A Merry Little Christmas (Bedroom Demo #265) (Patreon)

A Merry Little Christmas

words and music: Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane

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

Let your heart be 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

Someday soon we all will be together

If the Lord allows

Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow

So have yourself a merry little Christmas now

Have yourself a merry little Christmas

guitars and vocal: T.S. Taylor

note:

As a song writer I’m always fascinated by stories concerning the origins of certain popular songs. Of particular interest to me is the evolution of a song’s lyrics; fascinating because some song lyrics which we’ve come to know and love, are radically different than what they were when they were first conceived by their authors. The most striking example of this would be Paul McCartney’s “Yesterday,” whose original title was “Scrambled Eggs.” The evolution of the lyrics to “A Merry Little Christmas” may not be quite as dramatic as the title change to Paul’s ‘Yesterday,” but I’m certain you’ll react as incredulously as I did when encountering the original lyrics. Here’s the story of why they were changed from the strange and absurd into the lovely, melancholy version we sing today:

Songwriter Hugh Martin was hired to pen a somewhat sad but hopeful and comforting Christmas song for Judy Garland’s character to sing to her younger sister Margaret in the film “Meet Me In St. Louis, (1944). Martin, the primary writer of the song, says “it began with the melody,” but that he soon concluded that it wasn’t working, so he threw it in the trash. His collaborator Ralph Blane had heard it however and told Martin he was “mad to throw it out.” “We dug around the wastebasket and found it,” Blane recalls, “Thank the Lord that we did.” Thank the Lord indeed.

Strangely, the songs original lyrics evoked a far different Christmas feeling than the ones that eventually wound up in the film. Imagine what your reaction would be to the scene in which Judy Garland, (as the older sister), sings to her little sister, if the following original lyrics had been left in the movie:

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 the 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

(italics are mine)

This is supposed to comfort little Margaret?! Yikes! Judy may as well have gone ahead and closed the scene with her telling her little sister that there’s no Santa Claus. And what’s with the “popping the champaign cork” line? Yeah, that’s good advice for a nine year old!

It goes without saying that the studio execs were not happy with the song lyrics. Judy Garland herself was appalled by them. “If I sing this to little Margaret she’ll cry,” she complained, “The public is going to think I’m a monster!”

Hugh Martin, who admitted that back then he was young and arrogant, at first refused to change the lyrics to what the studio envisioned as “a sad song in which she (Garland) is smiling through her tears.” Eventually Martin came around and did a rewrite. The result is in the film.  Today, two versions are popularly sung. There’s the version that Martin tweaked for Judy, and another later version sung by Frank Sinatra on his “Jolly Christmas” album. Sinatra reasoned that since the song was a bit of a downer for an album supposedly made up of “Jolly” and bright Christmas songs, it needed yet another tweak from Martin that would “sprinkle some festive joy” on an otherwise downbeat line. Thus “We’ll have to muddle through somehow” became “Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.”

In my version of the song I’ve reinserted Martin’s original line “Someday soon we all will be together if the [Lord] allows. Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow.” It seemed fitting and poignant to me to, in retrospect, acknowledge the heartache of families around the world who were kept apart by the Covid epidemic and its resultant protocols. I also prefer the original’s “Lord” over “fates,” for the obvious reason.