America's classic Christmas song was written by a Jewish immigrant.
Born in Russia with the name Israel Baline, he was the genius
songwriter we know as Irving Berlin. He wrote "White Christmas" for the
1942 Hollywood musical "Holiday Inn," starring Bing Crosby and Fred
Astaire.
On set, the movie's hit number was presumed to be another Berlin
composition, the Valentine's Day song "Be Careful, It's My Heart." At
first, it was. Then "White Christmas" captured the public's imagination
and hasn't quite loosed its grip since.
As my colleague Mark Steyn puts it in a winsome podcast interview
with Berlin's daughter Mary Ellin Barrett, "Berlin loved America and he
sang its seasons": Easter ("Easter Parade"), July Fourth ("God Bless
America") and, of course, Christmas.
Some estimates point to sales of all versions of "White Christmas"
topping 100 million. According to Albert and Shirley Menendez in their
book on American Christmas songs, it made the charts for two decades
straight, and as late as 1969 was the No. 1 Christmas song in the
country. You are sure to hear it multiple times any Christmas season, on
the radio, on TV or at the mall.
It is a song built on yearning. In lines at the beginning of the
original version that aren't usually performed, Berlin writes of being
out in sunny California during the holiday: "There's never been such a
day/in Beverly Hills, L.A./But it's December the twenty-fourth,/And I'm
longing to be up North."
Steyn thinks that if America had entered World War II a few years
earlier, the song might never have taken off. But 1942 was the year that
American men were first shipped overseas, and it was released into a
wave of homesickness. Mary Ellin Barrett says it first caught on with
GIs in Great Britain. During the course of the war, it became the most
requested song with Armed Forces Radio.
The irony of the son of a cantor writing the characteristic
American Christmas song is obvious. Yet, his daughter says, "he believed
in the great American Christmas."
As a child on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, he loved to look at the
little Christmas tree of his Catholic neighbors. He and his Christian
wife Ellin (theirs was a scandalous mixed marriage), put on elaborate,
joyous Christmases for their three daughters. Not until later would they
reveal that the day was a painful one for them because they had lost an
infant child on Christmas.
Berlin knew he had something special with "White Christmas" as soon
as he wrote it. He supposedly enthused to his secretary, "I just wrote
the best song I've ever written — heck, I just wrote the best song that
anybody's ever written!" The song evokes the warmth of the hearth and
the comforts of our Christmas traditions in a way that hasn't stopped
pulling at heartstrings yet.
Whereas Berlin's composition has proved its enduring appeal across
more than half a century, Justin Bieber's or Cee Lo Green's latest
holiday numbers probably won't. In an essay in The New Republic,
Jonathan Fischer asks what has become of the golden age of pop Christmas
songs between the 1930s and 1950s that not only gave us "White
Christmas," but "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," "The Christmas
Song" and such lesser standards as "Silver Bells," "Santa Baby" and
"Frosty the Snowman."
Well, the writing was better, the standards higher, the culture
more charming and less abased. But Fischer notes something else —
Christmas meant more. "As the religious purpose of Christmas has gotten
increasingly remote," he writes, "pop songwriters seem to have less to
say about it" and "a traditional and sentimental version of Christmas . .
. doesn't appeal to the wider, more fractured popular culture the way
it once did."
Maybe we can't make great Christmas songs anymore, but we can still
listen to them, and that will have to be consolation enough. May your
days be merry and bright.
Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review. He has written for
The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Los
Angeles Times, and a variety of other publications. Read more reports
from Rich Lowry — Click Here Now.
© King Features Syndicate
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