White Christmas: The secret sadness behind the world’s greatest Christmas song

Irving Berlin's White Christmas is the most iconic of Festive songs. Illustration: Lesley-Anne Barnes Macfarlane

It’s like a question in a Christmas party game. You lift up the card and it asks: “What is the best-selling song of all time?”

At this point, your answer will largely depend on how old you are. For those under the age of 45, they might smirk and say: “Elton John – Candle in the Wind (the Princess Di version) – 33 million.”

Older heads among us (and, yes, that’s me) we will give an indulgent smile and sit back: "Bing Crosby - White Christmas – 50 million – and that’s nine million before they even started counting properly…”

It would be easy to believe that when you go into the supermarket this time of year and hear the usual Christmas suspects playing that it was ever thus. What’s that blaring from the speakers now? Slade (“It’s Chriii-st-maaas!”)? Paul McCartney (“Simply HA-ving a WON-derful Christmas time…)? Roy Wood and Wizzard (“When the snowman brings the snow…”).

But - in fact - the whole idea of a Christmas pop song market started some 80 odd years ago with a single song. An anthem that became an American standard written by a man born in Russia; words celebrating the Christian season – written by someone who was Jewish; music written on a piano by a man who (a) couldn’t read music and (b) who couldn’t really play the piano either.

The song, of course is “White Christmas” – words and music by Irving Berlin.

Irving Berlin was born Israel Baelin in Siberia on 11th May 1888. His father was a cantor, leading the community in worship in the little Jewish shtetl of Tolochin (these days, located in Belarus). Christmas was a time to be feared. The peace of the little villages would be shattered by pogroms. Like many other families of the place and period, the Baelin family decided to emigrate. To America.

The five year-old boy’s naturalisation papers changed to “Israel Baline”, the family settled into the bustling Lower East Side of New York City. Assimilation was easier for some than others. Israel’s father could not find a role as a cantor, but found employment as a kosher butcher, teaching Hebrew on the side, while his mother found occasional work as a midwife.

‘Izzy” started school and showed no particular aptitude, his teachers remarking of the seven year old: “He just dreams and sings to himself.”

Before long, his father dead, the young Izzy Baline found himself selling newspapers on street corners - but, as he got bigger he found that he earned more tips by standing on the corner bellowing out the Vaudeville hits of the day. So, he ditched the newspapers and focused on the acapella street-corner busking, hoping for the odd coin or two from passers-by. It turned out to be good practice.

Later, in his teens, he landed jobs as a singing waiter in run-down New York bars, establishments so rough they had names like “The Bucket of Blood”. Again, Izzy would supplement his tips by singing the songs of the day – but this time, he would write his own lyrics – “blue” versions of the songs in question. And then at night, when the rowdy patrons had finally gone home and the tables were cleared, Izzy Baline would sit at the old piano and teach himself how to play, picking out tunes on the black keys.

And it was in one of these low-down dives where Israel Baline, bellowing out his dirty versions of popular songs, found his true vocation.

The owner of The Pelham Cafe in Chinatown (a bar so rough, that the proprietor claimed to have murdered ten men) ordered the nineteen year-old Izzy to collaborate with the resident pianist to create an original song. They came up with the mock-Italian “Marie from Sunny Italy” – “Please come out tonight my queen/Can’t you hear my mandolin…” (It actually rhymes if you put on a fake Italian accent).

Two things resulted from that exercise: (1) Izzy earned his first songwriting money (a princely 33 cents for the publishing rights) and (2) it gave him a new name. The sheet music misprinted his name: ‘I Baline’ had become ‘I Berlin’. Thus, it was that 33 cents and a misprint helped create one of the greatest songwriters of all time: ‘Irving Berlin.

In the next four years, stooped over the piano (one musician remarked that Berlin’s musical technique resembled a child playing the piano with three fingers) the newly-named Irving Berlin wrote over one hundred songs including such forgotten ditties as: “Business is Business, Rosey Cohen”, “How Do You Do It, Mabel, On Twenty Dollars a Week?”, “Don’t Take Your Beau to the Seashore”, “The Monkey Tune” and “I just Came Back To Say Goodbye”.

