The Surprising Origins of Popular Christmas Songs

Time ^ | Dec. 19, 2023 | Olivia B. Waxman

[canuck_conservative]

"Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer"

In 1939, Chicago copywriter Robert May created the character of Rudolph for the annual Christmas coloring booklet for the retail and catalog company Montgomery Ward.

May created a reindeer because his toddler daughter was crazy about the deer at Lincoln Park Zoo. Depicting Rudolph as an outsider was inspired by May’s own experience being picked on while growing up for being shy and small. May got the idea for Rudolph’s glowing nose from gazing out his office window and thinking about how Santa would be able to navigate through the fog over Lake Michigan.

Rudolph’s story didn’t really become world-famous for another decade, until May’s brother-in-law Johnny Marks wrote the musical version that Gene Autry sang and the song topped the charts in 1949.

"Do You Hear What I Hear?"

Husband-and-wife songwriters Nöel Regney and Gloria Shayne penned the song in Oct. 1962 as a plea for peace amid the Cuban missile crisis — literally writing, “Pray for peace, people everywhere!”

“With the prospect of unspeakable war, my father was walking around New York and saw some babies and was very moved—and wrote the lyrics for ‘Do You Hear What I Hear?,’” [said] Gabrielle Regney ...

"Silent Night"

The Christmas carol can be traced back to Austria. It was written by Joseph Mohr, a priest at the Catholic St. Nicholas Church and first performed in 1818.

As Foley says, Mohr was “an Austrian priest who was very eager to celebrate a high mass for his congregation on Christmas, but the organ broke and couldn’t be repaired in time. As consolation, he dusted off an old poem that he had written to commemorate the end of the Napoleonic Wars and then asked a friend to set it to music. And the result was ‘Silent Night.’” ...

[canuck_conservative]

"The Christmas Song"

"Musician Mel Tormé and his writing partner Robert Wells composed this song in July 1945 at Wells’ California home in an effort to beat the heat.

Tormé came across a spiral notepad with snippets of lyrics: "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire / Jack Frost nipping at your nose / Yuletide carols being sung by a choir / And folks dressed up like Eskimos." As Tormés’s son recapped what Wells said to his father in a 2017 NPR interview, “You know, Mel, I have tried everything to cool down. I've been in my pool. I had a cold drink. I've taken a cold shower. I'm nothing but hot. And I thought that maybe, you know, if I could just write down a few lines of wintery...verse I could psychologically get an edge over this heat.” About 45 minutes later, Tormé had the music written.

The duo presented the finished product to Nat King Cole, who made it famous, recording it three times throughout his career."

* * * * *

"Little Drummer Boy" only written in 1941 ... I thought it was a lot older than that

And "Do You Hear What I Hear?" written in 1962!! That was surprising ...

Merry Christmas!

[nopardons]

BTTT

[Ken H]

I remember how disappointed I was when I found out that Christmas carols were composed by human writers - probably in2nd or 3rd grade. I had always just assumed they were originally sung by the angels at the Nativity.

[Jeff Chandler]

“White Christmas” was written by Irving Berlin for the 1942 musical film Holiday Inn. Both the La Quinta Hotel in La Quinta, California and the Arizona Biltmore claim to be the place Berlin was staying when he wrote it.

[Liz]

First song in space------ "Jingle Bells" was one of the first songs to broadcast from space, in a Christmas-themed prank by Gemini 6 astronauts Tom Stafford and Wally Schirra. While in space on December 16, 1965, they sent this report to Mission Control:

C6: Gemini VII, this is Gemini VI. We have an object, looks like a satellite going from north to south, probably in a polar orbit. He's in a very low trajectory traveling from north to south and has a very high climbing ratio. It looks like it might even be a ... Very low. Looks like he might be going to reenter soon. Stand by one ... You might just let me try to pick up that thing. (Music – Jingle Bells – from Spacecraft VI) P7: We got the tune, VI. C6: That was live, VII, not tape. CC: You're too much, VI.

The astronauts then produced a smuggled harmonica and sleigh bells, and with Schirra on the harmonica and Stafford on the bells, broadcast a rendition of "Jingle Bells" The harmonica, shown to the press upon their return, was a Hohner "Little Lady", a tiny harmonica approximately one inch (2.5 cm) long, by 3⁄8 of an inch (0.95 cm) wide.

[scrabblehack]

I recall seeing Mel Torme on Johnny Carson years ago — I hadn’t known he wrote “The Christmas Song.” Although he was an old man, I thought the song was older than that.

[Fiji Hill]

"Winter Wonderland" is from the show "Ziegfeld Follies of 1934" and apparently wasn't originally intended to be a Christmas carol (it makes no mention of Christmas). My favorite version is by Richard Himber & His Orchestra.

[Fiji Hill]

Do You Hear what I Hear?--The Harry Simeone Chorale (1962)