USA TODAY International Edition
Bleak 1944 movie ballad resonates
We await victory over another enemy
Radio stations that feature Christmas songs at this time of year will play — many times and by many artists — a song from a popular film that premiered in 1944. “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” was sung by Judy Garland in the movie “Meet Me in St. Louis,” about a family forced to move from their beloved home by their father’s transfer to New York.
Unlike most Christmas songs that are cheery but emotionally shallow, this song captures the pain and sacrifice so many American families were enduring in that dreadful winter more than seven decades ago — although the war itself is not mentioned. It is a song uniquely suited to Christmas 2020, overshadowed like Christmas 1944 by death and grief and uncertainty.
As we entered 2020 with anticipation and hope, so did the Americans of 1944 watching the triumph of the Allied armies in Western France and the headlong retreat of the German army to the safety of the fortified Siegfried line. One could almost give credence to the hopeful boast of some soldiers that they would be home by Christmas.
That hope was dashed by the Battle of the Bulge, just about the time audiences were seeing “Meet Me in St. Louis” in neighborhood theaters throughout the country. With U. S. forces in disarray and final victory an iridescent dream, families saw a film about separation, loss and dashed hopes.
Original lyrics were not so cheery
The words Judy sang, as she and her sister, played by Margaret O’Brien, gazed wistfully out of their secondfloor window, poignantly expressed the feelings of Americans in darkened theaters: “Someday soon we all will be together, if the fates allow. Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow, so have yourself a merry little Christmas now.”
You’ve probably listened to this song many times but heard the bowdlerized version substituted by performers who did not want to sing somber songs about muddling through. Garland implored the lyricists Hugh Martin and Ralph Blaine to make the lines more upbeat. They had already altered the lyrics from an even bleaker version (“Have yourself a merry little Christmas, it may be your last. Next year we may all be living in the past”) and preferred not to further tamper with them. Ultimately, a number of artists scrapped the muddling clause and replaced it with the sunnier “hang a shining star upon the highest bough.”
The attitude of the American people at the end of 1944 was not unlike the outlook of many during this pandemic. They were fed up with three years of war and interpreted the success of the Allied armies in the summer and fall as a signal to return to the prewar normal.
An editorial in the Jan. 8, 1945, edition of Life magazine described conditions very similar to those in pre- pandemic America: “1944 for civilians was pretty much of a lark. We made more money, spent more, ate better and lived higher than in any year in our history. ... In a mad rush of Christmas buying we reduced department store inventories to almost nothing ( but) this is the year of the showdown and we can no longer trust to luck.”
Courage, endurance
On an even more somber note about what lay ahead, the magazine wrote, “Much food and drink and money are pleasant; but when the death toll mounts, their irony becomes a spiritual burden. ... Let us welcome the chance to be constant in enduring hardship and fatigue for our soldiers’ sakes, as they endure for ours. Courage is inspiring, but endurance will bring us closer together.”
The writers of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” probably had the same thought when they wrote, “Someday soon we all will be together, if the fates allow. Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow.”
Those words from long ago, about the importance of persistence, fortitude and endurance, are especially relevant as we await victory over another implacable enemy that will not give up easily.