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.

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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.

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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.

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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 soldier’s 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 climatic 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.

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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.