I'm Alex Honnell, professional rock climber and founder of the Honnell Foundation.
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Today on Something You Should Know, our third Christmas bonus episode.
You know, every year around this time we hear the same songs at the mall, on the radio, in commercials, everywhere.
Today we have some wonderful stories about your favorite Christmas songs, including White Christmas, Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree and Nat King Cole's The Christmas Song.
What I love about this song is that it was written during the summer.
What happened is that Mel was going to Robert's house just for you know, a writing session, and it was a very, very hot summer day.
And he was, like you know, getting in the Christmas spirit writing this Christmas song.
Maybe this will cool me down.
And so they ended up writing the song in like 45 minutes.
And Nat King Cole, you know, liked the song enough that he recorded it the following year twice.
So grab some cocoa, settle in and we'll discover some fascinating facts about some Christmas songs we all know and love on, Something You Should Know.
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Something you should know.
Fascinating intel.
The world's top experts.
And practical advice you can use in your life.
Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.
You know, I love doing these holiday bonus episodes.
Doing them and then actually listening to them really gets me into the holiday spirit.
They're just fun to do, and I hope you enjoy them.
And we start this holiday bonus episode with holiday decorations.
If you think today's Christmas decorations are excessive well, there was a brief period when they were actually dangerous.
In the early 1900s, some Christmas ornaments and artificial snow were made with radioactive materials, including radium.
At the time, radium was considered healthy and modern.
It glowed in the dark.
So manufacturers added it to everything from watches to holiday decor.
People literally put faintly radioactive decorations in their living room without knowing that it could cause all kinds of health problems.
And that wasn't the only odd Christmas decoration.
In parts of Eastern Europe, families decorated Christmas trees with fake spider webs, sometimes even real spider webs.
It comes from a folk tale in which poor families wake up on Christmas morning to find spider webs on their tree turned into silver.
To this day, spider web ornaments are considered a symbol of good luck and prosperity in countries like Ukraine.
So, once upon a time, Christmas trees were either covered with spider webs or dangerously glowed in the dark, both of which were considered perfectly festive at the time.
And that is something you should know.
Unlike any other holiday, Christmas brings with it its own music.
Lots of music.
Songs and carols that we listen to over and over again.
Maybe you've noticed how some radio stations switch to an all-Christmas music format and seem to do it earlier and earlier every year.
And why do they do it?
Because listeners like it.
People love Christmas music.
And while some new songs get added to the mix every year, it is the classics that we're drawn to.
And those classic songs all have stories.
Joining me to reveal some of the interesting backstories to many of your favorite Christmas songs is Annie Zaleski.
She is an author, editor and journalist with a focus on music and pop culture, and she's author of a book called This Is Christmas.
Song by Song the stories behind 100 holiday hits.
Hi Annie, welcome to Something You Should Know.
Thanks for having me.
So let's start with why you like Christmas music so much and why you like going and investigating all the stories behind the songs.
Christmas music, I've always been a longtime fan ever since I was a small child.
And I think one of the things that I'm really fascinated by is that you can really see the world history, social movements, and they're all reflected in Christmas music.
So when you look at the history of Christmas music across the decades, you can kind of see how American culture has moved forward.
So let's start off with White Christmas because it's been around a long time.
It's a perennial favorite.
Everybody seems to like it.
What's the story with White Christmas?
You know, so that was written by Irving Berlin.
I don't think Irving Berlin needs any introduction.
He's one of the greatest composers in American history.
And he actually ended up writing it for a movie called Holiday Inn.
And that came out in 1942.
However, White Christmas came out the year before and basically emerged during the Christmas season right after World War II broke out.
The song was actually, he played it on his radio show.
The song was actually shipped to the UK that year, late 1941, to kind of provide solace for troops.
And what I just really love about this song is that it's reassuring.
He's very empathetic about it.
You know, it's a very kind of longing song.
It's full of nostalgia.
