“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas. Just like the ones I used to know.”
Wanna be even more sad?
It was written by Irving Berlin (the same composer behind “God Bless America”), a Russian-born immigrant who, interestingly enough, did not celebrate Christmas, as he was Jewish. Berlin’s three-week-old son had died on Christmas day in 1928, so every year on December 25, he and his wife visited their baby’s grave. He wrote it in California, seemingly as to why he wished for snow.
I read your comment 3 full times and I still don’t understand how anything explains why they wished for a white Christmas.
Edit: after thinking about this more, this reads like one of those stories that gets passed around without much evidence. It doesn’t really make much sense when compared to the lyrics of the song. 3 weeks is not long enough to establish “just like the ones i used to know”, and if they were jewish and wanted to write a song about remembering their late nights infant child…why be confusing and reference a holiday you don’t even celebrate?
Here is a sample lyric: “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas
With every Christmas card I write
May your days be merry and bright
And may all your Christmases be white”This is a regular Christmas song. If anything, it’s simply a coincidence his child died on christmas, and had very little to do with the creation of the song in any way, but gets passed around as for some reason probably just cuz infant death is dramatic. It might sound harsh in 2024, but 100 years ago losing a child at 3 weeks was sadly much more common and likely not as traumatic as we consider it today.
Edit2: i looked it up on Wikipedia:
“Accounts vary as to when and where Berlin wrote the song.[7] 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.[8] 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.”[9]”
The Wikipedia states they had a son who died in infancy, but makes no claims anywhere about it being on Christmas day so who knows about that even.
k
I always thought it was KKK masked propaganda… /s
“Over the river and through the wood” was published in 1844 and depicted needing a sleigh to visit grandmother’s house on Thanksgiving.
By the 1950s snow in Vermont on Christmas was something you dreamed of.
Don’t know where you live, but where I live it’s been the case for ~17 years since last Christmas Eve with snow.
Past few years it was kinda foggy here on Christmas. I like the fog, especially with the Christmas lights - and fog is white so I take what I can get
