The hidden history of 'White Christmas':
The tune crooned by Bing Crosby is still one of the most popular Christmas songs of all time ...
npr.org/2025/12/15/nx-s1-5628363/white-christmas-bing-crosby-history
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The Complicated History Behind “White Christmas”Bing Crosby first recorded Irving Berlin’s song in 1942; its legacy includes grief, nostalgia and racist portrayals.
- In 1928, Berlin’s only son died on Christmas Day; Jody Rosen says the loss contributed to Berlin’s dislike of Christmas.
- Bing Crosby first recorded Irving Berlin’s song in 1942; Guinness Book of World Records named it the best-selling physical single in 2012.
- A largely forgotten introductory verse Berlin originally wrote portrays a New Yorker in California yearning for the North.
- The 1942 film Holiday Inn contains racist stereotypes and a blackface number; television broadcasts usually remove that scene.
We get a pairing of nostalgia for Christmas, but also nostalgia for blackface, because so many of the people that were watching Holiday Inn when it premiered in the theaters grew up watching vaudeville, grew up watching their parents maybe even perform in blackface.— Brynn Shiovitz, scholar; quoted in NPR's piece The hidden history of 'White Christmas'.
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past events and their documentation, studied through historiography, archaeology, and related disciplines
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