Then, in 1911, he wrote “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”.

In those days, before the heyday of the phonograph and records, the success of a song was measured by the number of copies of sheet music sold (these were essential since an upright piano in the parlour was a feature of millions of American households, even the poorest ones). “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” – words and music by Irving Berlin – was an instant hit. It sold two million copies.

The former Izzy Baline became unstoppable. After that breakthrough, in the following years, the name Irving Berlin became synonymous with the greatest hits of the day, penning classics such as “Play a Simple Melody”, “A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody”, “When I Lost You”, “What’ll I Do”, “Always” and “Blue Skies”.

Then, in 1942, some three decades after the sensation of Alexander’s Ragtime Band came “White Christmas”.

By then, it was well established that Berlin had his own system of writing and getting his songs set down. He would devise the new song on his custom-made piano (despite years of playing, Berlin still couldn’t read or write music and he could only play in one key – the black notes (F#) – so he had a piano adapted with a special lever to change key when needed. He called it “The Buick”). Once a song was finished, he would bang it out on the piano and sing it to his amanuensis, Helmy Kresa, who would write down the melody (the top line) and suggest the likely chord changes underneath.

This is how “White Christmas” came about but nobody quite agrees when or where the song was written. One version of the origin of the song is that on Monday, 8th January 1940, Berlin surprised his staff by coming into his office early at 799 Broadway and ordering Kresa to take down the song that he had been struggling with all weekend, announcing: “Not only is it the best song I ever wrote, it’s the best song anybody ever wrote…” Kresa was used to his boss’s showbiz puff but had to agree.

Later, Berlin had the idea for a film project. A movie featuring seasonal songs – “Holiday Inn” – where they could showcase “White Christmas”. Berlin insisted that only one person could sing that song in the film: Bing Crosby. Now that recording techniques had become more sophisticated and microphones had become more sensitive, the old-fashioned bellowing of popular songs on 78 RPM records had given way to a more nuanced kind of delivery and Crosby had established himself as the pre-eminent crooner of the day. Also, Crosby had recently scored great successes with recordings of the Christmas music of “Silent Night” and “Adeste Fideles” (although, it has to be noted that Crosby – a good Catholic – had expressed reservations about recording such sacred songs and, in his nerves, stumbled over the Latin). Initial signs were promising. When Berlin first played Crosby the song, the languid singer took his pipe from his mouth and remarked: “I don’t think we have any problems with that one, Irving.”

Production began, but half way through the making of the movie, America was changed utterly. On 14th December 1941, Japanese planes carried out a surprise attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii. America had just been ushered into the Second World War. The movie was quickly adapted to incorporate additional patriotic material before its release in August 1942.

“Holiday Inn” was an instant success, breaking all previous records for film musicals. Berlin and the film producers began a campaign to promote a featured song from the movie – “Be Careful, It’s My Heart” – to be the hit from the film, but it was “White Christmas” which (a) won the Oscar for Best Song and (b) started to rush up the charts. The reason? Servicemen overseas.

The U.S. Army/Navy/Air Force draft meant that farmboys from Kansas found themselves waking up in theatres of war like New Guinea. Motor mechanics from The Bronx were loading their guns in the Philippines, Egypt, Anzio, Normandy, Guam or Borneo. There was one common denominator. Homesickness. And what better comfort than the calm, reassuring tones of Bing Crosby with reminders of those “sleigh bells in the snow” at home. U.S soldiers – GIs – in their thousands all over the world started to request “White Christmas” to be played on the Armed Forces Radio services, and gradually every PX (army store) seemed to have a supply of the record, every jukebox in every mess hall had it playing, Bing’s voice would remind the boys of the simple pleasures of home whether posted in the snows of Attu Island or the humid jungles of Guadalcanal.

