White Christmas was written in 1937 by Irving Berlin and became popular when Bing Crosby performed it in the 1942 movie, "Holiday Inn."

Yeah – the song White Christmas evokes oodles of wistful nostalgia (just like in the movie) - family warmth and all them fine memories of stuff that never really happens.

The irony here is that the original version of White Christmas was, well, a goof on Christmas.  Before Berlin was asked to suppress the opening verse, the song opened with a lyric about celebrating Christmas on an eighty-degree day beside a chlorinated Los Angeles swimming pool.  But in the movie you get a snowbound Vermont resort, and the original verse was dropped.  And White Christmas became the 'official' theme song of homesick WWII soldiers, and all the rest… the most popular Christmas song of all, selling more than thirty million copies of Crosby’s versions alone.

But originally it opens like this -

The sun is shining

The grass is green

The orange and palm trees sway.

I've never seen such a day

In Beverly Hills LA.

But it's December the 24th

And I am longing to be up North.

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas

Just like the ones I used to know.

Where the treetops glisten,

And children listen

To hear sleigh bells in the snow.

Snowflakes on Sunset Boulevard, at the edge of Beverly Hills…