A post on Facebook by Smithsonian Magazine (or, if you prefer, on their behalf) yesterday noted that before "White Christmas," there weren't any or anyway hardly any secular Christmas songs, and that nonstop Christmas music was absent from popular culture in Novembers and Decembers. I sort of felt that there was a suggestion that "White Christmas" somehow changed everything, clearing the way for all the other songs, but I guess that's silly. Listening to a Christmas song marathon on the radio today (Surprise!), I kind of picked up the mechanics of how it happened. Show biz generally and Hollywood specifically are very highly imitative.
On the radio marathon, the DJ was detail-oriented enough to mention how many of those songs were originally from Hollywood movies. Not to get overly technical, the percentage was a high one. At least a couple of them seemed to be really thrown in just to get a Christmas song in there. ("Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," I was surprised to hear came from "Meet Me in St. Louis." So it wasn't just that Irving Berlin taught Tin Pan Alley that Christmas songs generate cash register jingle bells; it seems more likely that Hollywood took the same lesson with regard to boffo box office. I just hope I don't have to blame him for "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree"!
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