Stories Behind the Best-Loved Songs of Christmas (8 page)

T
he discovery of this Christmas folk song fits well with the ballad’s title. For years, John Jacob Niles wandered around the Appalachian Mountains in search of the origins of songs. A composer and singer, Niles was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on April 28, 1892. Inspired by an old black field-worker who sang spirituals learned in his youth, at twenty-five Niles penned his first folk song, “Go ‘Way from My Window.” That initial offering and its positive reception inspired the young man’s passion for folk music, a passion that would eventually become Niles’s life’s quest.

The real world kept Niles from that quest for some time. To make ends meet, John worked for an adding machine company, then served as a pilot during World War I. It was during his days in Europe that he first put together an impressive catalog of American folk songs. Begging every soldier he met to share a song, Niles wrote down the lyrics and memorized the music of each one. After the war, armed with a suitcase filled with folk music, Niles returned home and
continued his education at the Cincinnati Conservatory. When he graduated he moved to Chicago, where he sang with the Lyric Opera and performed on Westinghouse Radio.

In 1925 Niles moved to New York, where he not only sang on radio and stage, but also began to publish music collections of both his original songs and the folk songs he had gathered during the war. By 1940 he was a recording artist on the RCA label and was recognized as one of the nation’s top opera singers. His two most successful original works were “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” and “Jesus, Jesus, Rest Your Head.” Money and fame had made Niles the toast of New York. Yet even as he received standing ovations for singing the best in classical music in front of crowds, dressed in the finest clothing, backstage the man sang folk ditties. There was something about simple American music that just wouldn’t leave him alone.

Deciding he was more historian than performer, Niles moved home to Kentucky. With the advent of radio and the automobile, rural music and the traditions that went with it were quickly fading. So in his beloved Appalachian Mountains, Niles spent a good portion of the remainder of his life traveling from town to town, looking for undiscovered folk songs. The library of work he uncovered is one of the most important in music history. One song in particular would become a monument to Niles’s years of hard work and a testament to the power of inspired creativity.

On a cold December day in North Carolina, Niles observed people from a poor community going about their daily lives. From his own experience, Niles knew that just a few hundred miles away in New York, people crowded the gaily decorated city streets, stores could not hold all the eager shoppers armed
with lists, and holiday music blared from long rows of loudspeakers. Yet in this village he could hear the sound of snow crunching under feet and spy children in ragged clothes looking longingly into windows where a few small toys were displayed. It was as if the modern world had never found this unspoiled place.

While Niles took in the pastoral scene that surrounded him, a solitary voice beckoned ever so faintly. Searching the street, his eyes honed in on a small girl sitting by herself on a bench. Unaware she had an audience, the child was softly singing a song Niles had never heard.

When she finished, the curious songwriter reached into his pocket and pulled out a pencil and tablet. Approaching the little girl, he introduced himself, sat down and then asked about the song. All she knew about it was that her mother had taught it to her, like her grandma had taught it to her mother before her. When asked to sing it again, the red-cheeked youngster smiled and quietly repeated the ballad’s short verses.

The song, which the girl called “I Wonder as I Wander,” haunted Niles. Long after the child disappeared into the evening, the man continued to study the words. They were unlike any he had ever uncovered in his long search for folk music. Deeply spiritual, incredibly thoughtful, yet obviously composed by someone of little means and education, the lyrics embraced the joy and wonder of Christmas but also lingered on the sacrifice of a child grown into a man that died on a cross. The soaring happiness, combined with unparalleled sorrow, seemed to share the elements of Negro spirituals with the irony of Irish ballads. Both the words and music were perfect, simple, direct, and inspired. Even a master songwriter like Niles couldn’t imagine improving on them.
“Where did it come from?”
he wondered as he returned home.

When Niles brought the song to prominence just before the beginning of World War II, he tried to capture the spirit of the child who had first shared the song with him. Even as he awed audiences with his discovery, the humble singer recognized that his version was not nearly as powerful as the original.

For years, Niles sang “I Wonder as I Wander” and continued to dig into the mystery of the unrecognized genius who composed the carol. It was a quest he pursued until his death in 1980. Yet he could never trace the song back farther than the girl in North Carolina, a child he never found again. It was as if the little one had been an angel sent to deliver a message, a message that embraced the wonder of the Savior’s birth and sacrifice. Because of a chance meeting between an unknown child and a man who spent his life wandering America in search of music, the world gained an unforgettable Christmas ballad that has never ceased to cause those who hear it to wonder.

M
illions of those who once embraced this song—who reverently listened to each word and note and hung on every sentimental thought woven into the lyrics—are now gone. Age has taken a mighty toll on the men and women who first clung to “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” as not just a song, but also as a prayer. For young and old during the darkest days of World War II, for sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, grandmothers and grandfathers, aunts and uncles, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” represented their hopes, dreams, and prayers better than any other song, movie, or story. Many who hear this carol today may think it overly maudlin, but when it was released, it quickly became the most powerful song on the hit parade.

