White Christmas

[sagehen]

>        [AM, 12 Dec:]
>Its origins are probably Old World, given the old saying that a green
>Christmas means a full churchyard.  It must have arisen in contrast to the
>notion that a healthier season would need enough winter weather by
>Christmastime to arrest some diseases.


        [MAM, 31 Dec, catching up:]
Isn't that "must" rather strong for the evidence? Growing up in NYC, far
from churchyards but not from winter snow, I never thought the expression
needed any explanation at all. Christmas -- snow -- the ground is white --
white Christmas. Absolutely transparently compositional.

        ....

>        [AM, 31 Dec:]
>I asumed we were talking about something more than just an expression that
>could  as easily have been about shoes or rooftops. "White Christmas"  as a
>hoped-for event, as in the Berlin song: a cultural trope.
>
>        [MAM again now, realtime, 1 Jan; happy New Year, all!:]
>
>Well, it's clearly hoped-for in the Berlin song, but not in any of the
>antedates to that in John Baker's post that started this thread (below).
>
> - The New Yorker cartoon (actually from 1932, annotated "Perry Barlow
>(12/24/1932)", number 789 on the CD) could well be hopeful,
> - but the 1878 cite is if anything negative in affect.
> - And to my mind all the positive affect in the 1874 cite comes from the
>surrounding words, "clean... pure and crisp": "white" is simply literal.
>
>(By the way, Berlin seems to have written the song in 1940, not 1937, and
>the movie that made it famous, "Holiday Inn", was released in 1942.
><http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=850892> .
> The fuzzy sheet-music image at
><http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/store/smp_inside.html?cart=10120306010&item=3772
>132&page=01>
>seems to say at the bottom "Copyright 1940, 1942 by Irving Berlin".)
>
>Which brings me back to my question: Is there any clear sense of "white
>Christmas" as a cultural trope, a hoped-for event, prior to the Berlin song?
>The evidence has dwindled to one cartoon caption. And if not -- or even if
>so -- what need is there to derive it by opposition from the mid-19c ominous
>"green Christmas"?
>
>-- Mark A. Mandel
>
>        --------------- QUOTED FROM ARCHIVE -----------------
>
>Date:         Mon, 12 Dec 2005 13:02:53 -0500
>From: "Baker, John" <JMB at STRADLEY.COM>
>Subject: White Christmas
>Comments: To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
>        How old is "white Christmas"?  The phrase's current popularity,
>of course, derives from the 1937 Irving Berlin song, but he did not coin
>it.  In Nancy: A Novel, by Rhoda Broughton (1874) (via Making of
>America), we read "It is Christmas-day - a clean white Christmas, pure
>and crisp."
>
>        That 1874 quotation, with "white" mixed in with other
>adjectives, made me wonder if the usage was the same as our standardized
>term.  There's no doubt about this example from 1878, from Appletons'
>Journal (Dec. 1878) (also via Making of America):  "Once she lifted the
>closed curtain and looked out; snow was still falling.  It was to be a
>white Christmas, and people had said all day that if the storm did not
>abate by nightfall there could be few carols sung this year."
>
>        "White Christmas" still had currency when Berlin wrote the song.
>>>From the 12/24/1934 New Yorker (reprinted in The Complete New Yorker):
>"For once, it looks like we might have a white Christmas."  This is the
>caption of a cartoon; the speaker is the father of an African-American
>family, looking out the window.
>
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I grant that what I said about its origins was infelicitously expressed, to
put it mildly.  In fact, I succeeded in contradicting myself in just two
sentences, probably as a result of moving scraps around without rereading
the whole. (Computers make that all too easy.) You are right to criticize
my use of "must;"  I ought to have said simply that it provides a contrast.

However, I do think there's plenty of evidence that "white Christmas" has
existed, for  a long time, as more than just a casual description of any
particular Christmas.  The Berlin song, in a way, is an affirmation of
this:  it's not merely the dream of the singer, it's a wish that "All your
Christmases be white."  That is a bit presumptuous if white Christmas isn't
already established as generally desirable.
You could pose the same question about the "green Christmas"  portending
the fat churchyard.  It's not just a green day around that time of year,
but "green Christmas" in particular: a special entity.
A. Murie

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