A beloved American holiday song celebrates its 60th anniversary this year. Irving Berlin's made its debut in a 1942 movie called It's been part of the Christmas season ever since, heard everywhere today from shopping malls to hotel elevators to holiday television specials. Now it's inspired a book by Jody Rosen, called
Jody Rosen wasn't born yet when Bing Crosby sang the first hit version of in 1942. The author grew up in the 1970s and 80s, listening to rock and roll, rap, and other music of his generation. But thanks to his grandmother's influence, he also loved the music of the 1930s and 40s. And after writing numerous articles on popular music, he decided deserved a book of its own. "It was the biggest song of the era in commercial terms, arguably one of the creative peaks of the period as well," he explained. "Bing Crosby's version alone has sold at least 31 million copies. But there have been quite literally hundreds of millions of copies of this song sold in various versions. There have been recordings in Swahili, in Dutch, in Hungarian. In Spanish speaking countries everyone knows In France everyone sings So it's really an American song that's become a universal song, the preeminent Christmas song of the 20th century."
has also helped shaped American notions about what the ideal Christmas should be like. "The cottage tucked on a snowy hillside and the associations of the holiday with family and home and hearth and all those sentimental images of the Victorian Christmas were already in the culture when Irving Berlin wrote the song. But this really was the first American popular song that discussed Christmas," he said.
Jody Rosen says he was also intrigued by the fact that a song about how Americans celebrate a Christian holiday was written by a Russian Jewish immigrant. As the author explains in Irving Berlin probably wrote the song partly for practical reasons; he believed there was a market for new Christmas music. "He was interested in hits above all, and not just because he wanted to make a lot of money, but he saw himself as a public songwriter, fulfilling a very important public role. On the other hand, it speaks to his lifelong effort to assimilate. He was born in a a small Jewish village in the Russian pale, emigrated at five- years-old in 1893, and from the moment he came to America wanted to be a Yankee Doodle American. After all, this was the guy who wound up writing which is an alternative national anthem."
Jody Rosen traces the inspiration for back to 1938. Irving Berlin had just returned to New York City after spending some five years in Hollywood working on movie musicals. He'd been amused to see Californians celebrating America's traditional winter holiday in such a warm climate. So he wrote what were supposed to be the opening lines to what would become
But those first lines, sung here by Mel Torme in a 1992 recording of were dropped from the version Bing Crosby sang 50 years earlier. Jody Rosen says what began for Irving Berlin as a parody song turned into something else. "I think he realized the sentimentality of the song summed up some of the emotions we bring to the Christmas holiday," said Jody Rosen. "So when he came into his office on January 8, 1940, a Monday morning, he told his musical secretary, 'I want you to take down a song I wrote over the weekend. Not only is it the best song I ever wrote, it's the best song anybody ever wrote.' And that song was "
Irving Berlin's own feelings about the holiday may have shadowed the song. Despite Berlin's Jewish heritage, says Jody Rosen, the composer enjoyed lavish Christmas celebrations, until tragedy struck his family. "On Christmas Day 1928, Irving Berlin jr., Irving Berlin's only son, who was three-weeks-old, died of what we might call today SIDS, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome," he explained. "And afterwards the holiday made him sad, because every Christmas was the anniversary of his son's death. And has this wistful, melancholy quality, which really comes across in Crosby's very soft, crooning performance of the song."
Bing Crosby was already known for singing other Christmas songs, and Jody Rosen says Irving Berlin knew from the start he wanted Crosby to sing "One of his nicknames was 'Santa Cros.' So when Berlin wrote his Christmas song he thought, 'Hey, I've got to have Crosby doing this, and he signed him up to do the movie in which the song first appeared and wouldn't agree to do that movie with Paramount Pictures unless Crosby was on board."