It's very wistful that with the hope that maybe one day, you know, everyone will be together.
Christmas will be better again.
And it really kind of summed up the time.
You know, it was a very anxious time in the world, a very fraught time.
Families were being separated and it was sort of a beacon of comfort, I guess.
Was it was it written for that purpose?
Was it written with soldiers in mind that one day they'll be home for Christmas, or was it just it just fit at the time?
Yeah, it just fit at the time.
No, I mean, he wrote this movie.
So Holiday Inn had a couple of other holiday themed songs that were kind of included on the movie soundtrack.
And it did not, you know obviously, I think when World War II broke out, it was one of those right place, right time things.
The song just really summed up the mood.
So my favorite Christmas song that I love to hear when I hear it on the radio I think OK, it's Christmas time is Nat King Cole's The Christmas Song.
What I love about this song The Origins that I did not realize until doing this book is that it was written during the summer.
There was actually a lot of Christmas songs that were written during the summer.
And so, this was written by Mel Torme and Robert Wells.
And actually what happened is that Mel was going to Robert's house, just for you know, a writing session, and it was a very, very hot summer day.
It was excessively hot, as he put it.
And he happened to see on the piano.
There were some lyrics that referenced Christmas carols, roasting chestnuts.
And he was, like you know what, getting in the Christmas spirit writing this Christmas song.
Maybe this will cool me down.
And so they ended up writing the song in like 45 minutes.
They immediately took the song to Hollywood.
And Nat King Cole liked the song enough that he recorded it the following year twice.
Actually, he did two separate takes in 1946.
But that song just sums it up right there.
That came out right as World War II ended.
And so there were a lot of people that there were getting back together trying to recover from a very, very difficult four years.
And so that also really kind of summed up and really provided a lot of comfort for families, sort of in the opposite way that White Christmas did.
You know, what's interesting to me about that song is there have been a lot of really good covers of that song.
I mean a lot and some of them are really good, but they just don't quite do it the way Nat King Cole did it.
100%.
And I think that's, you know, his voice.
He had such a singular voice.
He was so deeply empathetic.
And he was such a wonderful interpreter.
He really lived the songs that he sang and also i think it's such a big part of it he has that i don't know what that is, that haunting thing in his voice.
You know, sting kind of has that same thing.
There's a hauntingness about it that just makes the song.
And you know another song when i hear it at christmas or when i hear it anywhere, it gets stuck in my head for the rest of the day and that is blue christmas by elvis.
Oh, I love Blue Christmas.
Oh, absolutely.
You know, then that came out in 1957.
You know, and it's funny, he wasn't actually the first one to do it, which I was very interested about.
That had been recorded many times before he ended up tackling it.
But I think this is another one where his vocal performance just nailed it.
You know he just nailed the when you're not having a good Christmas, basically if you're having anyone who's having a melancholy Christmas and not having a great year.
You know he really, he really captured it.
And, funny enough, the writer actually was inspired by a gloomy day when he actually wrote it.
Jay Johnson.
And he was actually known for penning scripts for radio shows.
He wasn't necessarily a songwriter.
He was commuting from Connecticut to New York City, and it was a rainy day.
And he basically wondered why someone hadn't written a holiday song with some blues in it.
And so he decided to write one himself.
And he teamed up with a composer friend named Billy Hayes, and they put it together.
I've certainly noticed, as I'm sure everyone has, that the Christmas classic songs stay forever.
And there aren't a lot of new songs that really stick the way White Christmas or the Christmas song do.
But a few have.
And recently, like Mariah Carey, I mean, she's criticized for that song, her Christmas song.
But it has stuck.
And it probably will stick for a while.
So she actually wrote it with a collaborator of hers, Walter Afanaseff, who he also co-wrote.
Hero and One Sweet Day.
And so they were writing a lot of songs together, you know, and she loved Christmas.
