide us, our hope can evaporate at the first signs of resistance.

It May Be Your Last

The original lyrics of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane and originally submitted to the copyright office in November 1943 were initially much gloomier, and even included a line about how it could be your last Christmas. These lyrics reflected the somber mood of the moment, written during the most trying months of World War II. Many families lived in fear of receiving a notice that their loved one had lost their life in wartime service, and for many of those who served, 1943 was their last Christmas.

Judy Garland, the star of Meet Me in St. Louis who was set to sing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” pushed back against the darker lyrics and reportedly refused to sing the song as written. The scene for the song calls for Garland’s character to comfort her little sister who is heartbroken about her family’s pending move away from St. Louis, and Garland felt her character would come across as cruel on screen singing these sullen lyrics that sounded like a funeral. Composer Hugh Martin initially resisted making any changes, but he eventually relented and reframed the lyrics into a softer anthem of quiet resilience, the version heard in the movie.

There was an introductory verse originally written for the song as well, which was subsequently left out of the movie and is rarely heard. The verse uses the archaic term “welkin,” which refers to the skies or the heavens. Although “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” became the most successful song from the movie, it was not the song nominated for an Academy Award, nor was the popular “The Boy Next Door” that Garland also sang. The nomination for Best Original Song at the 1945 Academy Awards went to “The Trolley Song”, which ultimately lost the award to Bing Crosby’s “Swinging on a Star” from the movie Going My Way. The most enduring song from the picture was the one nobody nominated.

The Second Rewrite

As Frank Sinatra was working on his 1957 album A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra, he wanted to include “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” but felt the “muddle through” lyric was too pessimistic for the upbeat feel of the album. He asked Martin to change the lyrics once again, and Martin replaced the “muddle” line with a more optimistic line about a shining star. Several lines of lyrics were changed from future to present tense for this arrangement as well, reflecting the societal shift in perspective from the somber, war-torn early 1940s looking ahead to hopefully brighter days ahead, to the prospering, confident times of the mid to late 1950s which celebrated the now. Both versions are still performed, with artists such as James Taylor, Phoebe Bridgers, and Ella Fitzgerald singing the melancholy Garland lyrics, while others such as Sam Smith and the Carpenters use the rosier Sinatra lyrics in their performances. Even though he commissioned the rewrite of the song, Frank Sinatra had himself recorded the Garland “muddle through” version of the lyrics in 1947 which was released a year later.

The Sound of Sadness

Although the lyrics have been altered multiple times in attempt to make the song brighter, the song has held on to its bittersweet, introspective harmonies that belies any verbal attempt to soothe its yearning. The song sits in a basic AABA form, and it moves at a slow, plodding pace that prevents the major key from ever sounding too cheerful. The melody seems easygoing. It begins on simple arpeggios (a sequence of the chord’s notes), broken by gentle descending lines which feel like a musical sigh. However, during the first phrase (and indeed throughout the entire song), this melody continues to land on the 7th note of the chord, instantly creating a feeling of tension and an urge to resolve that never quite leaves. In addition to using the 7th chordal note in the melody, the song often uses colorful seventh chords which can typically be found in jazz tunes, making the music sound dreamy and lush.

What the song will not do is land. The second A section, on the words, “miles away,” refuses to resolve and sarcastically lands on a deceptive cadence which carries the listener into a remote modulation. The dramatic B section, the most musically complex section of the song, sees the melody actually begin its first three notes on the 7th of the chord, creating a nagging dissonance that holds the resolution just out of reach. More complex chords appear here, diminished and augmented, adding even more wistful sonorities, which the listener experiences as emotional complexity. There is also a beautiful, chromatic descending countermelody that is subtly hidden amongst the beauty of the melodic line, amplifying the harmonic ambiguity.

For a song that is meant to comfort a child who is forced to leave her home, the music ironically ends most its phrases with half cadences that leave the listener longing for a return to the musical home. The music never quite satisfies that intense longing, and it feels like an ever-extending sentence with comma after comma, which never quite finishes its musical thoughts. The one time in the song that a clear, authentic dominant-to-tonic resolution happens at the end of a phrase landing squarely on home (besides a brief passing resolution in the B section), is the very last note of the melody, on a single word: “now.” Everything before has been withholding. The final cadence is the only true release the song allows itself, and it lands on the one word that means the present. The melancholy of the song survived the numerous lyrical edits because it was never only in the words.

