Song of the Day 12/14: Judy Garland, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”

Jason said a few days ago that he’s not ready for a “little” Christmas, so to help him out I’m starting this year’s 12 Days of Christmas Music with the song that advocates exactly that. Not only is this the saddest of all Christmas standards, its lyrics seem prescient about Christmas 2020:

Through the years
We all will be together
If the fates allow
Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow

That’s how Judy Garland sang it in “Meet Me in St. Louis,” the 1944 movie it was written for, when she is trying to comfort her little sister (6-year-old Margaret O’Brien) about the family’s upcoming move from St. Louis to New York. She sang it live for this radio performance in late 1944, and her vibrato makes it sound as if she’s about to break into tears — something many GIs reportedly did when she sang it about the same time at the Hollywood Canteen.

The lyrics have set off disagreements ever since 1957, when Frank Sinatra, who had already recorded the song twice, approached songwriter Hugh Martin and asked for a revision of the penultimate line, “Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow.” “The name of my album is A Jolly Christmas,” he told Martin. “Do you think you could jolly up that line for me?” Martin’s elegant solution — “Hang a shining star upon the highest bough” — has split admirers into squabbling camps of Muddlers and Hangers ever since. In the Hangers’ favor is the fact that the song picked up in popularity after the change.

Apparently Martin’s first draft was even more depressing. “The original version was so lugubrious that Judy Garland refused to sing it,” he said. “She said, ‘If I sing that, little Margaret will cry and they’ll think I’m a monster.’ So I was young then and kind of arrogant, and I said, ‘Well, I’m sorry you don’t like it, Judy, but that’s the way it is, and I don’t really want to write a new lyric.’ But Tom Drake, who played the boy next door, took me aside and said, ‘Hugh, you’ve got to finish it. It’s really a great song potentially, and I think you’ll be sorry if you don’t do it.’ So I went home and I wrote the version that’s in the movie.”

Here are Martin’s original lyrics:

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

If Trump had won, those lyrics would have become the new standard.