What is it about the song "White Christmas"?

[This is adapted from one of my stories in my book, Christmas Memories from Seven to Seventy, available in paperback from Amazon.com.]

Occasionally, I've heard "White Christmas" sung in church.  When this happens, I'm startled: "Have they flipped?"

The more I think about it, the more inappropriate it sounds: "There’s no mention of God or of Jesus in the song. Why sing it in church? And why in South Carolina of all places? It snows so rarely, the song has little relevance for us, even apart from its lack of religious content.”

My thoughts go back to my childhood in West Texas during World War II. We had only occasional snow and ice. More often than in the South Carolina Upstate, but still only rarely. Still, after Bing Crosby recorded Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” in 1942, we school kids sang it as heartily as if we were accustomed to playing in snow drifts in Vermont. So the song became as much a part of my Christmas vocabulary as “Silent Night” before I was able to distinguish secular and sacred aspects of the season.

Mother was a devout Christian, but while I was growing up, I heard little at home about “the reason for the season.” As Mother and Daddy saw their sons and daughters grow up and fly away from the family nest, I often heard Mother give her definition of a good Christmas: It was “good” if we had “pretty weather” and all her children were home. So, even in her formula, there was no room
for a White Christmas, apart from Ole Bing’s crooning.

As a soloist crooned his own version of the song Bing made an American standard, I thought of other places where I had spent the holidays and how a White Christmas was or was not part of the scene:

We lived three years in New York’s Hudson River Valley where Berlin and Crosby’s dream often comes true. The song was a natural there. Our first December in Newburgh – a few miles above West Point – was a scene from a Christmas card. 

At the other extreme, we celebrated the holidays in sunny, snowless Central Florida. At that remove from New England, Berlin’s brainwashing was also successful: Most young people in our church had 
never seen a White Christmas except on television. But when a TV weatherman reported a snow storm in Middle Georgia, two car loads from our church headed north on I-75 in hopes of having a bona fide White Christmas.

Berlin’s tribute to winter blazed a snowy trail for other seasonal favorites: “Winter Wonderland,” “Frosty the Snowman” and “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow.” These are akin to “White Christmas” in that they say nothing about the Christian Christmas story. But they are even further removed: they are simply songs about snowy weather with no mention of Christmas at all.

Literary analysts often point to “subtexts” in poems, novels or plays – ideas or themes which are not explicitly developed in the piece but which seem to be implied by the author. As I continue to reflect on singing “White Christmas” in church, I believe the song has developed a subtext, or has been assigned a subtext by the American public.

My feeling is buttressed by a writer telling of visiting a church and being surprised to hear “White Christmas” played during a time of meditation. The writer may have felt as I did when I first heard it in church.  But, as the song was played, one man in the usually reserved congregation began to sing the familiar words. After a moment, he was not alone.  Others joined in. The pianist finished the piece and then started over again. By the time she ended playing, the entire church was singing Berlin’s song. 

The writer concluded: “It was very magical; very spontaneous. In many ways ‘White Christmas’ has become a hymn.”

So, there is your subtext. Though there is no God, no Jesus, no shepherds or wise men in the song, there is a warmth many people associate with the season. And it probably has nothing directly to do with frozen particles of moisture. 

Down deep, though we may hate the idea of a literal snowfall at the time for family gatherings and Christmas Eve Communion, we love the warm memories of earlier days when the family gathered and things were “merry and bright” for a few days, or even just a few hours. 

We respond emotionally to Berlin’s song, as a kind of “secular hymn,” because it invokes the hope for restoration of celebrations “just like the ones I used to know.”

Regardless of how much we are able to focus our thoughts and activities on Christmas as the coming of Christ into the world, we are also influenced by and caught up in the secular aspects of giving and receiving. As we reflect on Christmases past, our religious impulses inevitably intertwine with family get-togethers, gift-giving, and other aspects which have no specific Christian underpinnings.

In the Plymouth Colony, Christmas celebration was severely limited. The governor called the men out to work as usual on December 25. When some asserted it was against their conscience to work on Christmas Day, the governor excused them. He took those who were willing, and they spent the morning at chores necessary for the common good. When the workers returned to the settlement to eat at noon, those who had begged off work were in the streets, engaged in various sporting activities. 

The governor went to these merry makers and took away their sports implements. He informed them it was against his conscience for them to play while others worked. If Christmas was to be a day of religious devotion, the worshipers should keep such religious activities inside their houses.

This incident reported in the diary of a Pilgrim reminds me that the religious and recreational aspects of Christmas have often clashed but probably have always blurred in the thinking of most of us.

So, while I still would not recommend “White Christmas” to be sung or played in a religious setting, I should not sit in judgment on those who think the song appropriate in a religious context. Though the text is all together secular, the subtext may evoke the season’s spiritual intent.