Background
The song is a celebration and description of activities associated with the Christmas season, focusing primarily on get-togethers between friends and families. Among the activities included in the song is the telling of "scary ghost stories," an activity that is more commonly associated with Halloween than Christmas (although one such story, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, is indeed told most often around Christmas). Other activities mentioned include hosting parties for friends that come to call, roasting marshmallows (presumably over a fireplace and not a campfire as in the summer), and singing Christmas carols.
In a 2005 interview, Williams discusses how The Andy Williams Show figured into his recording of "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year": "George Wyle, who is a vocal director, who wrote all of the choir stuff and all of the duets and trios and things that I did with all the guests, he wrote a song just for the show -- I think the second Christmas show we did -- called "Most Wonderful Time of the Year". So I did that, you know, every Christmas, and then other people started doing it. And then suddenly it's become -- not suddenly but over 30 years -- it's become a big standard. I think it's one of the top 10 Christmas songs of all time now."
In the issue of Billboard magazine dated November 28, 2009, the list of the "Top 10 Holiday Songs (Since 2001)" places the Williams recording of "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" at No. 5. 2001 also marked the first year in which the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (also known as ASCAP) started compiling data regarding the radio airplay of holiday songs, and although the Williams classic started out at No. 25 of twenty-five songs that were ranked that year, it gained steam over the next ten years, reaching No. 18 in 2002, No. 13 in 2003, and eventually getting to No. 4 in 2010.
The song was also selected as the theme song for Christmas Seals in both 1968 and 1976.
Read more about this topic: It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year
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“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)