As Judy Garland sang a never-before-heard Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas to Margaret O’Brien on Christmas Eve, the emotion seeped through in a moment it felt like Tootie’s character never truly earned after two hours of some of the most obnoxious behavior graced to the silver screen by a child. Yet, it’s that moment that solidifies the film in the cultural zeitgeist as one of the most pivotal moments in cinema, arguably because it never felt earned. Every year, children are threatened with reward or punishment around the holidays regarding their behavior, losing sight of the fact that no kid is inherently bad, lacking the nuance of how situational changes may bring tension and uneasiness that impacts the child in a way they don’t know how to respond to.
However, it isn’t just the emotional response evoked within the characters that led Garland to re-capture the hearts of a nation five years after her Wizard of Oz fame. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas is arguably as famous as the mere concept of Christmas tradition itself. The bigger picture within the history of Christmas is its traditions beyond religious aspects. 1944 was the sixth consecutive year that American families were unable to gather around their Christmas trees because there weren’t anybody in their home to gather with. The Battle of Bulge was in full force, the U.S. was securing Leyte, and U.S. prisoners of war were stretched all across European soil. When the war began in 1939, the U.S. been dealing with a decade of the largest financial crisis in the history of the Union. While Roosevelt did a remarkable job leading the country through these struggles, it’s hard to argue that a generation of people hadn’t seen normalcy in their day-to-day life. 1939 not only saw the start of World War II, but also the first year of Thanksgiving having been pushed forward, a move requested by retail lobbyists lamenting that families would only have twenty-five days to do their Christmas shopping. Traditionally, to that point, Thanksgiving had been celebrated on the final Thursday of November and would have fallen on the final day of the month in ’39. President Roosevelt felt that an extra week of Christmas shopping would help stimulate the economy further, officially establishing the more consumer-driven holiday schedule we see today.
The consumerism of Christmas had been brewing for quite some time as the secularism of the holiday had long been subduing while holiday music began to pick up in the late 1930s. While hymns of the holidays date much farther back, the modern convivial Christmas carol is traditionally from wartime United States. Classics such as Santa Clause is Coming to Town were released from the 1940s, even if their more famous versions come from artists popularized decades later such as Bruce Springsteen. Irving Berlin’s White Christmas was essentially the first of the Christmas songs we hear today. But, what’s sung today joyously is a bit more ominous beneath the surface. Consider the lyrics Bing Crosby sung out of the gate: I’m dreaming of a white Christmas…just like the ones I used to know. While the song does wish that days be ‘merry’ and ‘bright,’ the primary reason for that is because Christmas wasn’t easy during this time period. In fact, I’d argue that Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas not only doubles down, but takes it a step farther.
Filed with the patent office of the U.S. government in 1943, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas was written with Meet Me in St. Louis in mind. The original lyrics, as filed for the copyright, are as followed:
“Have yourself a merry little Christmas, it may be…your last. Next year we may all be living in the past. Have yourself a merry little Christmas, pop that champagne cork, next year we may all be living in New York. No good times like the olden days, happy golden days of yore. Faithful friends who were dear to us will be near to us no more. But at least we all will be together, if the Lord allows. From now on, we’ll have to muddle through somehow. So, have yourself…a merry little Christmas…now.”
While the first half of Meet Me in St. Louis is full of cheer, the movie does turn south when the family finds out that they have to leave everything they know behind just before Christmas. Even with the sharp turn tonally, the producers of the film felt that the song was too depressing, especially while trying to calm down a character who’s worried about losing her friends. Two years before James Stewart and Donna Reed tugged on everybody’s heart strings in It’s a Wonderful Life, MGM didn’t want to go as far to do it as Frank Capra and Paramount did a few years later, requiring a re-write to maintain some sense of festive redeemability. Garland’s new lines are what you see below:
Meet Me in St. Louis provided another addition to the ‘colorful musical with depressing undertones’ genre, though their song that was meant to provide hope to their films secondary character provided hope to millions of people struggling in the onset of the second World War. Christmas had been used for years as a return-to-normalcy distraction from an otherwise cycling 12-month nightmare. This isn’t necessarily the story of the movie Meet Me in St. Louis, which focuses on the city of St. Louis as they planned the 1904 World’s Fair (an event that introduced iced tea while celebrating the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase), but it does represent a feeling of uncertainty and longing for the past felt domestically that gave the song a double meaning. Great art makes people feel something, even if contextually it doesn’t exactly match with the original intention of its artist. For something to be timeless, it has to resonate across different generations and demographics. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, with a slight lyric change (kudos to Sinatra), does that. For the silent generation, it gave a nostalgic feeling of something they’d been robbed off, a desire to return to life post-war, and a tradition to help them get through the world events that made them feel powerless and silent. The hope that you can make it through another year because you just made it through one provided Christmas cheer that was passed down through generations.