Conclusion

We would like to imagine hope as a new day, a sunrise that breaks over the horizon and changes everything for the better all at once. This song knows better. The hope from this song is the kind that appears in an ordinary evening in the middle of a difficult year, when nothing feels like it has resolved, yet you play the music box anyways.

Muddling through is hope endured.

Subscribe now

Sources and Further Reading

Meet Me In St. Louis by Gerald Kaufman. BFI Film Classics volume about the making and history of the movie.

Judy Garland: The Secret Life of an American Legend by David Shipman. A revealing biography about the troubled star.

Hugh Martin: The Boy Next Door by Hugh Martin. Autobiography of the American composer best known for his work on Meet Me In St. Louis.

Listen Along – Recommended Playlist

Listen to the Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra versions of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” with the contrasting lyrics, other artists singing the song including Ella Fitzgerald and Mel Torme, as well as additional songs from the movie Meet Me In St. Louis such as “The Trolley Song” and “The Boy Next Door.”

A boy stands in front of a large train, debating if he should get on. He is filled with awe and astonishment, but also apprehension and skepticism. He must decide what to do quickly, or he’ll be left behind for good. Will he choose the safety and logic of staying at home, or will he choose the potential magic and mystery ahead? He pauses while his fear and longing collide, and reluctantly he takes a few steps back. His cynicism seems to have won the day. The train whistle loudly hisses, the brakes are released, and the train begins to slowly roll away. For a moment, the boy watches the train start to pass him by. But suddenly the boy changes his mind, runs forward, and leaps aboard the train. He chooses wonder.

Choosing hope is an act of will which overcomes our doubt. We deliberately turn towards hope as an act of faith, even when the evidence does not fully compel it. This act of will is not optimism, and it is not merely a trait that comes more naturally to some of us than to others. This is also not a passive wish that somehow automatically manufactures our desires. Hope chosen is much stronger than optimism; it is intentional faith in what we believe. Choosing hope is an act of courage, our reaching for an anchor in the dark. The decision to hope might have been made against all logic, and yet somehow we know we have chosen wisely.

The Polar Express

Robert Zemeckis directed the 3D performance capture animated movie The Polar Express in 2004, which was adapted from the 1985 children’s book of the same title by Chris Van Allsburg. The movie follows the story of a skeptical boy who takes a fantastical journey aboard the Polar Express train to the North Pole. The movie was nearly complete when Zemeckis realized it still didn’t have a clear theme. He wasn’t just looking for a pretty, light-hearted theme centered on a shiny bell, but a multilayered concept with emotional character. Alan Silvestri, the film’s composer who had previously written the music for Back to the Future and Forrest Gump, among many others, set out to write a theme song to explore the complex psychology of belief.

Working from a leitmotif (a recurring musical theme) he had already scored in the music for the film, Silvestri worked with accomplished songwriter and lyricist Glen Ballard to develop the song. That eleventh-hour collaboration quickly produced the song “Believe,” sung by Josh Groban over the end credits of the film. Groban, whose “Closer” album had reached number one earlier that year, helped propel “Believe” to number one for five weeks on the adult contemporary chart beginning in December 2004. This last-minute addition to the movie surpassed expectations and was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe, and it won a Grammy for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture in 2006.

Doubting Thomas

In the Gospel of John, Thomas earns his nickname by refusing to believe until he sees the physical evidence for himself, in the original case of “seeing is believing.” It is not until his face-to-face encounter with the risen Jesus that his unbelief finally disappears. The boy in The Polar Express is a “Doubting Thomas” figure, and he remains skeptical throughout most of the film. While on his journey he continues to doubt, yet he keeps taking small steps towards his eventual belief.

In the pivotal scene where Santa Claus arrives to greet the large crowd in the North Pole town square, the boy picks up a stray bell fallen from Santa’s sleigh and shakes it to see if he can finally hear it ring. He cannot hear it. Instead, an eerie whisper repeats, “Doubter, doubter,” as he shakes the bell. It is then, and only then, that the boy closes his eyes, willingly lets go of his demand for proof, and makes a deliberate decision to believe. He shakes the bell one more time, and he clearly hears it ring. His belief is the prerequisite for the evidence, not the other way around. The boy does what Thomas could not: he believes without proof.

