Berlin’s Inspiring ‘White Christmas’ Sad For Reason?

Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” is an inspiring yet haunting ode to great memories & future hopes; little known is composer’s tragic story behind world’s “best loved Christmas song” as it was written 3-weeks after a new born son had died on Christmas Day 1928; Berlin & wife would visit the grave every Dec. 25 thereafter …

As related by NPR, The New York Times & Country Living in recent years, Russian immigrant Berlin was born an Orthodox Jew yet knew much about the Christian holiday having been married to Catholic novelist Ellin Berlin, his wife of 62 years. White Christmas would not air until many years after their baby’s death on the Dec. 25, 1941 Kraft Music Hall radio show and be sung by then-host Bing Crosby. Pearl Harbor had been attacked just a few weeks later. (Ironically, Berlin would also write “God Bless America” which became an unofficial national anthem and inspired as well as consoled Americans after 9-11.) Of course, it was Crosby’s version of White Christmas that would sell over 50 million copies, yet he tried NOT to sing the song while entertaining WWII troops about to go into battle: “I hesitated … because it invariably caused such a nostalgic yearning and made the men sad,” Crosby once said. “I didn’t come that far to make them sad. I tried to cut it out of the show, but these guys just hollered for it.”

“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know. Where the treetops glisten and children listen, to hear sleigh bells in the now…”

Davd Soul