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Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree
"Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," written by Johnny Marks and recorded by 13-year-old Brenda Lee in 1958, became one of the first Christmas songs to successfully incorporate rock and roll's emerging rhythm and energy into the traditionally more sedate genre of holiday music. Marks, who had already written "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and would go on to become one of the most prolific Christmas songwriters of the 20th century, built his publishing career substantially around holiday material, an unusually specialized commercial niche within the broader music industry. The song's initial commercial performance upon release was relatively modest, and its status as a genuine holiday standard grew gradually over subsequent decades of radio replay, eventually becoming one of the most streamed Christmas songs of the digital era despite its more than 60-year-old original recording. Its combination of its pioneering rock-and-roll-infused sound and its eventual long-delayed rise to genuine standard status has made "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" one of the most distinctive and enduring Christmas songs of the mid-20th century.
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Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane for the 1944 MGM musical film "Meet Me in St. Louis," introduced a more bittersweet, melancholy emotional register into the Christmas song canon, reflecting the film's wartime-era themes of family separation and uncertainty. Judy Garland, who performed the song in the film, reportedly requested that Martin soften the song's originally even bleaker draft lyrics, resulting in the more hopeful, though still wistful, version that became the standard recorded by countless subsequent artists. Frank Sinatra's later 1957 re-recording, for which he specifically requested Martin revise a lyric he felt was too melancholy for his own album, produced the somewhat more upbeat alternate version of certain lines that many contemporary performers now use interchangeably with Garland's original. Its combination of its distinctively bittersweet emotional tone and its dual iconic Garland and Sinatra recordings has made "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" one of the most emotionally complex and enduringly reinterpreted songs in the Christmas canon.
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