The Sound of Belief

“Believe” by Silvestri and Ballard is a moderately slow ballad that begins softly and tenderly, like a music-box lullaby, with its first verse setting a scene of children dreaming while bells ring from afar. The structure of the song is verse, chorus, verse, extended chorus, and coda, and the score is written for a full symphony orchestra. The opening melody is the film’s central musical motif, which appears as an instrumental theme throughout the movie, including the very opening scene, as well as the closing scene where the once-skeptical boy confirms his belief in Santa Claus and the spirit of Christmas. The full song, with Groban’s vocal, never plays during the film itself, and it does not further the boy’s narrative. The placement of “Believe” after this pivotal closing scene and during the end credits aims to reinforce the listener’s belief and to leave its hopeful resolution settled in us.

The first chorus begins with an orchestral swell and an ascending stepwise bass line, which makes each rising note in the bass feel like another step forward towards belief for the listener. The lyrics of the chorus begin and end with the same word, “believe,” and this pivotal word will be used eleven times throughout the entire four minutes and eighteen seconds of the song. The second verse revisits the quieter, dreamlike state of the first, calling up images of locomotives and ships moving through the dark, guided by the light of hope towards their destination. The familiar swell of the orchestra at the beginning of the extended chorus moves the listener towards a sense of wonder and rejuvenation, urging us to follow feeling rather than proof and let it carry us upward.

The climactic moment of the song comes at the end of the extended chorus. The phrase with the highest note in the entire song, which appeared only once on the word “if” during the first chorus, now sounds three times in succession with full orchestration. It strikes the same peak again and again, denying the melody any escape and pressing the listener to choose. As “Believe” begins to contract from its high point, the grammar at the very end of the song shifts from conditional to imperative, as the word “believe” appears for its last three iterations, and the opening “if” has become a command. This recurring “just + verb” imperative model is frequently found in advertising, and this kind of language is built to move you to act without deliberation. If you have not made your decision to believe by the time that peak arrives, this coercive grammar, with the imperative paired with the repetition of “just believe,” presses you to choose anyway.

Without Proof

By the end of the film’s credits, both the boy and the audience are ready to believe. The boy’s emotional journey from skepticism to belief is the listener’s too, as the music and lyrics of “Believe” mirror the movement from uncertainty to conviction. Hope here is a willed choice, not a passive expectation. Just as the boy loses the empirical evidence when the bell slips through the hole in his pocket, the emotional echo of the song leaves us with the same paradox: belief outlasts proof.

We only need to remember how to listen.

Subscribe now

Sources and Further Reading

• The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg. The original children’s book that inspired the movie.

• The New Oxford Annotated Bible (5th edition) by Michael Coogan, Marc Brettler, Carol Newsom, Pheme Perkins (Eds.). Academic study bible widely used for scholarly work.

• The Psychology of Hope by C.R. Snyder. Outlines Snyder’s Hope Theory defining hope as a cognitive process.

Listen Along – Recommended Playlist

Listen to the original “Believe” recording by Josh Groban from the The Polar Express soundtrack, along with versions of “Believe” from other artists, along with additional music from The Polar Express soundtrack and from Josh Groban.

Doubt is not the absence of hope, it is a mode of hope. We doubt because we still believe, we still trust, we still hope that what we are reaching for is still attainable. When we are troubled and ask the metaphorical questions, “Where are you?” or “Why?”, it is because there is still a glimmer of hope in the answer. Pure despair stops asking. The question itself is the hope. When we doubt hope, it is not completely abandoned, but in the moment hope feels unreachable. This is the darkest degree of hope, which is the last stage before faith is eventually renewed and hope springs forth once again.

A man sits at his desk and hears the bells ringing on Christmas Day, 1863. The insistent bells ring across Cambridge as if nothing has happened. They continue to ring, as if the man’s second wife had not burned to death in this very house two years ago. They continue to ring, as if his first wife had not died after a miscarriage twenty-six years before that. They continue to ring, as if his son had not been gravely wounded and nearly paralyzed on the battlefield during the grueling, never-ending national conflict the month before. The man takes out his pen and writes, “And in despair I bowed my head; ‘There is no peace on earth,’ I said.”

One-hundred and thirty-seven years later, a different kind of doubt was expressed. A lonely, disillusioned voice reaches out and asks, “Where?” and “Why?” But no one answers. The voice is lost and feels abandoned. Again, the voice asks, “Where?” and “Why?” The laughter is gone; the music is no longer heard. Still no one answers. One last time, the voice asks, “Where?” The silence continues, and the voice will have to answer herself.