I mean, I think that's obvious if everyone looking at it now she really leans into it because of the song, but she loved Christmas.
And so she basically wrote this song.
You know it was a silly love song.
You know a whimsical love song not silly but whimsical that she's basically waiting for her beloved.
You know that she's going to be underneath the Christmas tree, you know, waiting underneath the mistletoe, waiting for them to come up.
You know, and it's one of these songs that I'm still trying to figure out why it's become so popular and why it is just endured, and why that one in particular has become a standard.
And I think it's probably because you know you have her.
She really leans into the vocal performance.
She really goes for it.
And the instrumentation as well is, you know, kind of old fashioned.
You know, you have sleigh bells, you have piano, you know, with a little bit of a different production that could have come out in another decade.
Well, it also seems like other songs, like Blue Christmas, that when you hear it it gets stuck in your head for a while, until some other song comes and bumps it out.
But it is infectious in that way.
It gets in your head.
And you know what other song that gets stuck in my head at Christmastime and it is so hard to get rid of.
And I want to ask you about that when we come back in just a minute.
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So Annie, another more recent Christmas song that gets stuck in my head all the time and that I can't get rid of is Underneath the Tree by Kelly Clarkson.
I mean, I just hear it and I can't get it out of my head.
And I like it, but God, I wish I could think of something else.
You said that and I immediately started singing that in my head because yeah, it is one of those memorable songs that like her hook with that.
And, you know, it's funny.
She wrote that song with Greg Kirsten and who has a very interesting background.
He was in a 90s band called Gegita that very few people remember.
But he's done a lot of production for mainstream pop.
And they conjured kind of the Wallace Sound production style.
They kind of modernized it and kind of drew on that.
And, you know, basically, true love makes Christmas better.
I think it's one of those timeless songs that they went with the classics and decided to go for it.
I think her vocal performance too.
She is obviously a big fan of Mariah Carey's, but also some of the other powerful songwriters and powerful female vocalists through the years.
There are a lot of women who have sang Christmas songs, Darlene Love, obviously, the Ronettes.
She's in the long tradition of those very powerful women singing Christmas songs.
Let's get back to some of the classics, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.
I mean, that's been around forever.
Well, I don't know if it's been around forever.
Has it been around forever?
It's been around since the 40s, which feels like forever, I guess, depending on your perspective.
This was in Meet Me in St.
Louis, which is Judy Garland.
So it's very connected to her post Wizard of Oz.
And what was so fascinating about the song is that it almost didn't come to be.
So the songwriters were Ralph Blaine and Hugh Martin.
And basically, Hugh was writing the song and played it, just couldn't get the song to work.
And he threw it in the trash.
And Ralph was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second.
And he actually said no no no, this is good, and made him take it back out of the trash so they could finish it.
And, you know, even then, you know, obviously it's such a pivotal part of Meet Me in St.
Louis as well.
And it actually almost didn't end up in the movie, apparently because they were worried that it was a little bit too.
You know, dour?
So Annie, Merry Christmas Darling by the Carpenters.
When that came out, I think it just instantly became a hit and it has sustained for all these years.
And it's, I mean, it's her voice.
It's just the way she sings is like an angel.
Absolutely.
And I think you know when I was talking about female vocalists.
You know, just really nailing Christmas songs, she really did.
And this one as well.
So you know, Richard Carpenter handled the music and Frank Pooler wrote lyrics, and people might not necessarily know who he was.
What's interesting is that he wrote the song basically as a Christmas gift for a girl to get a crush on.
It didn't work out or anything, but he kept the song.
He later became a teacher.
He was a choral director at California State University, Long Beach, and met Richard and Karen Carpenter.
Basically, they asked, hey, do you have any Christmas song they could perform?
He dug out his lyrics and Richard wrote music to it.
So I mean, what a lovely story.
And he didn't realize that he was doing it.
Richard just kind of invited Frank to the studio and said, hey, I want you to listen to something.
