Always dreaming of a white Christmas

By Mark Hopkins

My favorite secular Christmas song of all time is "White Christmas." I love the simplicity of the lyrics and the mental visions it creates such as snow glistening on treetops and Christmas cards being written. Having been raised in the Midwest and now living in the South, the wistful dream of a white Christmas captures me.

The song was written by Irving Berlin in 1940 but it didn't really hit the public's consciousness until Bing Crosby sang it in the hit movie "White Christmas" in 1954. The song has sold more than 50 million copies since and is the most successful record of all time.

Bing Crosby said he didn't particularly like the song when he first heard it and was not scheduled to sing it in the movie. The "White Christmas" director, Michael Curtiz, wrote in his memoirs he intended for Crosby to sing it, but Crosby insisted he wouldn't be in the movie if he had to sing that song. It wasn't until they were nearing the completion of filming that they sprang it on Crosby. As the story goes, he refused to come to the set for two days after learning he had been duped but eventually relented and sang the song. The rest, as they say, is history.

Most of the movie stars of the '30s and '40s were graduates of Vaudeville, that stage-show circuit that ran from Boston to Buffalo, New York, to Philadelphia to Baltimore, and finally, if the act was good enough, to New York. Names such as W.C. Fields, Mae West, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Bing Crosby and Irving Berlin were well known in the theaters of the 36 Vaudeville circuit cities, all of them in the snowy Northeast.

When movies began to be made with sound, songwriters like Irving Berlin and singers like Bing Crosby found their way to California. There, of course, Christmas was very different from what most of the Vaudevillians were used to. You could understand their longing for a white Christmas.

The original words to Berling's classic, long lost today, were: "The sun is shining, the grass is green, the orange and palm trees sway. There's never been such a day in Beverly Hills, L.A. But, it's December 24th and I'm longing to be up North ..."

Then the chorus began with the familiar words, "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas."

Ruth and I have lived in South Carolina now for more than 30 years, and though we have had some snow from time to time, we have not yet experienced a white Christmas. So, assuming it won't happen this year, either, Ruth and I have a wish for you: "May your days be merry and bright, even if your Christmas can't be white."