9# The true story behind White Christmas

3 min read

6 months ago Leo S

Here’s the surprising history behind your favorite Christmas Carols!
What if “The Red-Nosed Reindeer”, Frosty and the “One Horse Open Sleigh” had nothing to do with Christmas?
Singing Christmas songs goes hand in hand with baking Christmas treats, listening our favorite Christmas tales, watching our favorite Christmas movies, and not only.
Like everything around this period of the year, everything has a story.
From songs that have been saved from being erased forever to not really knowing for sure where a song came from, here is the history of a few Christmas Carols you know and sing still today!

Enjoy our Advent Calendar 2022!

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🎄🎅🏻 THERE ARE ONLY 16 DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS 🎅🏻🎄

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Composer Irving Berlin, a Russian-born immigrant who, interestingly enough, did not celebrate Christmas, as he was Jewish, didn’t write “White Christmas” full of Christmas cheer.
But he usually spent the day visiting the grave of his three-week-old son, who died on Christmas in 1928, which helps explain the melancholy feel of the song.
It was written for the musical film Holiday Inn, released in 1942, and the composition won the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 15th Academy Awards.
Accounts vary as to when and where Irving wrote the song. One story is that he wrote it in 1940, in warm La Quinta, California, while staying at the La Quinta Hotel, a frequent Hollywood retreat also favored by writer-director-producer Frank Capra, although the Arizona Biltmore also claims the song was written there.

“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas / just like the ones I used to know / where the treetops glisten and children listen / to hear sleigh bells in the snow”.

When Bing Crosby made the song famous on his NBC radio show The Kraft Music Hall in 1941, it was a mere 18 days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
When he traveled overseas to perform for troops, the song was the most requested.
“I hesitated about doing it because invariably it caused such a nostalgic yearning among the men, that it made them sad,” he said in an interview. “Heaven knows, I didn’t come that far to make them sad. For this reason, several times I tried to cut it out of the show, but these guys just hollered for it.”

“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas / with every Christmas card I write / may your days be merry and bright and may all your Christmases be white”.

Since then, “White Christmas” has been covered by everyone from Elvis to Karen Carpenter to Lady Gaga—but its timeless message remains the same.
In any case, for 72 years, it has remained the most popular Christmas song, with estimated sales in excess of 50 million copies worldwide. When the figures for other versions of the song are added to Bing Crosby’s, sales of the song exceed 100 million.
But it’s also the best-selling single ever, according to Guinness World Records.