And he put together this song.
But oh yeah, I mean Karen's performance on this is just so.
I mean, there's almost no words to describe how beautiful it is.
And it's just so tender and dynamic.
And it's really, you know, that was fairly early in their career becoming hit makers.
And I think it was definitely one of those songs that showed you know another side of her and just showed her depth.
One Christmas song that's fairly popular that I am not a big fan of, because I think it's cute the first time you hear it.
It's not so cute the 700th time you've heard it, is I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.
I knew you were going to say that because I did not realize what a polarizing that song was.
And so this was actually written by a man named John Rocks.
He basically, he had studied music in Vienna.
He wrote some Broadway songs.
And the singer was 12.
Her name was Gayla Peavy.
And so she was kind of on a child star who was kind of on an upswing and she sang the song.
And I think what's most fascinating about this song is that the way they promoted it.
I think now it's kind of foreshadowed the way music promotion is now. know so basically the whole story is she wants a hippopotamus for christmas and so how they promoted the song was saying she needs the real gala needs a hippopotamus and so they did all of these you know fundraisers and promotion and they they did a fundraiser and they actually donated people donated four thousand dollars which in the early 50s you know i calculated was more than forty thousand dollars today and they basically found an elephant matilda and they She went to the Oklahoma City Zoo, and she lived there for decades.
So it's a weird song, and it's definitely kind of all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth.
There were a lot of songs like this in the early 50s, the post-World War II baby boom.
Children were music consumers, and I think that was definitely one of the songs too, geared toward them.
Well, and the Chipmunks Christmas song would fall into that category, but it's such a novelty song.
Yeah, I guess you still hear it a lot at Christmastime.
But again, I can hear it once a year and that's plenty for me.
That one is so funny because it's one man and he basically, and so if people know the song Witch Doctor by David Saville and he put together the chipmunk song, he bought a really real cassette recorder and manipulated the tapes to make the chipmunk voices which honestly, for the time was very forward thinking.
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It's funny because he actually almost did not end up on Chipmunks.
He wasn't sure if the singer should be them or insects.
He actually thought of being butterflies or mice or rabbits.
They almost were not Chipmunks, which is funny.
So I want to go back, because we talked about White Christmas, which came out in the 40s, Bing Crosby and all that.
But there's also I'll Be Home for Christmas, which is kind of similar in its theme and its time.
And the same guy sings it.
So sort that out.
Oh, boy.
I mean, and so this came out in 1943, which, you know, obviously was in the middle of World War II.
It was even more fraught time, I think, than when White Christmas came out.
And, you know, basically, it's less optimistic.
I mean, I think, you know, even, you know, I'll be home for Christmas.
When you hear the title, you're like, that's a promise.
I'll be home there.
But honestly, when you actually kind of listen to the song, the lyrics almost hint that coming home for the holidays is a fantasy.
Yeah.
That this is something that might not be possible, you know.
I think the parenthetical is, if only in my dreams, is I think you know, kind of you know, basically points to that, basically.
That, you know, that there's no guarantee.
And I think this is another song that just really, really summed up the time.
Funnily enough, the song actually has a very complicated backstory because there were lawsuits involved in terms of these songwriters.
People had shared this song and there were copyright things.
For a song that is just so melancholy and just so downtrodden.
There was a lot of drama and legal drama behind the scenes.
But boy, Bing just really, too, his performance and his delivery on the song, too.
He really, really lived the song and leaned into the melancholy.
But it was comforting in a way, you know, for people who weren't feeling great at the holidays, who were feeling like we're feeling hopeless, that things weren't going to work out.
You know he he was really the soundtrack to that and really told people it's okay to feel that way.
So rock and roll changed music, but it also changed the landscape of christmas music when it appeared and i want to ask you about that in just a moment, It's a busy time.
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So Annie, when rock and roll showed up, it produced a couple of Christmas songs, like Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree and Jingle Bell Rock.
