So, it’s that time of year, yet again, when department stores everywhere are all adorned with glistening synthetic trees, draped in twinkling tinsel and plastic holly, surrounded by cotton-wool snow and lovingly-wrapped empty packages. Competitively-priced sound system speakers spread jolly messages of good will to all, while the latest jumbo-sized LED Full HD Smart TV screens unashamedly pump out an endless tirade of sappy, saccharine-sweet tales of Yuletide cheer.
Christmas is big business, and nowhere more so than in entertainment. From the studio moguls right down to the humble street busker, show biz people instinctively get it – at Christmas time the familiar old standards are always in fashion. Anyone lucky enough to have Old Nick slip a Christmas hit into their stocking, is getting a gift that will keep on giving forever.
In 1940, the American composer and songwriter, Irving Berlin – a Russian Jew who migrated to New York City in the late 1800’s, wrote a simple, sentimental little song called White Christmas, remembering bygone, snow-covered Christmases at home. The song was first performed publicly by the popular crooner Bing Crosby on his radio programme on Christmas Day 1941, just weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
It struck a deep chord with the American public. As young GIs sailed off to war in the Pacific, White Christmas became an anthem, symbolising all that they were leaving behind.
To this day, it remains the biggest-selling single of all time. The song has sold over one hundred million copies, and Crosby’s recording of it has never been out of print. At a time of worldwide turmoil and displacement, Berlin’s simple, heartfelt lyrics touched a vital, deep-seated sentiment in the hearts and minds of middle America. So much so, Berlin himself reportedly quipped “Not only is it the best song I ever wrote, it’s the best song anybody ever wrote.”
True or false, you don’t have to write the world’s best song, film, or book, or even plumb the depths of any great sentiment, to score yourself a red-hot Christmas hit. Just ask those musical maestros, the Royal Guardsmen.
Way back in 1967, at the height of the super-cool, trippy hippy psychedelic era, the Florida-based, US band came up with a simple formula that ensured we will all be hearing their music on our local radio station this Christmas season, and probably for many more to come.
Following the success of such insightful compositions as their 1966 hit singles, Snoopy vs the Red Baron and The Return of the Red Baron – featuring that lovable little cartoon beagle, Snoopy, Charlie Brown’s day-dreaming pet dog and sidekick in Carles M Schultz’s iconic late 20th century comic strip, Peanuts – the Guardsmen decided to go for the jackpot with a perky, if somewhat similar-sounding, Christmas ditty, entitled Snoopy’s Christmas. Unless you’ve slept through the entire Christmas season of the past 57 years since the song was first released by Festival Records, you’ll know Snoopy’s Christmas recounts the epic if unlikely tale of how, for some unexplained reason, Snoopy the dog is directed to fly out in a bi-plane on a bitterly cold Christmas Eve to fight the legendary World War I fighter-pilot Baron Manfred von Richthofen, a.k.a. the Red Baron.
At first blush, that plot-line may not exactly sound like the stuff of enduring success, but in this part of the world at least, it apparently is. Snoopy’s Christmas swiftly soared to a stellar number 1 in the singles charts in both Australia and New Zealand, where it was fastest-selling single of the time. To this day, the recording is estimated to be New Zealand’s biggest-selling overseas single of the twentieth century.
In film and popular fiction, it’s the same uncanny story.
The great Damon Runyon, perhaps America’s most celebrated crime writer of the twentieth century, made a career out of writing humorous short stories about the gamblers and gangsters of New York’s colourful underworld. But, 80 years after his death, his Dancing Dan’s Christmas Gift, the quirky tale of a jewel thief who stashes his loot in an old lady’s Christmas stocking, is still amongst his best-loved and most fondly-remembered.
The 1947 American film Miracle on 34th Street, starring respected English stage actor Edmund Gwenn as Kris Kringle, an old man (with an striking resemblance to Santa Claus) who is hired to play Santa at Macy’s New York City Store on 34th Street, was a smash hit at the box office, winning a slew of industry awards, including three Oscars. But it subsequently went on to even broader success, becoming a perennial Christmas-time TV favourite for years, before a 1994 colour remake starring Richard Attenborough eventually took its place in the hearts of new generations of Yuletide viewers. Love Actually, the 2003 British Christmas comedy written and directed by Richard Curtis, went one step better by not only being a massive movie hit, but also featuring Mariah Carey’s hit song Christmas standard All I want For Christmas Is You, which sells the house down this time every year.
So right now, I’m feverishly working up my next movie script, which I’m thinking should maybe be about a singing lawyer who gets called out on Christmas Eve to defend a short roly poly guy in a red velvet suit, charged with attempted breaking and entering. What do you think?
Merry Christmas.