Two Works, One Thread

What does a Civil War-era hymn share with a Y2K cinematic pop ballad? The pairing is unusual on the surface, but if we look past the obvious asymmetry in cultural weight, both explore the same thematic tension of doubt from profound loss. In the lyrics for “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” which were adapted from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1863 poem “Christmas Bells”, Longfellow expresses theological doubt stemming from his anguish over external tragedies. In the lyrics for “Where Are You Christmas?”, co-written by James Horner, Will Jennings, and Mariah Carey for the 2000 film How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the narrator expresses introspective doubt arising from the fear that Christmas has been lost forever. These two songs interpret hope under pressure differently, but both arrive at the same destination of profound disillusionment.

Civil War Despair

Longfellow never fully recovered from the death of his second wife, and while still full of grief, he wrote his declaration of theological dissent. This poem includes seven total stanzas, two of which were directly tied to the ongoing Civil War. The poem was later adapted to music using the hymn tune “Waltham” by organist and professor John Baptiste Calkin and became “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”. This “Waltham” tune was originally written in 1872 specifically for George Washington Doane’s mission-related text “Fling Out the Banner,” and it was only later paired with Longfellow’s poem.

“I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” leaves out the two verses relating to the war, and rearranges the more triumphant third verse about ringing and singing to the end of the piece. Composer Johnny Marks created another version of the song in 1956 with a more contemporary melody, which has been recorded by Bing Crosby and the Carpenters, among many others. The Christian band Casting Crowns also had success in 2008 with their own unique interpretation of “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”, set against excerpts of Longfellow’s text with a solemn piano ostinato introduction in minor.

Cinematic Crisis

“Where Are You Christmas?” was written as the musical centerpiece of the soundtrack for the movie adaptation of the classic children’s book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas! by Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel). The song resonates with listeners who struggle with their own emotional dislocation during the holidays. The original plan was for Mariah Carey to release the song she co-wrote for the soundtrack, and she reportedly recorded a demo. However, a massive studio conflict involving Carey’s ex-husband Tommy Mottola, then head of Sony Music, allegedly blocked her from recording and releasing the song.

Faith Hill was brought in as a high-profile replacement, and her version of the movie’s soundtrack became a top ten adult contemporary hit in early 2001. In a full circle moment, Taylor Momsen, the child actress who played Cindy Lou Who and sang the alternate “Christmas, Why Can’t I Find You?” song in the movie, released her own version of “Where Are You Christmas?” with her band The Pretty Reckless in 2025.

Architecture of Doubt

At the emotional center of both songs is the exploration of doubt under pressure. In “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”, the “Waltham” hymn tune uses a strict strophic form, allowing each verse to share the same melody and underlying chord progressions throughout. The steady structure of the music acts as a divine constant against the temperamental words of man, whose emotional state changes from verse to verse. The opening verses are statements of faith – the “old, familiar carols play” and the bells ring “the unbroken song.” This is the expected hope deserving of the “peace on earth, good-will to men!” phrase which hypnotically repeats at the end of each verse, making the coming doubt much sharper. “Where Are You, Christmas?” begins unusually with a disconcerting series of unresolved chords by strings. This unnerving opening sounds nothing like a box office power pop ballad. The chords gradually descend for nearly 30 seconds, stopping and starting again, before the moving piano accompaniment in its upper register finally arrives and takes over.

The Crux of the Doubt

The deepest point of doubt comes at the central moment of each song. The pivotal verse of “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” is a desperate proclamation that scorns the promise the angels sang:

And in despair I bowed my head;

“There is no peace on earth,” I said;

“For Hate is strong,

And mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

The stunning effect of these abruptly dark words stands in sharper relief against the unchanging musical accompaniment. There is no dramatizing the despair with dissonance. The words carry all of the burden. Here, in this moment, hope feels utterly defeated. The collapse of hope from external calamity momentarily drowns out the Christmas bells.

After the jarring instrumental opening of “Where Are You Christmas?”, the voice begins the simple melody with quiet, isolated questions about the missing wonder of Christmas. The sense of bewilderment builds with each unanswered question, verse after verse of unresolved queries. But here the struggle is not external – it is internal. The voice finally realizes that Christmas has not changed; the change has come from within.

The Pivot - Hope Springs Forth

The climactic pivot for both works finds a reframed hope that triumphantly reappears from its doubt-induced banishment. The fourth verse of “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” (which is the final verse in the poem) begins with the defiantly loud return of the thundering bells, as the voice proclaims, “God is not dead, nor doth He sleep.” Again, the music remains the same as the previous dark verse, yet the melody sounds lighter, freer. Longfellow has completed the theological arc by moving from complete despair to renewed divine trust.