In those early years, Crosby’s recording went on to sell nine million copies and the song became a national phenomenon. At one point during the war, The New York Post published a cartoon of Adolf Hitler (in his swastika pyjamas) lying on the snowy Russian front – dreaming of his own “White Christmas”.

No doubt, you’ll hear the song at some point over this Christmas period, whether on TV or the radio or in the supermarket. Here’s a question for you: Is it a happy song or a sad song? Not easy, is it? Neither word seems to hit the bullseye. Is the person singing “just like the ones I used to know” thinking of better, bygone times? Ironically, Irving Berlin said that his own earliest memory was of his family home being burnt to the ground. During one of the Russian pogroms at Christmas? We’ll never know.

“I’m dreaming of a White Christmas – with every Christmas card I write…” If the person is writing the cards, then it’s not Christmas Day yet. The singer is looking forward to Christmas soon.

But is there a deeper sadness, a wistfulness, a longing inside the song for some other, unspoken reason? Maybe we have to look back to a time before the song was written, to December 1928.

We look into the Berlin household in the run-up to Christmas Day 1928. Berlin – writing his Christmas cards – is rich; a world-famous songwriter; happily married to Ellin with a beautiful two year-old daughter and with another precious Christmas gift on the way: Ellin is expecting their baby, a son. And on 1st December 1928, Ellin gave birth to Irving Berlin jnr. Christmas 1928 was going to be the perfect Christmas.

Then, tragedy.

At 5am on Christmas morning, a panicked nurse roused the parents. Three doctors were called. But nothing could be done. The baby Berlin had died. No-one could say why. It was attributed to a heart attack. The grieving parents didn’t tell their daughter, who was too young anyway to know what was happening. After that, it was never spoken of in the house. Mary Ellin had to find out about her baby brother some years later when she was going through clippings in her father’s desk drawer and she came across a snippet of page three of the New York Times, dated 26th December 1928: “Berlin’s Infant Son Dies of Heart Attack”.

Shocked as Mary Ellin was, this made sense of a puzzling ritual that had been happening in the Berlin household every year. Each Christmas Eve, her parents, Irving and Ellin Berlin, would dress in sombre clothing and leave the home for a couple of hours, not telling their daughter where they were going. In fact, they were going to a cemetery in The Bronx and laying flowers on the grave of Irving Berlin Jr. Years later, Mary Ellin’s mother would confess that the parents hated Christmas because it was such a distressing time for them, but that they kept a brave face so that the children could be happy.

Berlin was so affected by his son’s death that he never spoke of it. The following years saw him write with an astonishing facility with the creation of popular songs that have become undisputed modern classics of The Great American Songbook:

“Puttin’ on the Ritz”, “Cheek to Cheek”, “Isn’t This a Lovely Day (To Be Caught in the Rain)”, “Let’s Face the Music and Dance”, “Top Hat, White Tie and Tails”, “Easter Parade”, “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm”, “God Bless America” (his personal favourite), “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better” (written in a taxicab), “There’s No Business Like Show Business”, “Steppin’ Out With My Baby”, “You’re Just in Love”, “Sisters”.

Irving Berlin lived to the age of 101 and died on 22nd September 1989. The song “White Christmas” had become so embedded in the popular mind that, when Berlin turned 99, a survey of songs revealed that the majority of Americans thought that “White Christmas” had no identifiable author as such, but that it was just a very old folk song.

Of all Christmas songs, “White Christmas” continues to be an unusual mixture of melancholy and optimism. Longing and satisfaction. But perhaps these are the contradictions that we should have expected from the life of a native Russian who wrote the Great American Songbook; a musician who couldn’t read music, a pianist who couldn’t play the piano.

There’s no doubt that in the 21st Century the song has retained its wistful magic – almost 100 years after Irving Berlin rushed into that Broadway office – and we still bask in the warmth of the voice of Bing Crosby and smile as we begin to dream of our own “White Christmas” (with every Christmas card we write).

Ross Macfarlane’s book “Edward Kane and Mr Horse – Collected Short Stories: Volume I” is now on sale on Amazon and Kindle.