The crooner Bing Crosby first sang “White Christmas” live on the “Kraft Music Hall” radio show on December 26, 1941, nineteen days after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

It was a frightening time, one of our country’s darkest moments. The nation felt wounded, violated, and every living American knew that a tough fight would follow. Holiday spirit was at a low.

Yet, Bing’s song set aside the worry for a moment, and because of its “nostalgia around the holidays, regardless of religion,” it resonated with audiences.

“It’s not upbeat. Its lyrics are wistful, even a sad recollection of past holidays.” Yet people loved its melancholy mood, and it has remained a holiday classic.

Irving Berlin, a prolific songwriter, wrote “White Christmas,” for the 1942 movie, “Holiday Inn,” starring Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby, who sang the song in the movie, along with Marjorie Reynolds.

A story later emerged that Berlin raced into his Manhattan office and asked his secretary to take dictation, for, what he said, was “the best song I ever wrote. The best song anybody ever wrote.”

Irving Berlin was born Israel Bellin, a Russian Jewish immigrant, on May 11, 1888, in Tolochin, Russia, now in Belarus, and he died on September 22, 1989, at the age of 101 years and 4 months.

During that century plus of living, he wrote hundreds of songs, including: “God Bless America,” “Easter Parade,” “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” and the wedding song “Always.”

“White Christmas” though was his most popular, and it sold the best, by far.

Irving Berlin and his second wife, Ellin Mackay—an heiress of Irish Catholic descent—had four children. One son, Irving Berlin, Jr., though died at the age of three weeks, on Christmas Day, 1928.

Although Irving did not celebrate Christmas, he and his wife visited their son’s grave every year on Christmas Day. Some have speculated that the song was Berlin’s method of coping with his tragic loss.

In 2002, the author Jody Rosen wrote a book, “White Christmas: The Story of a Song.” In it, Rosen said, “The kind of deep secret of the song may be that it was Berlin responding in some way to his melancholy  about the death of his son.”

Of the song, Berlin’s daughter, Linda Emmett, said, “It’s very evocative. The snow, the Christmas card, the sleigh, the sleigh bells, and it’s entirely secular.”

The poet and biographer Carl Sandburg wrote, “We have learned to be a little sad, and a little lonesome without being sickly about it. This feeling is caught in the song of one thousand jukeboxes that is whistled across streets and in homes. ‘I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.’

“When we sing it, we do not hate anybody, and there are things we love. Way down under the latest hit of his, Irving Berlin catches us where we love peace.”

Richard Corliss, a film critic and editor at “Time” magazine, said, “[The song] connected with GI’s in their first winter away from home. It voiced the ache of separation, and the wistfulness they felt for the girl back home, for the innocence of youth.”

Bing Crosby said that whenever and wherever he performed for GIs during World War II, they shouted at him on the stage that they wanted to hear him sing “White Christmas.”

Jody Rosen speculates that Berlin may have written the song in 1937, when he was in California, away from wife and kids and home, when making a movie in Beverly Hills, California.

This makes sense when one considers the lyrics to the song’s sole verse that no one knows or hears.

“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 the 24th, and I am longing to be up north. I’m dreaming of a white Christmas.”

All we hear Bing Crosby sing, or anyone else sing, is the chorus, composed of just three sentences.

“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know, where tree tops glisten, and children listen, to hear sleigh bells in the snow.

“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, with every Christmas card I write. May your days be merry and bright, and may all your Christmas’ be white.”

The song became an even bigger hit for Bing Crosby when he sang it in the 1954 movie, “White Christmas,” which starred Bing, along with Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and Vera-Ellen.

According to the Guinness World Records, the song “White Christmas” is the all-time best-selling Christmas song, and also the all-time best-selling song ever, with some 50 million copies sold.

The closest to that record is Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind.”

A white Christmas is not that unusual for those of us who live in Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, South and North Dakota, on the Great Plains, but it is for those who live in California, south Texas, Arizona, and Florida.

We can dream about a white Christmas, and we may get it. Have a Merry Christmas!

Bill Benson, of Sterling, is a dedicated historian.