In “Where Are You Christmas?”, the pivotal moment comes in the bridge, supported by a rich harmonic progression that lifts the tonal center upwards. The voice has faced her internal doubt and realizes that Christmas is indeed here. Suddenly, the voice leaps up an octave and loudly repeats this joyful proclamation, with the high note of the whole piece landing on the “mas” of “Christmas.” The voice carries in the restoration of Christmas, albeit with a redefined sense of self.

Both songs explore and eventually overcome doubt. One meets doubt from the outside; the other meets doubt from within. Both follow a similar structural arc: a central point of explicit despair followed by the ultimate reframing of hope.

In every Christmas season there is space for doubt, grief, and disorientation. There is also space for reaffirming hope even in the darkest of winters.

The voice finds her answer, and the bells do keep ringing.

Subscribe now

Sources and Further Reading

The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. A comprehensive collection of Longfellow’s works.

Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow by Alfred A. Knopf. A recent biography of Longfellow.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas! By Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel). The original children’s book that inspired the movie.

The Meaning of Mariah Carey by Mariah Carey and Michaela Angela Davis. Carey’s memoir about her life and career.

Listen Along – Recommended Playlist

Listen to the “Waltham” tune version of “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”, along with the Johnny Marks version and the Casting Crowns arrangement. Also, listen to Faith Hill’s “Where Are You Christmas?”, a new version from Pentatonix, along with Taylor Momsen’s recording with The Pretty Reckless.

Hope usually points us forward, towards a better tomorrow and a brighter future. We are hopeful because we believe that what we want will happen soon. But hope remembered is something different. Hope remembered is anchored backwards, towards a past filled with idealistic nostalgia. This hope reflects on what we used to have, on what we used to believe, and on what might have been. When we remember hope, we reminisce about the “good ole days”, when everything was less chaotic and times were simpler. We remember our loved ones whom we’ve lost along the way, and we yearn to have just one more magical moment with them. The songwriter Irving Berlin experienced a profound loss on Christmas Day that permanently rewired his relationship with the holiday, and this subtle melancholy of hope remembered can be heard in Berlin’s immortal song, “White Christmas”.

“White Christmas”

Just days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the world first heard “White Christmas” sung live by Bing Crosby on his radio show on Christmas Day in 1941. The master to the original 1942 recording of the song by Bing Crosby with the Ken Darby Singers wore out from frequent use, and the song was re-recorded in 1947 and is the version we are most familiar with today. Interestingly, there is a forgotten verse at the beginning of the song, describing the bright, warm climate of Los Angeles on Christmas Eve, depicting a displaced soul longing for a wintry Christmas. The introductory stanza is typically excluded from recordings, including Crosby’s versions.

“White Christmas” also appeared in Holiday Inn in 1942 and in White Christmas in 1954, two films which Crosby starred in, and the song won the 1942 Academy Award for Best Original Song for Holiday Inn. Due to these popular holiday movies and the massive success of his recordings of “White Christmas”, Bing Crosby became the unofficial voice of Christmas, and his Christmas singles and albums continue to sell well and make the popular charts even today.

The Suspended Note

There is a subtle, yet dramatic moment in the very first phrase of the song, where the melody lands on a suspended note (a sharp 4) on the first syllable of Christmas, “Christ,” before resolving on the second syllable “mas.” For such a warm and seemingly easy-going melody, it may be surprising to hear a momentarily tense moment in the first line of the song. The chromatic note happens so quickly that the listener may not register the haunting friction which happens in less than a second. This F sharp note on “Christ”, which is an evocative note as far away from the song’s C major key as you can be, creates a restless, kinetic energy that needs to resolve to the G on “mas” as soon as possible. This splinter of dissonance demands an immediate resolution to the soothing balm of the dominant chord. It is a wonderful but quick moment of tension and release, and it adds a layer of understated complexity to the music.

Although this brief moment almost goes unnoticed, this suspended note is much more important than we first realize. Hope itself lives within this suspended note. As hope is the suspension before the eventual joy, this suspended note on “Christ” is the poignant embodiment of hope before the eventual satisfying resolution on “mas”. This haunting, chromatic note on the most important word of the holiday epitomizes the Hope Remembered theme, the deep longing we have for a past to which we can never quite return.