All of this long-winded, contrived history essay is a formal way to give insight into the informal reasons I’m sitting here putting a proverbial pen-to-paper. The Christmas traditions we know come from the 1940s, and one thing that I’ve pondered about is why it’s so hard to find new Christmas music or new Christmas traditions. Traditions passed down through families rarely change: some people open their gifts Christmas Day, some Christmas Eve. Some want a real tree (*ahem* me) as smells of spruce and pine give them that Christmas feel, while some find solace in looking at the same tree every season because the visual of Christmas is their reminder. Whatever the tradition may be, families rarely deviate. Unfortunately for somebody who doesn’t like hearing the same songs over and over, the music isn’t something we tend to deviate from either. U2’s version of Baby, Please Come Home is one of my favorite songs. Yet, once I’ve heard it from them, Michael Bublé, and Death Cab For Cutie, the song loses a bit of its luster. Christmas music, with the exception of a random song from a George Michael or a Mariah Carey, doesn’t tend to have a long shelf life unless it’s from a specific era in our history. It’s been clear to me for a few years now that this is the case, and I’ve wanted to broach the topic for some time, yet I never could figure out a way that I wanted to go about writing a piece such as this, that would seemingly aggressively rip into the complacency, redundancy, and mass-proliferation regarding the music of my favorite season of the year. That is until the Tuesday before Thanksgiving this year.
Embarrassingly, I have to admit I’d never seen Meet Me in St. Louis before this past week. I’m not the biggest Judy Garland fan, even if I can appreciate the complexity of playing Dorothy, as well as her performances in The Clock and Judgement at Nuremburg. As both a massive film history buff and entertainment writer, I feel a classic like that should have been watched sooner by yours truly. However, I also believe that seeing a movie at the right time can be more gratifying than seeing it as soon as possible. Watching Meet Me in St. Louis for the first time in your 20s feels as though it isn’t a first-time watch because it has so much cultural recognition throughout that’s been studied, repeated, and shared many times over. But it pulls no punches, doesn’t throw the stereotypical ‘it’s Christmas! You must be jolly’ message that a lot of contemporary films seem to be a big fan of, and shows real human struggle. While it isn’t my favorite Christmas film, and might not even be in my top three Christmas films of the 1940s (It’s a Wonderful Life, Christmas in Connecticut, Holiday Affair, Holiday Inn, and White Christmas all rank highly for me), it reminded me of what Christmas reminds me of. Even in my worst years, Christmastime would still find a way to deliver, no matter what I had been going through. Meet Me in St. Louis, much like It’s a Wonderful Life in ’46, understood the most crucial aspect of Christmas: it reminds us of our best when we feel at our worst. It’s reminds us of our past and our history while we consider optimism for our future. It reminds us that at our worst, there are still people to lift us back to our best. But it flips the switch on you as a haunting reminder that you may be at your best, but some people are struggling with their worst. It reminds you that just because you have people there for you does not mean that those people have somebody there for them. Your Merry Christmas may be the worst case scenario of somebody else.
That’s why we have traditions: to celebrate that we still have our favorite people to enjoy it with and pass it down to. New artists create new Christmas music every year, but people don’t want new Christmas music to learn. People want to listen to their favorite Christmas song from years past when decorating their tree, watch their favorite Christmas movie when wrapping their gifts, and smell the chestnuts when shopping at a Christmas market.
I don’t really have a point to this incoherent rambling, I guess. Perhaps I probably should have had one. But, as we embark on our holiday shopping today for Black Friday and in a couple days for Cyber Monday, I do want to use this opportunity to not lose sight of what the spirit of the season is for everybody, no matter their experiences, their denominations, or the active problems currently in their day-to-day life. For anybody that came across this article in their social media feed that’s struggling, I hope this could brighten your day a little bit. It’s not much, but even a little more joy can uplift. If your 2024 hasn’t been the year of your dreams or your 2025 looks to be difficult, I hope you can find peace and joy this holiday season. For those who are having the holiday season of their dreams, please be sure to check in on your loved ones in the mean time. Merry Christmas to our TWM+ readers. To those who have their own cultural holidays, have a wonderful holiday season. Everybody at our site appreciates when you take time out of your day to support us during the year.
Meet Me in St. Louis is currently available to stream for free on Tubi.
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