Strange & Fascinating Stories Behind Your Favorite Christmas Songs

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MIAMI (CBSMiami/CNN) — The Christmas play isn’t implicit without singing a fewer Christmas carols but bash you cognize the past down immoderate of the songs you whitethorn beryllium belting retired to neighbors?

Here’s a person look astatine the stories down immoderate of your favourite vacation tunes.

‘Santa Claus Is Coming To Town’

Inspiration tin onslaught you anywhere, adjacent connected a subway. While traveling to a euphony publisher’s bureau successful 1933, the tune’s songwriters John Frederick Coots and Haven Gillespie sat successful a subway car and penned the opus connected the backmost of an envelope.

‘All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth’

It started disconnected with Donald Gardner asking a radical of second-graders to implicit the sentence, “All I privation for Christmas is … ” No, nary 1 truly said they wanted their 2 beforehand teeth for Christmas. But erstwhile Gardner listened to their wishes, immoderate of the students’ lisps gave him the inspiration for his 1948 hit. He went location that nighttime and wrote the opus successful 30 minutes.

‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’

When songwriters Hugh Martin and Ralph Blaine primitively wrote the vacation classical for the 1944 movie, “Meet Me successful St. Louis,” Judy Garland didn’t similar it. The histrion said it was truthful bittersweet it would marque her co-star Margaret O’Brien outcry and permission herself looking similar a monster. After immoderate debate, the songwriters changed the opus to the mentation that is successful the movie.

‘Do You Hear What I Hear?’

A plea for peace, maybe? Songwriters and then-married mates Noel Regney and Gloria Shayne Baker wrote the opus during the Cuban rocket situation successful October 1962. The opus aboriginal went connected to merchantability much than a quarter-million copies during that Christmas season.

‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’

Walter Kent and James Gannon’s opus captured the temper of homesick Americans successful 1943, particularly the soldiers who were successful the depths of World War II. It was the astir requested opus astatine Christmas U.S.O. shows successful Europe arsenic good arsenic the Pacific.

‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’

It’s really an 18th-century representation crippled intended to assistance young Catholics larn the tenants of their faith. Over the centuries, immoderate said the song’s gifts person hidden meanings, including the “true love” symbolizing God and “the partridge successful a pear tree” arsenic Jesus Christ.

‘Let It Snow!’

That’s astir apt what composer Jule Styne and lyricist Sammy Cahn desperately wanted successful July of 1945. That’s erstwhile they wrote this song, successful the mediate of a heatwave successful Hollywood.