[Dixielandjazz] Christmas songs by Jewish songwriters - New York Daily News, December 18, 2011

[Robert Ringwald]

Jewish Songwriters Wrote the Score of Modern Christmas
>From 'White Christmas' to 'Rudolph' and 'Silver Bells' to 'I'll Be Home for Christmas'
by David Hinckley
New York Daily News, December 18, 2011
The longest running gag about Jews and Christmas, at least in New York, is that Jews
love the holiday because, with Christians all busy opening stockings and quaffing
eggnog, you can get into popular movies without waiting in long lines.
But the Jewish contribution to Christmas, at least in popular culture, goes way beyond
passive appreciation.
If it weren't for Jewish songwriters and moviemakers, a big chunk of our Christmas
tradition would melt away faster than Frosty the Snowman.
Almost everyone knows that America's most popular secular seasonal song ever, "White
Christmas," was written by Irving Berlin, whose Jewish parents transported young
Israel Baline from Siberia to the Lower East Side some 50 years earlier.
But when the American Society of Composers and Publishers releases its annual list
of the 25 most popular holiday season songs, a good half of them have music and/or
lyrics by Jewish writers.
Without Jewish writers, we would just for starters not have "Rudolph the Red-Nosed
Reindeer" or "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire."
And how did this happen?
"To be honest, I don't think most of them were even thinking about" the religious
part, suggests Rich Conaty, host of "The Big Broadcast" Sunday nights on WFUV (90.7
FM). "They were writing for an occasion. They wanted to write popular songs appealing
to a wide audience."
Part of it, he says, was just a numbers game.
"A huge percentage of the great Tin Pan Alley songwriters were Jewish," he says.
"So by the law of averages, they were going to write some of our great Christmas
songs. If not them, who?"
Johnny Marks, who was Jewish, not only created "Rudolph," but "A Holly Jolly Christmas"
and "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree."
Perhaps Marks had to write "Rocking" because Berlin never would have. Berlin even
hated the rock 'n' roll renditions of his own songs, like "White Christmas" by the
Drifters and Elvis Presley.
The Christmas song to which many New Yorkers feel most attached, "Silver Bells,"
came from Jewish writers Jay Livingston and Walter Evans.
Jewish writers also gave us the loneliest of Christmas songs, "I'll Be Home for Christmas,"
written by Walter Kent and Buck Ram.
Mel Torme and Bob Wells wrote "The Christmas Song" -- in the desert on a hot day
in July, they always said.
The classic Christmas movies "Holiday Inn" (1942) and "White Christmas" (1954), besides
both having music by Berlin, had Jewish directors: Mark Sandrich and Michael Curtiz.
The best modern Christmas movie, 2003's "Love, Actually," was directed by the Jewish
Richard Curtis, and the 2009 remake of "A Christmas Carol" with Jim Carrey was directed
by the Jewish Robert Zemekis.
Berlin wrote "White Christmas" as part of the "Holiday Inn" score that required a
song for each major holiday. So he also wrote the almost equally famous "Easter Parade,"
about another holiday built on the story of Christ.
There are conflicting reports on how Berlin felt about "White Christmas." Some say
he considered it just another song. The more endearing story is that he told his
secretary, "This is the best song I've ever written. Heck, it's the best song anyone's
ever written."
What's clearer and sadder is that Berlin, while not an Observant Jew, found little
personal joy in the day. His son Irving Jr., three weeks old, died on Christmas in
1928.
That might be part of the reason "White Christmas" has such a strong undertone of
melancholy, yearning for something that feels just out of reach.
What's indisputable, though, is that Christians have no hesitation embracing any
of these Jewish-created Christmas songs and films. They endure because, like all
successful art, they say something the audience is feeling.
And shorter movie lines really only begin to repay the debt.


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
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