12# Santa Claus Is Coming to Town!

3 min read

1 year ago Pavel

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 13 DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS 🎅🏻🎄

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Penned by James “Haven” Gillespie, this jolly tune was first performed on American singer Eddie Cantor’s radio show in 1934.
But for all its mirth, its inspiration came from a place of grief.
Actually Gillespie was a vaudevillian-turned-songwriter who’d fallen on hard times, both financially and personally, and he got the call to pen a Christmas tune for Cantor just after learning his brother had died.
Initially, he rejected the job, feeling too overcome with grief to consider penning a playful holiday ditty.
However, a subway ride recollecting his childhood with his brother and his mother’s warnings that Santa was watching changed his mind.
He had the lyrics in 15 minutes, then called in composer John Coots to make up the music that would become a big hit within 24 hours of its debut.

The earliest known recorded version of the song was by banjoist Harry Reser and his band on October 24, 1934. It was then sung on Eddie Cantor’s radio show in November 1934, and this version became an instant hit with orders for 500,000 copies of sheet music and more than 30,000 records sold within 24 hours.

Haven Gillespie’s lyrics begin:
“You better watch out, better not cry
You better not pout, I’m telling you why
Santa Claus is coming to town“.
And Cantor’s original performance, broadcast at the height of the Great Depression, included verses not in the standard version of the song, encouraging listeners to be charitable and help the less fortunate at Christmas.
Either way, over the years, the song has been recorded by over 200 artists, including Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters, The Crystals, Mariah Carey, Neil Diamond, Bruce Springsteen, Frank Sinatra, Bill Evans, Chris Isaak, The Temptations, The Carpenters, Michael Bublé, Luis Miguel, and The Jackson 5.