White Christmas - A Carol that Evokes Fond Visions of Christmas and Snow Everywhere

Having grown up in upstate New York, I have always believed that Christmas and snow go together. Not that Rochester, New York, my hometown, is known for white Christmases. Cold and overcast is common with a little better than a fifty-fifty chance of some snow on the ground if not snow falling from the skies and blanketing the landscape.

Living in Arizona for the past two and a half decades have made me used to green Christmases even though I still miss the snow covered Christmases we had in my youth. Ironically, the one white Christmas in Tucson in the years I have lived here occurred the year we took our, then three or four year old son, back to Rochester for Christmas. I had promised him a traditional snow covered Christmas with the family.

However, instead a landscape covered with a fresh blanket of snow, we woke up on Christmas Day to a cloudy day with the temperature in the low 40s and an intermittent drizzling rain.

What was worse, was a big picture on the front page of the morning paper showing palm trees in downtown Tucson with branches bent under the weight of the snow covering them and a headline boldly announcing the first white Christmas in Arizona since some time in the 1940s. While we have had a handful of snow storms since then, none of them have been on Christmas.

My early association of Christmas and snow is probably why I have always enjoyed the Christmas carol White Christmas.

Having been written a few years before I was born and being popular in my youth as one regularly heard Bing Crosby singing it on the radio while I was growing up, is probably the main reason I enjoy it so much.

The music and lyrics for the carol were composed in 1940 by Irving Berlin for the 1942 movie Holiday Inn staring Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. Berlin supposedly composed the carol while sitting by the pool in Beverly Hills, California and drew inspiration from his memories of Christmas decorations and snow while growing up in New York City.

According to WikiPedia the original version of the carol began with the words:

The sun is shining, the grass is green,
The orange and

palm trees sway.
I've never seen such a day
in Beverly Hills, L.A.
But it's December the twenty-fourth,—
And I am longing to be up North—

The joys of winter and snow are relative. Like other things in life, the joys of snow and winter are temporary. For children, snow is a lot of fun and the words of the carol definitely make one think back to the happy and carefree days of their childhood.

However, snow tends to lose its charms as one gets older and finds themselves having to crawl out of a warm bed early on a dark winter morning so that they can go outside and shovel the snow off the driveway in order to get to work. Sunshine, green grass and palm trees swaying in the breeze in places like Beverly Hills, California or Tucson, Arizona make for a more appealing image most of the time.

Yet, there are few activities more peaceful and more beautiful than a stroll with one's lover on a crisp and quiet winter evening with the ground covered with a blanket of new snow while snow continues to gently drift down from the sky and the only sound is the gentle crunching sound from below as you walk on the newly fallen snow. And on Christmas Eve the experience is even more serene and beautiful.

The carol quickly became popular and its popularity led to Bing Crosby staring in a second movie, White Christmas, which was released in 1954 and the ending scene of which had Bing Crosby leading the cast in singing the carol while snow began falling on Christmas Eve in the background.

The movie, like the carol, evoked memories of wartime camaraderie and the bonding between soldiers fighting overseas while consoling themselves with memories of past white Christmases at home with their families.

While one of the themes of the movie White Christmas is that of two ex soldiers (played by Bing Crosby and co-star Danny Kaye) helping their former commander, with whom they shared Christmas on a lonely battlefield in Italy during World War II, save his Vermont ski resort that was failing due to lack of snow, the song itself tends to evoke nostalgic memories of home and family. With families separated by the war, as almost every family had a son, husband, father, nephew, etc. away fighting, it is easy to see why the carol quickly became popular during the war.

The song itself, however was not written for the war. Instead, it was intended as a Christmas song to accompany a movie that was a part of a series of films commemorating American Holidays. Composer Irving Berlin was commissioned in 1940 to write this and songs for other holidays for the series.

With musical and theatrical productions, as with the production of other products, there is a time lag between the idea and the finished product and world events continue to develop and change during the production process. In this case World War II erupted for the United States with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 just a few weeks before Bing Crosby introduced the song, White Christmas, on his radio show broadcast on Christmas Day 1941.

As the United States was gearing up for the war in 1942 by drafting, training and deploying troops to fight around the world, the movie Holiday Inn, for which the song had originally been commissioned, was released in August 1942. Earlier, in May 1942, Bing Crosby made the first recording of White Christmas, which was released in the fall of that year where it quickly rose to the top of the charts.

Given the nostalgic theme of the carol and the coincidence of its release just as the United States entered World War II, it is easy to see how it quickly became popular and has remained popular in the hearts of people at Christmas time.