That said hey, rock and roll is part of the culture now.
Absolutely.
And you know, Jingle Bell Rock is another one of those when I mentioned, you know, songwriting credits.
That is a fascinating.
Fascinating one, because the songwriters who are credited are Joseph Carlton Beale and James Ross Booth.
And there's not a lot of information about them.
You really have to kind of dig to find out sort of what they did.
Bobby Helms over the years has always claimed, you know, he's no longer with us.
But when he was alive, he claimed, I wrote a bunch of this stuff.
I really rewrote this song and he didn't get credit for it.
And he was in country music.
That was so interesting is that he had had a couple of country hits.
So when he kind of came up with this song, that was a little bit.
It's funny because it's very early, rock and roll kind of easygoing.
You can tell that he was in country, by the way, with the instrumentation and the musicianship.
Hank Garland was on it, big country music performer.
And just really sort of being laid back and sort of shuffling.
And it's just...
It's one of those feel-good songs when Jingle Bell Rock.
Jingle Bell Rock is basically it's people going, you know, you're going to Jingle Bell Square, you know.
So it's kind of playing up the iconography of Christmas and just kind of for teenagers going out and dancing.
That's very much this.
Same thing with Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree, you know, and this Brenda Lee first off nailed it.
This was another song that she recorded right in the dead of summer.
And it was written by Johnny Marks, who is notorious because he also wrote Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
And she was only like 13, right?
No, actually, you know what?
She was 12.
She might have even been 12.
I'd have to look up what her birthday was.
She was so young, and you wouldn't know it.
I mean, I think that's what's so incredible about that song is that she always sounded so much more sophisticated and adult than she actually was.
And I remember reading in an interview with Brenda Lee that when Home Alone came out and Home Alone features that song, that that was a real shot in the arm for the song.
A hundred percent, you know, and she said that it was a turning point, you know, and that it's really she called an interview.
It breathed new life into the tune.
And, you know, it hit number one last year.
I mean, I think that's what's striking, you know, decades after it came out.
She, you know, it basically, you know, Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas is You parentally hits number one around the holiday season and Brenda Lee did last year.
Just unbelievable.
Yeah.
Well, as we were talking about before, you know, the all-time great Christmas songs.
They don't let many new members into that list very often.
But sometimes there's like the little flurry and it happened like in the 80s with Wham and the Eagles.
Their Christmas songs are now classics, right?
And it's funny when you think about it.
You know that was 40 years ago now, you know, and the Eagles was almost 45 years ago.
And so you know, when we were growing up, those songs from the 40s and 50s, those were the classics.
So yeah, they are now the classics.
Wham's Last Christmas is so, you know unbelievable, because i think george michael especially has been getting a lot more credit for his songwriting, his production, you know, in recent years.
And that song he basically wrote himself.
He was at his parents house and he was hanging out, you know, um andrew ridgely, his wham bandmate, was also there and he basically got inspiration and he went upstairs and he happened to have a keyboard in his childhood bedroom and started writing the song And then he actually ended up recording it in the studio by himself.
There was just an engineer.
And he played the instruments on it, too, with some synthesizers and a drum machine.
And that was basically a George Michael production.
And that song is so funny because the interpretations of it vary so wildly.
I mean, I've always said that that it's basically you run into an ex at a Christmas time and that you go through a whirlwind of emotions your anger, your bitter, your sad, your longing and that you're basically saying nope, they are no longer worth my time.
I'm done with you.
It's time to move forward.
But people have many different interpretations of that.
It's very, very interesting.
I've had some heated conversations with people about Last Christmas, which you would not expect, for the way it sounds, being such a synth pop classic the eagles, oh the eagles.
And so and i you know this is, it's funny that the eagles have so many good songs, and i honestly think this is my one of my favorite eagle songs, to be very honest, and i think it's, you know i, for starters, i think it's the vocal performances, you know.