The song may very well be one of the simplest Christmas carols ever written. There is an introduction, a single verse and a chorus, just twelve lines that innocently depict a person’s longing for home. Yet the way these dozen lines moved a nation during the uncertain times of war, as well as the way
they continue to move people today, makes this secular carol one of the most spiritual songs of any era.

It was 1942, and lyricist Kim Gannon knew the emotional toll of fighting a war on two fronts. In Brooklyn, the writer’s home, not only had thousands of families given up their sons to the armed forces, but many had already lost their children in battle. Christmas, traditionally a time of great joy in Gannon’s New York borough, felt strangely different that year. The streets were decorated, trees were sold on corner lots, and Santas still rang their bells and smiled at children, but the war had cast a pall over the holidays. It was hard to think of presents or peace on earth when parents anxiously read the news and prayed that every telegraph delivery man would pass them by. To make it all worse, no one was completely sure that the United States and its allies could even win the horrible war.

Kim saw the same gut-wrenching scenes play out every day—the prayers of frantic parents, the tears of newly enlisted soldiers saying their good-byes at train stations, the rush toward mailmen who might carry a letter from a loved one. The writer knew well that the news on the radio was both a curse and a blessing. Everyone felt the need to learn what was going on in the Pacific and Europe, but fear came with that knowledge as well…a biting fear when a parent or wife heard that a major battle had broken out in the same place a son, father, or husband had mentioned in their last letter home. With the coming of Christmas, the depression of being separated from loved ones was even worse.

Not only were families of overseas soldiers caught in a world of uncertainty and dread, so were many displaced rural men and women who had moved to New York and other large cities to work in plants and offices. Like many of the men in uniform, the war had taken civilians away from home. Most
were spending a Christmas away from family for the very first time, and were lonely and homesick.

When Gannon sat down with pen in hand to capture the unsettling scenes that surrounded her and everyone else in America, the cascade of emotions must have made writing “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” very difficult. There was so much to say, so much that would be missed by those split apart by the hellish nightmare of war. Yet rather than try to cover everything, the writer simply wrote, in a straightforward, uncomplicated manner, about the heartache of being away from home at Christmas. Short, direct, and sweet, the poem Kim produced in so few lines somehow completely captured the emotions of hundreds of millions.

Gannon’s words were brought to tunesmith Walter Kent. Also a New Yorker, Kent understood the sadness of the holiday season. Kent, who had already composed the sentimental hit “White Cliffs of Dover,” inherently knew what the song needed. In his mind’s eye, he saw empty chairs at the table, mothers trying to smile through tears as they baked cookies for remaining family members, and unopened presents on the tree. (During this period Christmas presents were often very simple and tied to the tree rather than wrapped and placed under it.) With these pictures
firmly set in his mind, he sought to find just the right notes to paint them into a musical score. When he finished his work, he had written a dreamy, hopeful melody that was a perfect fit to Gannon’s words.

One of the true wonders of this song is that it sounds more like a letter home than a typical Christmas carol. Not only is there a real sadness evident in the words and melody, but a hopefulness as well. It’s as if the singer were a homesick marine, soldier, or sailor assuring those who missed him that he would soon be there with them again. Ultimately, “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” left the listener with the final and urgent plea, “Don’t give up, we’ll be together soon.”

The spiritual nature of this song comes from its almost prayer-like message. Christmas in America had always been about family and remembering the One who started it all. Yet World War II had broken those bonds and disturbed the traditions of the holidays. “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” eloquently acknowledged the hope that while things changed, given time, everyone would be home again.

On October 4, 1943, Bing Crosby recorded “I’ll Be Home For Christmas.” It became his 209th charting single and a follow-up to his holiday hit of 1942, “White Christmas.” The latter had stayed on the charts for seventeen weeks during its initial release and reentered the hit parade in 1943 and stayed on there for another month and a half. Yet in the midst of the war, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” received more airplay and generated more sales than did the Crosby hit of the previous year. It quickly became the most requested song at Christmas U.S.O. shows in both Europe and the Pacific. Some historians have said that for service personnel and their families the only inspirational patriotic song that was its equal was “God Bless America.”

Throughout World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, the song symbolized and captured the emotions of those on the battlefronts, as well as the emotions of those back home praying for their safe return. Recorded countless times by scores of different artists, it has sold millions of records. But beyond its remarkable sales is the way the song has been embraced by every facet of society. As a testament to its hopeful nature, even though it does not have a single reference to Jesus or the first Christmas, over the past fifty years it has been used in hundreds of cantatas and church programs.

Today, more than five decades after it was embraced as a World War II holiday prayer, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” stirs new emotions. Most of those who returned home for Christmas after the war have left this world for the next. Yet because of the contributions and sacrifices of the men and women who served our country during those dark days, they will always be home for Christmas in our hearts, memories, and dreams.