Eighty-one years ago, the Muse visited songwriters Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane1 to bless us with a tune now embedded in the DNA of the American yuletide. A year after the song was born, moviegoers heard "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" for the first time when Judy Garland sang it to Margaret O'Brien in Meet Me in St. Louis.
Garland's version2 only reached 27 on the Billboard charts, a showing that strikes me as unbelievable, given the gift the song has become over these last 80 years. It has been covered by singers of all stripes, from Frank Sinatra to Twisted Sister to Tori Amos and many more. Josh Groban and John Legend both hit the top of the charts with their versions.
In my next life as a torch singer, I, too, will release a version, because it expresses the beautiful melancholy I reconnect with every year at Christmas.
Have yourself a merry little Christmas / Let your heart be light.
From the very first verse, "Merry Little Christmas" makes a promise it knows it can't deliver:
From now on / Our troubles will be out of sight.
Will they? Trouble has a way of finding us eventually. Yet the suspended animation of the season invites us to release logic just for a time and welcome the fantasy of a trouble-free life — even in years when Christmas and trouble descend the chimney together.
This "merry" song's beauty lies in the way it holds loss, yearning and good cheer in a single melody. But as the story goes, it took Martin some doing to get it right2. His first version, created against the backdrop of World War II, was downright glum:
Have yourself a merry little Christmas.
It may be your last.
Next year we may all be living in the past.
Have yourself a merry little Christmas.
Pop that champagne cork.
Next year we may all be living in New York.
No good times like the olden days.
Happy golden days of yore.
Faithful friends who were dear to us.
Will be near to us no more.
But at least we all will be together.
If the Lord allows.
From now on, we’ll have to muddle through somehow.
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.
As NPR Fresh Air host Terry Gross learned in an interview with Martin and Blane3, we owe Garland and the film producers a debt of gratitude for persuading Martin to rethink the lyrics. That rewrite produced the glistening version Garland sings in the film. Still, it was a touch too sad for Frank Sinatra when he was making his 1957 Christmas album, so on behalf of Frank, Martin turned "muddling through somehow" into "hang a shining star upon the highest bough."
This is the Garland-cum-Sinatra version we hear most often now:
Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
From now on
Our troubles will be out of sight.
Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Make the Yuletide gay
From now on
Our troubles will be miles away.
Here we are as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us once more.
Through the years we all will be together
If the fates allow
Hang a shining star upon the highest bough
And have yourself a merry little Christmas now.
Here we are as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us once more.
Through the years
We all will be together
If the fates allow
Hang a shining star upon the highest bough
And have yourself a merry little Christmas now.
As we see, over time Martin chipped away the pessimism to reveal instead the sweet yearning that is the essence of the season itself.
WHEN I WAS A KID, Christmastime was a flurry of anticipation often tinged with a superficial yearning for some gift I hoped would show up under the tree. Maybe it was a popular toy or doll I had to wait for. Or perhaps the right gift arrived but didn't deliver the thrill I'd expected. I am thinking here of my very first blow dryer with its plastic comb attachment. Its motor burned in protest as I tried to force it to turn my lank, straight, sopping-wet hair into Farrah Fawcett waves.
Understand, I was far from deprived. These were just early and necessary lessons about materialism.
When I got older, Christmastime yearning became more complex. Something about the snow and the trees and my mother's good cheer sharpened my longing for a better life: more friends, more popularity, more fun — and a boyfriend with whom I could exchange gifts. Year after year, yearning after yearning, the sweetness of the season was tinged with the ache for what had not (yet) arrived.
I got it all, eventually: the Easy Bake Oven, Malibu Barbie, the bike and the friends. And nothing compared to the thrill I felt scouring Spencer's Gifts in 1978 for a lava lamp to give the long-awaited boyfriend.
But then ...
Through the years we all will be together
If the fates allow
If we are lucky enough to hang around Planet Earth for a while, holiday yearning takes another form altogether, and the song becomes lovelier still. By now, everyone I know — all those friends who showed up in an answer to little-girl prayers — have lost loved ones who once were there with them. Together.
The fates allow, yes, but not forever.
My family of origin, which once numbered six, is now just three. Long gone are grandparents, aunts and uncles, old neighbors and neighborhoods, and the dachshund that kept me company as a kid. Gone too is that first boyfriend, although at this time of year I always think of him and the light-up Christmas village atop the console TV in the home he shared with his mom.
Now we yearn for the blessed beings we miss, and maybe for the simplicity of childhood, and for scenes that lit up life in holidays past. Oh, what I'd do for a way to travel back to lost moments and drink in every face, every detail.
Even in the present, when I am indeed having a merry little holiday, I also experience such longing for the long gone.
IN MY FAVORITE VERSION of "Merry Little Christmas," James Taylor5 entertains a gorgeous arrangement with light jazz leanings and Larry Goldings on piano. He also tweaks the language just a bit, probably to comport with his sense of things.
Through the years we all will be together
becomes
In a year, we all will be together.
Most notably, he rejects Frank Sinatra's jolly tone and takes us back toward the version Judy Garland sang. We lose the star on the bough, and once again are muddling through ... somehow.
This seems just right for James Taylor, whose most exquisite songs have been about loss.
But when I come back as a torch singer, and I drop my first holiday song directly into microchips implanted in people's brains, my version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" will refuse to choose. I will sing of muddling through, somehow, despite all that we miss and long for.
But I will include the hanging of the star on the bough, because that's the truth of this season, isn't it?
We ache for souls and places and versions of ourselves we’ve lost, even as we take in the beauty of the stars and the lights and the faces right before us.
I think that is exactly as it's supposed to be.
Notes
1. Martin would later say that he alone wrote the songs for the movie. Who knows?
2. Judy Garland’s version.
3. Long after the song became a hit and Martin became a deeply devoted Christian, he rewrote the lyrics again. Here you go.
4. Here's the Terry Gross interview.
5. James Taylor’s.
And by the way
My mom, Margaret Ann Mahoney Sandstrom, made ornaments for us kids in 1965. This is the one she made for me.
Mom would have been 101 tomorrow, Dec. 18. I think of her every day, and never more so than throughout the Christmas season, which she loved with infectious exuberance.
Happy birthday, Mom.
Last-minute gift rescue for your favorite pet lover
If you’re still searching for something special for your favorite animal lover, perhaps consider a gift certificate for a pet portrait. This link will take you to the Etsy shop, where you can choose a traditional ink-and-watercolor single pet portait, two- or three-pet portrait, or an illustrated story like the one here. I’'ll personalize a certificate, which I can send by mail or email to either you or your giftee.
Hope you have the happiest of holidays.
The ornament is beautiful! You have taken good care of it all these years. ❤️ wonderful story too!! Merry! Merry to all!
Merry Christmas! Thank you for this beautiful eloquent piece. The wistful mix of joy and hope and melancholy this season always holds for me - you nailed it.