"White Christmas" is a song reminiscing about an old-fashioned Christmas setting. Written by Irving Berlin for the 1942 musical film Holiday Inn, the song won the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 15th Academy Awards.
Introduced by Bing Crosby, it topped the Billboard chart for 11 weeks and returned to the number one position again in December 1943 and 1944. His version would return to the top 40 a dozen times in subsequent years, the most recent being 2025. Crosby's version is the world's best-selling single (in terms of sales of physical media), with estimated sales in excess of 50 million physical copies worldwide. When the figures for other versions of the song are added to Crosby's, sales of the song exceed 100 million. It also remains one of the best-selling singles in the United States with estimated physical copies sold between 10 and 12 million as of 1963.
Since its release, "White Christmas" has been covered by many artists.
Contents
History
Origin
Accounts vary as to when and where Berlin wrote the song. One story is that he wrote it in 1940, in warm La Quinta, California, while staying at the La Quinta Hotel, a frequent Hollywood retreat also favored by writer-director-producer Frank Capra, although the Arizona Biltmore also claims the song was written there. He often stayed up all night writing. One day he told his 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."
Bing Crosby versions
The first public performance of the song was by Bing Crosby, on his NBC radio show The Kraft Music Hall on Christmas Day, 1941, a few weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Crosby subsequently recorded the song with the John Scott Trotter Orchestra and the Ken Darby Singers at Radio Recorders for Decca Records in 18 minutes on May 29, 1942, and it was released on July 30 as part of an album of six 78-rpm discs from the musical film Holiday Inn. At first, Crosby did not see anything special about the song. He just said "I don't think we have any problems with that one, Irving."
The song established that there could be commercially successful secular Christmas songs—in this case, written by a Jewish immigrant to the United States. Ronald D. Lankford Jr., wrote, "During the 1940s, 'White Christmas' would set the stage for a number of classic American holiday songs steeped in a misty longing for yesteryear." Before 1942, Christmas songs and films had come out sporadically, and many were popular. However, "the popular culture industry had not viewed the themes of home and hearth, centered on the Christmas holiday, as a unique market" until after the success of "White Christmas" and the film where it appeared, Holiday Inn. Dave Marsh and Steve Propes wrote, "'White Christmas' changed Christmas music forever, both by revealing the huge potential market for Christmas songs and by establishing the themes of home and nostalgia that would run through Christmas music evermore."
The song initially performed poorly and was overshadowed by Holiday Inn's first hit song: "Be Careful, It's My Heart". By the end of October 1942, "White Christmas" topped the Your Hit Parade chart. It remained in that position until well into the new year. It has often been noted that the mix of melancholy—"just like the ones I used to know"—with comforting images of home—"where the treetops glisten"—resonated especially strongly with listeners during World War II. The Armed Forces Network was flooded with requests for the song. The recording is noted for Crosby's whistling during the second chorus.
In 1942 alone, Crosby's recording spent eleven weeks on top of the Billboard charts. The original version also hit number one on the Harlem Hit Parade for three weeks, Crosby's first-ever appearance on the black-oriented chart. The song also topped the following weekly charts in the same year: Songs with Most Radio Plugs, National record sales, and National sheet music sales. Re-released by Decca, the single returned to the No. 1 spot during the holiday seasons of 1945 and 1946 (on the chart dated January 4, 1947). The recording became a chart perennial, reappearing annually on the pop chart twenty times before Billboard magazine created a distinct Christmas chart for seasonal releases.
Sales figures
Crosby's "White Christmas" single has been credited with selling 50 million copies, the most by any release and therefore it is the biggest-selling single worldwide of all time. By 1968, it had already sold thirty million. The Guinness Book of World Records 2009 Edition lists the song as a 100-million seller, encompassing all versions of the song, including albums. According to analysis of PRS for Music figures, it was estimated that the song generates £328,000 of royalties per year.
Crosby's holiday collection Merry Christmas was first released as an LP in 1949, and has never been out of print since.
