I suppose I started thinking about Christmas songs at my father's funeral. My sister chose the music. She picked his favourite song, Bing Crosby's 'White Christmas'. It was strangely appropriate. There really was something mournful about it, an air of things lost rather than gained. If it celebrated anything, it was the past not the present.
At the time, I'd have said I was projecting my own feelings on to it. But I was wrong. The mournfulness is there right in its heart and soul. Below its cheery snow-covered surface lies war, religious conflict and death.
Crosby first performed it in public on Christmas Day 1941, just 18 days after Pearl Harbor. It was written by Irving Berlin, the grand wizard of twentieth-century song. He was Jewish, but his life was determinedly ecumenical. For his second wife - his first died on their honeymoon - he took an upper-class Manhattan Catholic leftie called Ellin. His daughter was christened in a Protestant church. Even his recollection of Christmases past was grounded in reality. 'He had nostalgic memories of childhood Christmases on the Lower East Side, and especially of the Christmas tree belonging to his neighbours, the O'Haras,' wrote his biographer Lawrence Bergreen .
Berlin's only son, Irving Jr, was born on 3 December 1928. He wrote a song for him, 'My Little Feller'. Three weeks later, on Christmas Day, Irving Jr died. Ever after, Christmas Day in the Berlin household meant laying flowers on their son's grave. Irving and Ellin would slip out quietly, leaving their two daughters at home to carry on with their typical American Christmas. When the girls left home, the Berlins stopped celebrating it.
It's not too much of a stretch of the imagination, is it, to hear at least some of that in the song? It was born into a world at war. American forces radio made it a big favourite with US troops abroad, expressing their unspoken longings for home, hearth and mother - it evokes the snowy New England midwinters of the childhood we all think we had. More than that, it developed into what Berlin called 'a peace song in wartime', an expression of hope for the future.
There have been many other versions over the years. The best is probably the Drifters' doo-wop deconstruction; Berlin seemed to have ignored it though he was incensed by Elvis Presley's less dramatically divergent reading. His staff phoned radio stations and asked them not to play this 'sacrilege'. The campaign was soon joined by fundamentalist Christians who seemingly failed to spot the contradictions raised by defending one version of a secular Jewish Christmas song against another version, on the grounds of religious sacrilege.
There's a jazz version, by Charlie Parker; a reggae one, by Nyah and the Snowflakes. Mandy Patinkin's Yiddish one is possibly the worst but it's a close run thing, particularly by The Chipmunks.
In Operation Shylock , Philip Roth tackles its author's cultural identity. The narrator says: 'God gave Moses the 10 Commandments and He gave to Irving Berlin "Easter Parade" and "White Christmas". The two holidays that celebrate the divinity of Christ - the divinity that's the very heart of the Jewish rejection of Christianity - and what does Irving Berlin do? He de-Christs them both. Easter he turns into a fashion show and Christmas into a holiday about snow...He turns their religion into schlock. But nicely! So nicely the goyim don't even know what hit them...'
'White Christmas' was not the only seasonal song to catch the public heart during the war. 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas' was written for Meet Me in St Louis . It's as mournful as 'White Christmas'. In the film, Judy Garland sings it to calm her younger sister in the aftermath of a Halloween night so violent it feels like a Midwestern Kristallnacht - in 1944, I'm sure the allusion was felt, if not neccessarily meant.
Originally, the song was even more direct. The line after the title was 'because it may be your last'. Director Vincent Minnelli cut it, but the emotional tug of that thought remains in the song, like a shadow. Which is why, as Philip French pointed out last week, it was such a smart choice for The Victors , where it's the soundtrack for the execution of US deserters. And why James Taylor has just recorded a new, very doleful version.
'The Christmas Song' - the one that has chestnuts roasting on the open fire - was written in the closing stages of the war, during a heatwave, by Mel Torme (also Jewish). Then came the debut of 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer', which was a hit for the singing cowboy (and wartime pilot) Gene Autry, who also scored with 'Here Comes Santa Claus'. 'Rudolph' was written by Johnny Marks, a Jewish New Yorker who once cornered the market in Christmas novelty songs.
His only challenger for that crown was an Englishman, Tommie Connor, who wrote the English lyrics to 'Lili Marlene' and such wonders as 'Never Do a Tango with an Eskimo' as well as 'The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot'. Even better known, though, is his other Christmas song, 'I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus', its subtext made manifest by Spike Jones in his private reworking, 'I Saw Mommy Screwing Santa Claus'.
Smutty Christmas songs, that's a whole other subgenre, mostly black and bluesy: Clarence Carter's 'Back Door Santa', Jimmy Butler's 'Trim Your Tree', Ella Fitzgerald's 'Santa Claus Got Stuck in My Chimney'.
Elvis did one too, 'Santa Claus Is Back in Town'. Written by two Jews.
What is it about Jews and Christmas songs? Each year, a New York one - name of Bill Adler - gathers together his favourite seasonal tracks and compiles them on a CD which he sends to me and other privileged people.
Why, I asked him, are there so many Jewish Christmas songs and so few for Chanukah - which starts at sunset today. 'Chanukah is a minor holiday that has been artificially inflated to keep up with Christmas. Accordingly, the music trails in its wake.' He paused. 'It's a Christian country,' he laughed. 'What can we do?'