Today’s classic Christmas song of the day comes from that classic holiday television special, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The song is “A Holly Jolly Christmas” and it was made famous by Burl Ives.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was a Rankin/Bass stop-action animation production that first aired on December 6, 1964, on the NBC television network. I watched it on WFBM-TV Channel 6 in Indianapolis, on our 23″ RCA black and white console television. (I didn’t know it was in color until the following December, when we got our first color TV set.)
“A Holly Jolly Christmas” was written two years earlier, in 1962, by songwriter Johnny Marks. It was first recorded by The Quinto Sisters in 1964, but the Rankin-Bass folks appropriated it for their Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer special and gave it to Burl Ives (the narrator) to sing. It stuck.
Marks, a Jewish guy, specialized in writing Christmas songs. He was the songwriter behind the song “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” (a hit for Gene Autry in 1949), “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” (a hit for Brenda Lee in 1958), “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” (introduced by Bing Crosby in 1956), “Run Rudolph Run” (recorded by Chuck Berry in 1958), “Silver and Gold” (also for Burl Ives in the Rudolph TV special), and, of course, “A Holly Jolly Christmas.” Not a bad resume.
Burl Ives was much bigger back then than we might realize today. He was famous as both an actor (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, East of Eden, Desire Under the Elms, The Big Country, and one of my long-forgotten favorites, Day of the Outlaw—along with countless TV and Broadway appearances) and folk musician (“A Little Bitty Tear,” “Funny Way of Laughin’,” “On Top of Old Smokey,” “Lavender’s Blue (Dilly Dilly),” and “Blue Tail Fly,” among others). Casting him in the Rudolph special must have been a coup—and he was perfect for the part of the narrating snowman, whose design was modeled on his own appearance.
I was six years old when Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer first aired. It started a spectacular three-year run for classic TV Christmas specials. Rudolph was in 1964, A Charlie Brown Christmas was in 1965, and the Chuck Jones animated How the Grinch Stole Christmas aired the following year, in 1966. There’s been nothing really like that since.
And here’s your daily bonus video of the day, a clip from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer featuring Burl Ives, as Sam the Snowman, singing “A Holly Jolly Christmas.” Oh, by golly, have a holly jolly Christmas this year!