Immediately after the first mention of a “White Christmas”, the lyrics begin to reminisce about an idyllic wintry scene from a different place and time. Children and sleigh bells, two key themes which many songwriters will deeply explore in their own lyrics in Christmas songs to come, are also lovingly remembered here. There is a sense of quiet yearning in these lyrics, while the dreamer in the song expresses hope for a “White Christmas” for all of us. The idea of a “White Christmas” is so powerful because it is deeply personal. Each of us carries a nostalgic vision of our own perfect “White Christmas”, like an old, worn-out recording of our favorite home video. While the song is technically in a “happy” major key and appears benign on the surface, the multiple suspensions and descending chromatic lines throughout pull us towards an entirely different mood, which those who are at war can thoroughly relate to.

The Accidental War Anthem

“White Christmas” would begin to transform from a popular Christmas song to a national cultural monument in the fall of 1942, climbing to the top of the Hit Parade charts thanks to the millions of homesick U.S. soldiers overseas during World War II. Fighting in very un-festive environments, these soldiers overwhelmed the Armed Forces Radio Service with constant requests to play Crosby’s recording towards the end of 1942 and throughout the rest of the war. The song’s profound sense of longing perfectly epitomized the psychological state of the soldiers, and the vision of this “White Christmas” articulated the serene, picturesque homestead for which they were yearning.

The popularity of the song only continued to grow during the wartime Christmases of 1943 and 1944, topping the charts for both years yet again thanks in part to the soldiers’ never-ending affection for the tune. Bing Crosby frequently traveled overseas during the war to entertain and sing for the troops, and these soldiers would continually request “White Christmas” all throughout the year. “White Christmas” soon surpassed Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” in sales becoming his most popular song ever, and “White Christmas” eventually became the best-selling Christmas song of all time.

Bing’s 1947 Recording

The instrumental arrangement of Crosby’s 1947 recording has helped define the sound of Christmas for future generations, with light, fluttering flutes, warm violins full of vibrato, and a celesta which adds a wonderful, glistening sparkle. The warm, lush orchestration creates a comfy ambience, as if we are settled down and relaxing by the fireplace. The music’s tempo strolls at a steady, relaxed pace, with plenty of time to soak in the nostalgia of better days gone by.

“White Christmas” is also an absolute masterpiece in economic songwriting, as it only takes fifty-four words and sixty-seven notes to tell this holiday short story, which is repeated once to fill out the 3 minutes and 3 seconds of Crosby’s 1947 recording. After Bing sings the verse the first time through, the Ken Darby Singers lead the beginning of the repeated verse in a wait-like caroling manner, with Bing accompanying them with a lighthearted, gleeful whistle, until he once more takes the vocal lead for the climactic ending. The massive success of this song forever changed the popularity of Christmas music, and it ushered in a new wave of musical nostalgia for the holidays, with hits such as “The Christmas Song” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”

Berlin’s Tragic Loss

The melancholy which silently pervades throughout the song, is also reflected in the somber history of Irving Berlin’s relationship with Christmas. As a Russian-Jewish immigrant, Irving Berlin’s relationship with the holiday was already complicated. However, on Christmas Day in 1928, Berlin experienced the most devastating loss a parent can ever endure. Berlin’s infant son, Irving Berlin Jr., tragically died on Christmas Day in 1928 (likely of sudden infant death syndrome), just a few weeks after being born. The death of his baby boy haunted Berlin for the rest of his life, and he would regularly put flowers on Irving Berlin Jr.’s grave on Christmas Day as a memorial to his lost son.

Hope remembered became Berlin remembered.

Subscribe now

Sources and Further Reading

• White Christmas: The Story of an American Song by Jody Rosen. The definitive biography of the song itself.

• Irving Berlin: New York Genius by James Kaplan. A recent biography framed through the lens of New York and the Jewish American experience.

• Sleigh Rides, Jingle Bells, & Silent Nights: A Cultural History of American Christmas Songs by Ronald D. Lankford Jr. A history of American Christmas music told through the songs themselves.

• Merry Christmas! Celebrating America’s Greatest Holiday by Karal Ann Marling. The cultural history of how America made Christmas what it is.

Listen Along - Recommended Playlist

Listen to Bing’s 1947 and 1942 “White Christmas” recordings back to back, a recording from the Carpenters with the missing first verse, along with “White Christmas” recordings from several other artists.