I think obviously, their harmonies are unparalleled, and i think this one, especially this, really highlights it.
This was actually written though, by Charles Brown.
And so he is a very, very underrated musician, basically.
He had started playing in the 1940s with Johnny Moore's Three Blazers, who actually had a hit with Merry Christmas Baby, long before it became very well known.
Then he also fronted the Charles Brown Trio.
But he basically recorded this song for King Records, which was a very infamous and very influential record label in Cincinnati.
He basically the Eagles found it and covered it.
And so it had been released decades before and they put just a really wonderful kind of RB.
You know rock, soft rock, spin on it.
And like I said, I just, you know, I love this song.
You know, I mean I think Joe Walsh and Don Felder, they were really.
They're such powerful guitar players and they were very, very subtle.
And it was actually the first time Timothy B Schmidt contributed bass to an Eagles song, which I think also probably contributes to the sound of it as well.
Well, I must admit, I always like hearing stories behind popular songs.
They're just so interesting to me.
And apologies to anybody who if we didn't get to your favorite Christmas song.
We only have so much time and there are so many songs.
I've been talking to Annie Zaleski.
She's an author, editor and journalist and one of her books is called This Is Christmas.
Song by Song the stories behind 100 holiday hits.
And there's a link to her book at Amazon in the show notes.
Great Annie.
Thanks.
Merry Christmas.
Thank you so much.
This was fun.
Since we're talking about Christmas music, you've probably heard the song The Twelve Days of Christmas more times than you can count.
But there's a lot to that song you may not know.
First of all, the twelve days don't actually refer to the days leading up to Christmas, as many people believe.
Traditionally, they begin on Christmas Day and then run through January 5th, the eve of the Christian Feast of Epiphany.
So if you've been singing it as a countdown to Christmas, technically you're 12 days early.
And what about all those odd gifts in the song?
Well, many people have heard the story that each line of the song contains a hidden religious message, like two turtle doves representing the Old and New Testaments.
It's an interesting idea, but historians say there's no solid evidence for that.
It seems that the song started out as a simple memory and forfeit game.
In 18th century England and France, players would take turns reciting the growing list of gifts in the song, and if you messed up you owed a forfeit, which was usually something silly or embarrassing.
Speaking of gifts, if someone actually sent you all the birds and all the people represented in that song, repeating each gift every day, you would end up with 364 total presents.
That includes 184 birds and 40 different entertainers to dance, leap, and pipe around your house.
And finally, the costs.
Every year, a financial firm publishes what they call the Christmas Price Index.
It's an estimate of how much it would cost to buy everything in that song.
Today, the full set of gifts would run well over $40,000, and that's without the repeating days.
If you include all the cumulative gifts, you're looking at a total somewhere in six figures.
So the next time you hear the 12 days of Christmas, remember it's not a secret code and it's not a countdown and it's definitely not a very practical gift list.
And that is something you should know.
This was fun.
This was a really fun episode to do.
I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you're having yourself a very Merry Christmas season.
I'm Mike Carruthers.
Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.
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Do you ever find yourself lying in bed and your brain then decides this is the perfect time to remind you of everything?
And then your brain starts racing and you start thinking and sleep seems impossible.
This is why I really like Catherine Nicolai's podcast called Nothing Much Happens.
It's simple, it's soothing, and it works.
Each episode is just a calm, cozy bedtime story.
There's no drama, nothing intense, nothing to follow.
You don't have to write anything down.
It's just simple repetition and these really peaceful sensory details that give your brain permission to settle down and go to sleep.
Millions of people use it as part of their nighttime routine, and I totally get why.
They recently did a story I love called The Guest Room.
It was all about clean sheets and fresh towels and those things I love that help me sleep.
You really should try it tonight when you go to bed.
You can listen to Nothing.
Much Happens wherever you get your podcasts.
Episodes every Monday and Thursday.
