Little Known Tales Behind Your Favorite Holiday Tunes
Happy Xmas (War is Over)
BY JOHN LENNON & YOKO ONO
This song was written and demo’ed on the same day — October 1971 in Lennon's and Yoko Ono's New York hotel with nothing but an acoustic guitar.
Co-produced by Lennon, Yoko Ono and Phil Spector, this anti-war sentiment was recorded almost immediately and released as a hit single on December 1st. The song felt familiar to Lennon fans from the posters John and Yoko had launched in 12 US cities in '69, with the statement:
WAR IS OVER! IF YOU WANT IT.
– Happy Christmas from John & Yoko.
It’s been 51 years since The War Is Over peace campaign. The message was simple yet powerful. Yoko Ono and John Lennon presented peace like something which people could touch and interact with. Peace was not a feeling, it was an action.
Their mission was to draw attention to the fact that war and peace are an active choice that we all participate in one way or the other. Lennon and Ono chose the Christmas theme deliberately so that the world would spread their message as quickly and as powerfully as the holiday season.
While some saw the movement as performance art, the War is Over message was just the beginning of Yoko Ono’s anti-war campaigns and lifelong work towards peace around the world.
All I Want for Christmas is You
BY MARIAH CAREY
In 1994, Mariah Carey was hesitant to write a Christmas song. She had a troubled childhood and her holiday experiences growing up were far from merry. Mariah chose to write this song to rewrite her past. It became a way to live out her "early fantasies of family and friendship."
White Christmas
BY BING CROSBY
Not only is “White Christmas” the highest-selling holiday track of all time, it's also the highest-selling song ever. Irving Berlin originally wrote the song about the longing felt by American military fighters who were spending their first holiday away from home while serving in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack. Then Bing Crosby sang it in the 1942 movie Holiday Inn. 33 years later, the song marked the end of the Vietnam War after it was played by the American Radio Service as a signal to troops to make their final evacuation.
Merry Christmas Darling
BY THE CARPENTERS
Frank Pooler was the choral director at Cal State University-Long Beach where the Carpenters went to school. Frank wrote Merry Christmas Darling in 1944 when he was 18 for a girl he had fallen in love with. He planned to give her as a Christmas present. Sadly, their romance hit the rocks before she ever heard it.
20 years later he taught The Carpenters at university. They were playing gigs around town and looking for unique holiday songs when they asked Pooler, their favorite professor, if he had any ideas. He gave them the lyrics he had written all those years before.
Years later when the Carpenters had made his song a hit, he decided to look up the girl he wrote “Merry Christmas, Darling” for. He found her living in Palm Springs and arranged a visit with her.
Eventually “Merry Christmas Darling” came up. “Did you ever know I wrote that song for you,” Pooler asked his old flame.
“No,” she replied. “But now I have a treasure.” Thanks to The Carpenters and Frank Pooler, we enjoy this treasure every holiday too.
Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)
BY DARLENE LOVE
This should-have-been hit single by Darlene Love was released on a Phil Spector classic album A Christmas Gift for You.
Sadly its release date landed on the same day as the unexpected JFK assassination and was temporarily pulled from stores.
The song didn't really click until 23 years later when Darlene Love sang it live on Dave Letterman's show in 1986 — a tradition she continued until Letterman's retirement.
By 2015, it broke into Billboard’s Top 20.