There has been confusion and debate on whether Crosby's record is the best-selling single, due to a lack of information on sales of "White Christmas", because Crosby's recording was released before the advent of the modern-day US and UK singles charts. However, after careful research, Guinness World Records in 2007 concluded that, worldwide, Crosby's recording of "White Christmas" has sold at least 50 million copies, and that Elton John's recording of "Candle in the Wind 1997" has sold 33 million. However, an update in the 2009 edition of the book decided to further help settle the controversy amicably by naming both John's and Crosby's songs to be "winners" by stating that John's recording is the "best-selling single since UK and US singles charts began in the 1950s", while maintaining that "the best-selling single of all time was released before the first pop charts", and that this distinction belongs to "White Christmas", which it says "was listed as the world's best-selling single in the first-ever Guinness Book of Records (published in 1955) and—remarkably—still retains the title more than 50 years later."
Legacy
In 1974, the 1942 recording of the song by Bing Crosby and The Ken Darby Singers on Decca Records was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
During the Vietnam War, a recording was broadcast on Armed Forces Radio on April 30, 1975, as a secret, pre-arranged signal precipitating the U.S. evacuation from Saigon.
In 1999, National Public Radio included it in the "NPR 100", which sought to compile the one hundred most important American musical works of the 20th century. Crosby's version of the song also holds the distinction of being ranked No. 2 on the "Songs of the Century" list, behind only Judy Garland's "Over the Rainbow", as voted by members of the RIAA. In 2002, the original 1942 version was one of 50 historically significant recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry. In 2004, it ranked No. 5 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema.
In a UK poll in December 2012, "White Christmas" was voted fourth (behind "Fairytale of New York", "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday" and "Merry Xmas Everybody") on the ITV television special The Nation's Favourite Christmas Song.
Formats and track listing
These are the formats and track listings of single releases of "White Christmas".
Original verse
Irving Berlin's opening verse, contrasting the sunshine and warmth of Christmas in California with the narrator's desire for a traditional holiday setting of winter snow, is often dropped in recordings.
It is included on A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector, sung by Darlene Love; on Barbra Streisand's A Christmas Album; on the Carpenters' Christmas Portrait, sung by Karen Carpenter; on Neil Diamond's The Christmas Album; on Bette Midler's Cool Yule; on Libera's Christmas Album; and on Crash Test Dummies' Jingle All the Way.
Certifications and sales
Other versions
There have been more than 500 recorded versions of the song, in several different languages. The following have received some charting success.
Gordon Jenkins and his Orchestra (with Bob Carroll on lead vocal) released a version on Capitol Records that reached No. 16 on Billboard magazine's pop singles chart in 1942 and Charlie Spivak and his Orchestra (with Garry Stevens on lead vocal) released a version for Columbia Records that reached No. 18 on Billboard's pop singles chart as did Freddy Martin and his Orchestra (with Clyde Rogers on lead vocal) for RCA Victor, reaching No. 20 on Billboard's pop singles chart (and again in December 1945, reaching No. 16).
In 1944, Frank Sinatra with a backing orchestration under the direction of Axel Stordahl for Columbia, reached No. 7 on Billboard's pop singles chart (two more times: December 1945, No. 5; December 1946, No. 6) Jo Stafford reached No. 9 on Billboard's pop singles chart in 1946, with backing vocals by the Lyn Murray Singers and backing orchestration by Paul Weston for Capitol. Eddy Howard and his Orchestra released a version on the Majestic label that reached No. 21 on Billboard's pop singles chart the same year while Perry Como, with backing orchestration by Lloyd Shaffer, recorded the song for RCA Victor in 1947 and reached No. 23 on Billboard's pop singles chart; Como recorded a stereo version of the song in 1959.
In 1949, The Ravens peaked at No. 9 on Billboard's Rhythm & Blues Records chart in January 1949 on National Records. while Ernest Tubb, with female backing vocals by The Troubadettes on Decca, peaked at No. 7 on Billboard's Country & Western Records chart.
In 1952, Mantovani and his orchestra reached No. 23 on Billboard's pop singles chart while The Drifters showcased the talents of lead singer Clyde McPhatter and the bass vocals of Bill Pinkney in 1954, peaking at No. 2 on Billboard's Rhythm & Blues Records chart. It returned to the same chart in the next two years. In February 1954, the Drifters recorded "White Christmas", which was released that November. While the song became a No. 5 R&B hit in 1954, its popularity remained in the black community. The Drifters' rendition of this song can be heard in the films Home Alone and The Santa Clause.