By William H. Benson
The Parallel Lives
Of The NOBLE AMERICAN RELIGIOUS THINKERS AND BELIEVERS:
Roger Williams VS. Cotton Mathers
NEW ARTICLES
White Christmas
White Christmas
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.
LINCOLN VS. DARWIN
LINCOLN VS. DARWINLINCOLN VS. DARWIN by William H. Benson February 5, 2009 “Neither man gave much evidence of his future greatness until well into middle age.” so wrote Malcolm Jones last July in an article he wrote for Newsweek, in which he compared and...
INAUGURATION
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CASTRO’S CUBA
CASTRO’S CUBACASTRO’S CUBA by William H. Benson January 8, 2009 The Cuban Revolution was amazingly non-violent. On New Year’s Day in 1959, Fulgencio Batista, the Cuban dictator, boarded a jet and took his fortune, as have countless other Cubans, with him to...
1968
19681968 by Wiliam H. Benson December 25, 2008 On January 20, 1968, the Vietcong attacked five of Vietnam’s six major cities, most of its provincial capitals, and fifty towns. The Tet Offensive caught the American and South Vietnam forces by surprise, but within...
SMALLPOX
SMALLPOXSMALLPOX by William H. Benson December 11, 2008 The World Health Organization certified on December 9, 1979 that small pox had been eradicated. Two years before, WHO officials had vaccinated a hospital cook stricken with the disease in Merka, Somalia, and...
A SHORT READING LIST
A SHORT READING LISTA SHORT READING LIST by William H. Benson November 13, 2008 In the June 1, 2008 edition of the New York Times Book Review, nineteen living authors were asked to suggest certain books for the, at that time, three Presidential candidates:...
Older Posts
PRESIDENTIAL INTELLECT
PRESIDENTIAL INTELLECTPRESIDENTIAL INTELLECT by William H. Benson October 30, 2008 At the founding of our nation and the creation of the government, the intellectuals ruled. Madison, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, and Hamilton had each read the political treatises...
MOGADISHU AND TRIPOLI
MOGADISHU AND TRIPOLIMOGADISHU AND TRIPOLI by William H. Benson October 16, 2008 The battle began on October 3, 1993, when rebel forces in Mogadishu, Somalia, armed with a rocket-propelled grenade, shot down a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter, pinning the American crew...
KING, PRIEST, JESTER, SCRIBE
KING, PRIEST, JESTER, SCRIBEKING, PRIEST, JESTER, SCRIBE by William H. Benson October 2, 2008 I recently read Alan Alda’s newest book, Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself, in which, after a lifetime of acting on stage and on the screen, he addressed a...
NUMBERS—ZERO, ONE, TWO, THREE
NUMBERS—ZERO, ONE, TWO, THREENUMBERS—ZERO, ONE, TWO, THREE by William H. Benson September 18, 2008 For millennium humankind struggled with mathematics before arriving at the concept of a zero, moving from the idea of empty to nothing to finally the modern zero....
PATRICK BUCHANAN
PATRICK BUCHANANPATRICK BUCHANAN by William H. Benson September 4, 2008 Recently, I read Patrick Buchanan’s book, Day of Reckoning, a shrill attack upon George Bush’s noble vision of America’s grand role in the world. Buchanan, a pugnacious, opinionated, and...
THANKSGIVING DAY ’S RANDOM THOUGHTS
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One of University of Northern Colorado’s 2020 Honored Alumni
William H. Benson
Local has provided scholarships for history students for 15 years
A Sterling resident is among five alumni selected to be recognized this year by the University of Northern Colorado. Bill Benson is one of college’s 2020 Honored Alumni.
Each year UNC honors alumni in recognition for their outstanding contributions to the college, their profession and their community. This year’s honorees were to be recognized at an awards ceremony on March 27, but due to the COVID-19 outbreak that event has been cancelled. Instead UNC will recognize the honorees in the fall during homecoming Oct. 10 and 11……
Newspaper Columns
The Duodecimal System
For centuries, the ancient Romans calculated sums with their clunky numerals: I, V, X, L, C, D, and M; or one, five, ten, 50, 100, 500, and 1,000. They knew nothing better.
The Thirteenth Amendment
On Jan. 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and by it, he declared that “all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states “are and henceforward shall be free.” Lincoln’s Proclamation freed some 3.1 million slaves within the Confederacy.
The Fourteenth Amendment
After Congress and enough states ratified the thirteenth amendment that terminated slavery, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. This law declared that “all people born in the United States are entitled to be citizens, without regard to race, color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude.” The Act equated birth to citizenship.
The New-York Packet and the Constitution
Jill Lepore, the Harvard historian, published her newest book a month ago, These Truths: A History of the United States. In a short introduction, she describes in detail the Oct. 30, 1787 edition of a semi-weekly newspaper, The New-York Packet.
Mr. Benson’s writings on the U.S. Constitution are a great addition to the South Platte Sentinel. Its inspiring to see the history of the highest laws of this country passed on to others.
– Richard Hogan
Mr. Benson, I cannot thank you enough for this scholarship. As a first-generation college student, the prospect of finding a way to afford college is a very daunting one. Thanks to your generous donation, my dream of attending UNC and continuing my success here is far more achievable
– Cedric Sage Nixon
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– Extra Times
FUTURE BOOKS
- Thomas Paine vs. George Whitefield
- Ralph Waldo Emerson vs. Joseph Smith
- William James vs. Mary Baker Eddy
- Mark Twain vs. Billy Graham
- Henry Louis Mencken vs. Jim Bakker