Twenty-eight-year-old Naomi Biden married twenty-five-year-old Peter Neal on the south lawn, at the White House, on Saturday, November 19, 2022, beginning at 11:00 a.m. Eastern time.

Because there was no tent, and because the temperature was a chilly 39 degrees, some 250 guests received shawls, hand-warmers, and blankets once they arrived. They also checked in their cell phones.

The President and First Lady Jill Biden hosted the ceremony, and the family paid for the wedding.

At a few minutes after 11:00 a.m., the bride’s father, Hunter Biden, and her mother, Kathleen Buhle, walked alongside their daughter on a white carpet leading from the White House’s south door to a point on the south lawn, where two officiants completed the ceremony a few minutes before noon.

That evening inside the White House, some 325 guests attended a reception that featured desserts and dancing.

The President said, “It has been a joy to watch Naomi grow, discover who she is, and carve out such an incredible life for herself.” The next day, Sunday, November 20, Joe Biden turned 80 years old, the first octogenarian to serve as President of the United States.

This was the nineteenth wedding held at the White House, although a first for a granddaughter and a first held on the south lawn.

A wedding that could have been—and perhaps should have been—held at the White House was when Franklin Delano Roosevelt wed his fifth cousin, once removed, Eleanor Roosevelt, niece of the then current President, Theodore Roosevelt. The day was March 17, 1905.

Instead, it was held in New York City, in Mrs. Henry Parrish’s home, Eleanor’s aunt.

On December 7, 1892, when Eleanor was eight years old, she lost her mother due to an outbreak of diphtheria. Two years later, when ten, her father Elliot Roosevelt died of a seizure, due to his prolonged alcoholism. Eleanor’s maternal grandmother, Mary Livingston Hall, stepped in and raised Eleanor.

Elliot Roosevelt was Theodore’s younger brother. Hence, the President was fond of Eleanor, a niece.

The wedding was set for March 17, because the President was scheduled to march in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York City that same day. At the wedding, the President walked Eleanor down the aisle, and gave her away. This was news for the city’s news reporters.

Theodore though was a master at self-promotion. His daughter Alice Roosevelt Longworth remarked, “My father always wanted to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding, and the baby at every christening.”

Eleanor and Franklin’s marriage held fast, even after she discovered that Franklin was having an affair with her social secretary Lucy Mercer. A historian, Doris Kearns Goodwin, said, “Their union from that point on was more of a political partnership.”

Eleanor wrote opinion columns and gave speeches in person and on the radio, and in her media announcements, she championed the rights of women and African-Americans.

On Sunday afternoon, December 7, 1941, the White House received word that at 8:00 a.m., Honolulu time, Japanese air forces had bombed the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, killed hundreds of American sailers and destroyed the Pacific fleet, save for the aircraft carriers, then out at sea.

Because Eleanor was scheduled to give her weekly radio program that same evening, “Over Our Coffee Cups,” she decided that she would speak first to the American people about the Pearl Harbor attack, before her husband, the president, did so. She told the American people,

“I am speaking to you tonight at a very serious moment in our history. The Cabinet is convening, and the leaders in Congress are meeting with the President. The State Department and the Army and Navy officials have been with the President all afternoon.

“In fact, the Japanese ambassador was talking to the president at the very time that Japan’s airships were bombing our citizens in Hawaii.

“For months now the knowledge that something of this kind might happen has been hanging over our heads, and yet it seemed impossible to believe. That is over now, and there is no more uncertainty. We know what we have to face, and we know we are ready to face it.

“We must go about our daily business more determined than ever to do ordinary things well.”

The next day President Franklin Roosevelt addressed Congress, and asked for a declaration of war. He said, “Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

“But always will our whole Nation remember the character of the onslaught against us.”

The vote was 82-0 in the Senate, and 388-1 in the House. Jeannette Rankin, a Montana Republican, the first woman elected to Congress, and a pacifist voted against a declaration of war.

FDR and Eleanor faced hard times: a Depression and a war with Japan and Germany. Yet, they had Theodore Roosevelt’s presence and blessing at their wedding, and Naomi Biden and Peter Neal had the presence and blessing of the current president at their wedding. We can wish the young couple well.

