White Christmas (song)
"White Christmas" is an Irving Berlin song reminiscing about an old-fashioned Christmas setting. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the version sung by Bing Crosby is the best-selling single of all time, with estimated sales in excess of 50 million copies worldwide.
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-producer Frank Capra, although the Arizona Biltmore also claims the song was written there. He often stayed up all night writing — he told his secretary, "Grab your pen and take down this song. I just wrote the best song I've ever written — heck, I just wrote the best song that anybody's ever written!"
Read more about White Christmas (song): Bing Crosby Version, Sales Figures, Historic Influence, Original Introduction, Other Versions
Famous quotes containing the words white and/or christmas:
“Would you ascend to Heaven and bodiless dwell?
Or take your bodies honorless to Hell?
In Heaven you have heard no marriage is,
No white flesh tinder to your lecheries,”
—John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974)
“Monday’s child is fair in face,
Tuesday’s child is full of grace,
Wednesday’s child is full of woe,
Thursday’s child has far to go,
Friday’s child is loving and giving,
Saturday’s child works hard for its living;
And a child that is born on a Christmas day,
Is fair and wise, good and gay.”
—Anonymous. Quoted in Traditions, Legends, Superstitions, and Sketches of Devonshire, vol. 2, ed. Anna E.K.S. Bray (1838)