"White Christmas" is a song reminiscing about an old-fashioned Christmas setting. Written by Irving Berlin for the 1942 musical film Holiday Inn, the song won the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 15th Academy Awards.
Introduced by Bing Crosby, it topped the Billboard chart for 11 weeks and returned to the number one position again in December 1943 and 1944. His version would return to the top 40 a dozen times in subsequent years, the most recent being 2025. Crosby's version is the world's best-selling single (in terms of sales of physical media), with estimated sales in excess of 50 million physical copies worldwide. When the figures for other versions of the song are added to Crosby's, sales of the song exceed 100 million. It also remains one of the best-selling singles in the United States with estimated physical copies sold between 10 and 12 million as of 1963.
Since its release, "White Christmas" has been covered by many artists.
History
Origin Accounts vary as to when and where Berlin wrote the song. One story is that he wrote it in 1940, in warm La Quinta, California, while staying at the La Quinta Hotel, a frequent Hollywood retreat also favored by writer-director-producer Frank Capra, although the Arizona Biltmore also claims the song was written there. He often stayed up all night writing. One day he told his secretary, "I want you to take down a song I wrote over the weekend. Not only is it the best song I ever wrote, it's the best song anybody ever wrote."
Bing Crosby versions
The first public performance of the song was by Bing Crosby, on his NBC radio show The Kraft Music Hall on Christmas Day, 1941, a few weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor.Todd Decker. "Crosby, Bing." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. Web. September 26, 2016. Crosby subsequently recorded the song with the John Scott Trotter Orchestra and the Ken Darby Singers at Radio Recorders for Decca Records in 18 minutes on May 29, 1942, and it was released on July 30 as part of an album of six 78-rpm discs from the musical film Holiday Inn. At first, Crosby did not see anything special about the song. He just said "I don't think we have any problems with that one, Irving." "White Christmas" (p. 6)
The song established that there could be commercially successful secular Christmas songs—in this case, written by a Jewish immigrant to the United States. Ronald D. Lankford Jr., wrote, "During the 1940s, 'White Christmas' would set the stage for a number of classic American holiday songs steeped in a misty longing for yesteryear." Before 1942, Christmas songs and films had come out sporadically, and many were popular. However, "the popular culture industry had not viewed the themes of home and hearth, centered on the Christmas holiday, as a unique market" until after the success of "White Christmas" and the film where it appeared, Holiday Inn. Dave Marsh and Steve Propes wrote, "'White Christmas' changed Christmas music forever, both by revealing the huge potential market for Christmas songs and by establishing the themes of home and nostalgia that would run through Christmas music evermore."
The song initially performed poorly and was overshadowed by Holiday Inn'''s first hit song: "Be Careful, It's My Heart". By the end of October 1942, "White Christmas" topped the Your Hit Parade chart. It remained in that position until well into the new year. It has often been noted that the mix of melancholy—"just like the ones I used to know"—with comforting images of home—"where the treetops glisten"—resonated especially strongly with listeners during World War II. The Armed Forces Network was flooded with requests for the song. The recording is noted for Crosby's whistling during the second chorus.
In 1942 alone, Crosby's recording spent eleven weeks on top of the Billboard charts. The original version also hit number one on the Harlem Hit Parade for three weeks, Crosby's first-ever appearance on the black-oriented chart. The song also topped the following weekly charts in the same year: Songs with Most Radio Plugs, National record sales, and National sheet music sales. Re-released by Decca, the single returned to the No. 1 spot during the holiday seasons of 1945 and 1946 (on the chart dated January 4, 1947). The recording became a chart perennial, reappearing annually on the pop chart twenty times before Billboard magazine created a distinct Christmas chart for seasonal releases.
In Holiday Inn, the composition won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1942. In the film, Crosby sings "White Christmas" as a duet with actress Marjorie Reynolds, though her voice was dubbed by Martha Mears. This now-familiar scene was not the moviemakers' initial plan. In the script as originally conceived, Reynolds, not Crosby, would sing the song. The song would feature in another Crosby film, the 1954 musical White Christmas, which became the highest-grossing film of 1954. (Crosby made yet another studio recording of the song, accompanied by Joseph J. Lilley's orchestra and chorus, for the film's soundtrack album.)
According to Crosby's nephew, Howard Crosby, "I once asked Uncle Bing about the most difficult thing he ever had to do during his entertainment career… He said in December, 1944, he was in a USO show with Bob Hope and the Andrews Sisters. They did an outdoor show in northern France… he had to stand there and sing 'White Christmas' with 100,000 G.I.s in tears without breaking down himself. Of course, a lot of those boys were killed in the Battle of the Bulge a few days later."
The version most often heard today on the radio during the Christmas season is the 1947 re-recording. The 1942 master was damaged due to frequent use. Crosby re-recorded the track on March 19, 1947, accompanied again by the Trotter Orchestra and the Darby Singers, with every effort made to reproduce the original recording session. The re-recording is recognizable by the addition of flutes and celesta in the beginning.
Although Crosby dismissed his role in the song's success, saying later that "a jackdaw with a cleft palate could have sung it successfully", he was associated with it for the rest of his career.