Bill Benson, of Sterling, is a dedicated historian.

Elias Boudinot, a member of Congress in the new Federal Government, introduced a resolution in 1789, to form a joint committee that asked President George Washington to call for a day of prayer and thanksgiving. That joint resolution passed both Senate and House. Washington chose to respond.

On October 3, 1789, he called for a day of “Public Thanksgiving and Prayer,” that he set for Thursday, November 26, 1789. Washington celebrated that early Thanksgiving, by attending services at St. Paul’s Chapel, and giving beer and food to those in jail for failing to pay their bills.

Washington set another day of Thanksgiving late in his administration, in 1795, after armed forces defeated the Whiskey Rebellion.

Thomas Jefferson was elected President in 1800, but he refused to proclaim a day of prayer and Thanksgiving, based on that “wall of separation between Church and State,” spelled out in the First Amendment. He also believed it the duty of the states to determine special days of observance.

Yet, when governor of Virginia, Jefferson had declared a day of Thanksgiving and Prayer. The idea of a national day of Thanksgiving died though with Thomas Jefferson, and remained almost dead until the Civil War split the country apart, over slavery.

The one exception was James Madison who called for a single day of Thanksgiving.

Sarah Josepha Hale, editor at Godey’s Lady’s Book, a women’s magazine, had lobbied governors, Congressmen, judges, and presidents for four decades, pleading for a national day of Thanksgiving.

She asked the same thing of everyone, that “the last Thursday in November be set aside to ‘offer to God our tribute of joy and gratitude for the blessings of the year.’”

Lincoln was the first person with any authority to respond to Sarah Josepha Hale’s letter dated September 28, 1863, but then Lincoln faced a rebellion and a war and needed some good news, something positive to redirect the nation’s attention.

On January 1, 1863, Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves in the rebellious states. On July 3, 1863, at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Union forces had stopped the Confederates’ attack on Cemetery Ridge, south of the town, dooming Lee’s march into the North.

On July 4, 1863, the Confederate Army of the Mississippi, led by Lt. General John C. Pemberton, surrendered to Union Major General Ulysses S. Grant at Vicksburg, Mississippi, after a 47-day siege, dividing the Confederacy into two parts. The Union now controlled the Mississippi River.

Partly as a result of the welcome news on both fronts, President Lincoln read Sarah Joseph Hale’s letter, and chose to act.

On October 3, 1863, the same day as Washington’s proclamation, Lincoln issued his proclamation, “to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”

William Seward, Lincoln’s Secretary of State, drafted the proclamation, and Lincoln signed it. “A year later federal officials chose to sell that document of the proclamation, in order to benefit Union troops,” an archivist’s worst outcome.

On November 19, 1863, Lincoln boarded a train in Washington D.C. that carried him to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where he spoke for a few minutes at the dedication ceremony for the new national cemetery, a fitting burial site for those Union soldiers who had perished over three hot days in July.

Lincoln finished his address, “that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.”

A week later, on November 26, 1863, when back in the White House, Abraham Lincoln, with Mary Todd, and their sons, celebrated that day of Thanksgiving and prayer, as did countless other Americans across the country. What a monumental year 1863 had become! Thanksgiving began to bind the nation.

William August Muhlenberg, an Episcopal clergyman in New York City, read the President’s proclamation for a day of Thanksgiving, and on that day, he jotted down the lyrics for what he called a President’s Hymn, that he entitled “Give Thanks All Ye People.”

“Give thanks, all ye people; give thanks to the Lord. Alleluias of freedom, with joyful accord. Let the east and the west, north and south roll along; Sea, mountain and prairie, one thanksgiving song.”

May all of you, my dear readers, enjoy this Thanksgiving, as it binds our families and our nation together once again, over a noon meal on a Thursday, the last week in November, the way that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln wanted it.

Bill Benson, of Sterling, is a dedicated historian.

Gaston Leroux published his novel, “Le Fantome de l’Opera,” or “Phantom of the Opera,” in 1911.

