Videos by American Songwriter
As we make our way toward Christmas and are barraged with holiday tunes, there is one that stands out because of the way it allows you, the listener, to choose your own adventure. If you’re in an upbeat, hopeful mood about the holiday, there’s a version of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” for you. And, if you’re feeling a little humbug this yuletide season, well, there’s a version of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” for you too.
What’s fascinating about the song is that there was also almost a version for the truly morbid among us. Songwriters Ralph Blane and Hugh Martin composed the song for the 1944 Judy Garland movie Meet Me In St. Louis, in particular for a scene when the main characters are sad about moving away from home. As Martin, who by most accounts did the lion’s share of the writing on the song, told Entertainment Weekly in 2007, his original lyrics (sample: “Have yourself a merry little Christmas/It may be your last”) were downright hopeless, and it took a lot of convincing for him to change them.
”They said, ‘It’s so dreadfully sad,’” Martin remembers about the initial reaction. “I said, ‘I thought the girls were supposed to be sad in that scene.’ They said, ‘Well, not that sad.’ And Judy was saying, ‘If I sing that to that sweet little Margaret O’Brien, they’ll think I’m a monster!’ And she was quite right, but it took me a long time to get over my pride.”
Martin’s rearranged draft manages to balance beautifully on the precipice between hope and melancholy. The narrator is singing to someone who isn’t there with them, so there is inherent sadness in that fact. But there are repeated references to Christmas reunions in the future when “all our troubles will be miles away.” Garland’s definitive version manages to somehow capture all of the conflicted feelings in the song, from the quivering sadness in the present to the unquenchable spirit of Christmas that allows her to “muddle through” until better times arrive.
In 1957, Frank Sinatra approached Martin about doing yet another revision to his classic. Sinatra, ever wary about keeping his albums thematically sound, loved the song but couldn’t see it fitting into an album he was planning called A Jolly Christmas. So Martin rose to the occasion again, replacing the line “Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow” with “Hang a shining start upon the highest bough.”
And so began a war for the soul of the song, with a new battle waged with every fresh version. Interpreters have to choose between the vivid imagery and metrical smoothness of the “shining bough” take, and the psychological realism of the “muddle through” version. (Even Garland and Sinatra waffled, as each recorded both versions of the song during their illustrious career.)
So where do you stand on the great debate over “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”? Are you all about shining stars of muddling through? Or does it change for you from year to year, maybe even from day to day, depending on your specific holiday circumstances? No matter where you stand, you can count on this beloved evergreen of a song to second your emotions.
