Today is Christmas day so it’s only fitting that today’s classic song of the day is the perennial holiday classic, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” It’s a sad and wistful tune that takes one back to one’s younger days or just better days in general; just thinking of Christmas, it seems, can make it seem as if your troubles are miles away.
The song was written specifically for the 1944 movie, Meet Me in St. Louis. In the movie, set in 1903, Judy Garland, as Esther Smith, is trying to cheer up her little sister Tootie (and herself) as they’re facing their last Christmas in St. Louis. Their father has just received a big job opportunity in New York and the whole family will soon be moving there, leaving behind their home, their schools, and their friends. It’s a touching moment in the film and the song itself is still touching today.
“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is credited to songwriter Hugh Martin and lyricist Ralph Blane, although Martin claimed he wrote both the music and words for this one. Apparently Martin’s initial version was a little too depressing for the film, so director Vincente Minelli and Judy Garland had him change a few lines. For example, the original lines “It may be your last/Next year we may all be living in the past” was rewritten as the slightly more upbeat (and more well-known) “Let your heart be light/Next year all our troubles will be out of sight.”
There were more lyrical changes in 1957 when Frank Sinatra asked Martin to “jolly up” the line “Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow,” which he thought was decidedly unjolly. Martin came up with the replacement line, “Hang a shining star upon the highest bough,” which are the words most of us know today.
For some reason I can’t quite grasp, filmmakers and filmgoers in the 1940s were fascinated with life during the turn of the 20th century. There were a slew of films set four decades or so prior, including Life with Father, Orson Welles’ legendary masterpiece The Magnificent Ambersons, and Meet Me in St. Louis, of course. It would be like moviemakers today fixating on life during the 1980s—which, I suppose, some are.
There are tons of versions of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” that I like and could have featured here (by Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Doris Day, Ella Fitzgerald, Diana Krall, Nat King Cole, James Taylor, Luther Vandross, the Carpenters, Coldplay, Michael Bublé, Josh Groban, Christina Aguilera, John Legend, Sam Smith, Billie Eilish, and even Sabrina Carpenter), but there’s nothing like the original. Judy Garland, then just 22 years old, sang it in a voice that was wiser than her years. It just tears at your heart, particularly in the context of the film.
So, to everybody out there, have yourself a merry little Christmas today. We’ll try to muddle through, somehow.