Earlier he had worked as a theatre critic for a French newspaper, the “L’Echo de Paris,” and had heard talk of a chandelier, fastened above the crowd, in the Paris Opera House, that had crashed down, killing one, injuring others. He also learned of murders and kidnappings at the theatre.

He then heard rumors of a ghost that haunted the Paris Opera House, who lived near an underground lake, deep below the opera house, who in secret, interacted with audiences, theatre officials, and actors.

Leroux pulled these isolated facts and rumors into a tale of mystery and horror, in the same order as Edgar Allen Poe or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In Leroux’s telling, the Opera Ghost instructs those with mediocre talents and brings out their best on stage, if they will allow him.

The Opera Ghost hesitates to show himself to many, because he suffers from a disfigured face, that he covers with a partial mask.

One current literary critic, Patricia Drumright, pointed out that Leroux’s story has remained popular for over a hundred years, because it offers “something for just about everyone,” mystery, Gothic horror, music, theater, melodrama, tragedy, and, above all else, romance.

In his mystery novel’s prologue, Leroux claimed that he had investigated the facts and rumors and concluded that it was all true, even though his novel is a work of fiction.

The romance is three-sided: Christine Daae, a young and dazzling soprano, from Sweden; Rauol, Christine’s childhood friend, who now professes his intense love for Christine; and the Opera Ghost, whom Christine calls her Angel of Music, who also professes his everlasting love for Christine.

Drumright says, “Rauol offers romance, but the Phantom offers passion.”

In Leroux’s beginning pages, Christine sings in place of Carlotta, who had failed to show for a performance, and Christine brings down the house. The audience is astonished at Christine’s voice, her exceptional talent, and wonders why she has not sung before.

Seated in the audience that evening is Rauol, a young man who recognizes Christine as a childhood friend. After the performance, he goes to her backstage room and is about to knock on the door, when he hears a conversation between Christine and a man, both inside the room.

The man says, “Christine, you must love!” She replies, “How can you talk like that? When I sing only for you!” He says, “Your soul is a beautiful thing, child. The angels wept tonight.”

Christine leaves the room, fails to see Rauol, who then steps into the room, wanting to meet and confront this mysterious man, whom he now despises, but the room is empty. When Rauol confronts Christine about the man in her room, she is vague, evasive, not forthcoming with information.

Gothic horror novels are “expected to be dark and tempestuous and full of ghosts, madness, outrage, superstition, and revenge.” Drumright says, “this tale contrasts ugliness with elegance, genius with madness, and ruthlessness with compassion.”

In 1984, Andrew Lloyd Weber, a Broadway musical producer, famed for “Cats,” was busy writing a different musical, when he found a copy of Leroux’s long-out-of-print novel in a second-hand store.

Lloyd Weber said, “I realized that the reason I was hung up was because I was trying to write a romantic story. With the Phantom, it was there.” The musical producer transformed Leroux’s novel into a spectacular musical extravaganza.

Drumright says that Andrew Lloyd Weber’s stage version of Leroux’s novel is now considered “the most successful musical of all time.”

But, “Phantom of the Opera,” Broadway’s longest-running show ever, after 35 years, will close on February 18, 2023, with a record 13,925 performances. “It has sold nearly 20 million tickets and grossed $1.3 billion.” “This winter the Phantom will haunt the Paris Opera house for the last time.”

I will say that Andrew Lloyd Weber’s music is haunting. The “Overture” features a pipe organ solo with crashing chords that step up the musical scale and then step back down. Think Vincent Price and Edgar Allen Poe. The two most admired songs are “All I Ask of You,” and “Music of the Night.”

In that latter song, the masked Phantom sings his love to Christine.

“Nighttime sharpens, heightens each sensation. Darkness stirs and wakes imagination. Silently the senses abandon their defenses. . . . Let the dream begin, let your darker side give in, To the power of the music that I write. The power of the music of the night.” It is haunting.

Of Leroux’s novel, one critic pointed out that it is a story of “a misunderstood monster who only needs love,” a nod to “Beauty and the Beast.” Another said of the Phantom, “He had a heart that could have held the entire empire of the world; and in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar.”

Have a safe and happy—if not a Phantom-filled—Halloween! “Let the dream begin.”