Irving Berlin’s ‘White Christmas’ Turns 80 Years Old

When Irving Berlin first wrote the soon-to-be-holiday classic “White Christmas,” it was to accompany the 1942 film Holiday Inn, which starred not-quite-legends-yet Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. The chief song off that film soundtrack was ‘Be Careful, It’s My Heart,” but by the time the 1943 Academy Awards swung around, ‘White Christmas’ had stolen America’s heart and it won the Oscar for Best Original Song.

The song is remarkable in that it has stood the test of time, through generations of Americans and it is still in heavy rotation today – either in its original iteration or in any number of covers. The song is also an institution in that it became a modern Christmas classic without being overtly religious — as most “Christmas” songs at that time were more religious in nature.

Berlin, a Jewish Russian immigrant whose family settled in New York City, also wrote a number of other songs that comprise what many consider to be “the Great American Songbook.” He penned “Easter Parade” (which accompanied the same-named film also starring Astaire in 1943), “God Bless America,” and “There’s No Business Like Show Business.”

As for ‘White Christmas,” it was first performed by Crosby and in 1942 started a life of its own that went on to make it the best-selling holiday single in United States music history, and the best-selling single of all time. That’s according to the Guinness Book of World Records. There are over 500 versions of the Christmas classic, sung by everyone from Ella Fitzgerald to Taylor Swift to Otis Redding.

The Irving Berlin fan page even created a two-hour Spotify playlist of all the various covers of the classic. You can listen to it here.

Berlin, who was born in 1888 and died in 1989, at the time didn’t realize that he had

written a song in his young adulthood that would became a staple of his adopted country. The song was used again in the 1954 film White Christmas, which was a remake of sorts of the original black and white

Holiday Inn, with the exception of Astaire’s role being reworked for Danny Kaye.

Of the song’s enduring popularity, Berlin famously said to the Jamaica Press newspaper of Long Island: “Much as I’d like to take a bow and say I anticipated its future success, I must admit I didn’t.”