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White Christmas
"White Christmas," written by Irving Berlin and first performed publicly by Bing Crosby on Christmas Day 1941, became the best-selling single of all time by some measures, a distinction it has held for over eight decades despite the enormous growth of the recorded music industry since its release. Berlin reportedly wrote the song's wistful, nostalgic lyrics while staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles, composing an ode to a snowy Christmas from the middle of a Southern California winter, a contrast later commentators have often noted as part of the song's enduring emotional appeal. Crosby's version, featured in the films "Holiday Inn" and later "White Christmas," became so closely associated with the song that Berlin himself reportedly considered Crosby's recording the definitive version, and it has been re-released and charted repeatedly during the Christmas season for decades since. Its combination of its record-setting sales status and Bing Crosby's definitive vocal performance has made "White Christmas" widely regarded as the greatest and most commercially significant Christmas song ever written.
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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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