Sales figures Crosby's "White Christmas" single has been credited with selling 50 million copies, the most by any release and therefore it is the biggest-selling single worldwide of all time. By 1968, it had already sold thirty million. The Guinness Book of World Records 2009 Edition lists the song as a 100-million seller, encompassing all versions of the song, including albums. According to analysis of PRS for Music figures, it was estimated that the song generates £328,000 of royalties per year.
Crosby's holiday collection Merry Christmas was first released as an LP in 1949, and has never been out of print since.
There has been confusion and debate on whether Crosby's record is the best-selling single, due to a lack of information on sales of "White Christmas", because Crosby's recording was released before the advent of the modern-day US and UK singles charts. However, after careful research, Guinness World Records in 2007 concluded that, worldwide, Crosby's recording of "White Christmas" has sold at least 50 million copies, and that Elton John's recording of "Candle in the Wind 1997" has sold 33 million. However, an update in the 2009 edition of the book decided to further help settle the controversy amicably by naming both John's and Crosby's songs to be "winners" by stating that John's recording is the "best-selling single since UK and US singles charts began in the 1950s", while maintaining that "the best-selling single of all time was released before the first pop charts", and that this distinction belongs to "White Christmas", which it says "was listed as the world's best-selling single in the first-ever Guinness Book of Records (published in 1955) and—remarkably—still retains the title more than 50 years later."
Legacy In 1974, the 1942 recording of the song by Bing Crosby and The Ken Darby Singers on Decca Records was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
During the Vietnam War, a recording was broadcast on Armed Forces Radio on April 30, 1975, as a secret, pre-arranged signal precipitating the U.S. evacuation from Saigon.. For more information, see Fall of Saigon, the end of the Vietnam War.
In 1999, National Public Radio included it in the "NPR 100", which sought to compile the one hundred most important American musical works of the 20th century. Crosby's version of the song also holds the distinction of being ranked No. 2 on the "Songs of the Century" list, behind only Judy Garland's "Over the Rainbow", as voted by members of the RIAA. In 2002, the original 1942 version was one of 50 historically significant recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry. In 2004, it ranked No. 5 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema.
In a UK poll in December 2012, "White Christmas" was voted fourth (behind "Fairytale of New York", "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday" and "Merry Xmas Everybody") on the ITV television special The Nation's Favourite Christmas Song."The Nation's Favourite Christmas Song". ITV. December 22, 2012.
Formats and track listing These are the formats and track listings of single releases of "White Christmas".
Original verse Irving Berlin's opening verse, contrasting the sunshine and warmth of Christmas in California with the narrator's desire for a traditional holiday setting of winter snow, is often dropped in recordings. It is included on A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector, sung by Darlene Love; on Barbra Streisand's A Christmas Album; on the Carpenters' Christmas Portrait, sung by Karen Carpenter; on Neil Diamond's The Christmas Album; on Bette Midler's Cool Yule; on Libera's Christmas Album; and on Crash Test Dummies' Jingle All the Way.
Charts
Bing Crosby version Chart (1958–2026) Peakposition Denmark (Tracklisten) 27Finnish Airplay (Radiosoitto) 51 Greece International (IFPI) 23 Italy (FIMI) 27 Latvia Streaming (LaIPA) 14 Lithuania (AGATA) 40Netherlands (Dutch Top 40 Tipparade) 23Netherlands (Global Top 40) 27 New Zealand (Recorded Music NZ) 24 Norway (IFPI Norge) 74 South Korea (Circle) 180US Holiday 100 (Billboard) 5 US Rolling Stone Top 100 16
Michael Bublé version Chart (2011–2026) Peakposition Croatia International Airplay (Top lista)with Shania Twain 23 Estonia Airplay (TopHit) 51 France (SNEP) 179 Italy (FIMI)Solo version 16 Italy (FIMI)with Shania Twain 53 Portugal (AFP) 58US Holiday 100 (Billboard)with Shania Twain 22US Holiday Digital Song Sales (Billboard)with Bing Crosby 5US Holiday Digital Song Sales (Billboard)Solo version 49US Holiday Digital Song Sales (Billboard)2019 version 7
Glee Cast version Chart (2012–19) Peakposition US Holiday Digital Song Sales (Billboard) 29
Gwen Stefani version +Chart performance for "White Christmas" Chart (2017–2019) Peak position US Holiday Digital Song Sales (Billboard) 27
Meghan Trainor version Weekly charts Chart (2020–2025) Peakposition Poland (Polish Airplay Top 100) 62
Year-end charts Chart (2021) Position US Adult Contemporary (Billboard) 29
Certifications and sales Bing Crosby version
Michael Bublé version
Other versions There have been more than 500 recorded versions of the song, in several different languages. The following have received some charting success.
Gordon Jenkins and his Orchestra (with Bob Carroll on lead vocal) released a version on Capitol Records that reached No. 16 on Billboard magazine's pop singles chart in 1942 and Charlie Spivak and his Orchestra (with Garry Stevens on lead vocal) released a version for Columbia Records that reached No. 18 on Billboards pop singles chart as did Freddy Martin and his Orchestra (with Clyde Rogers on lead vocal) for RCA Victor, reaching No. 20 on Billboards pop singles chart (and again in December 1945, reaching No. 16).