White Christmas
Sign in to saveoriginal Christmas song written and composed by Irving Berlin for the 1942 musical film "Holiday Inn", sung by Bing Crosby
Key facts
- B side
- "Let's Start the New Year Right" " God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen " " Jingle Bells "
- Released
- July 30, 1942 (original)
- Recorded
- May 29, 1942, March 19, 1947
- Studio
- Radio Recorders (Los Angeles) (1942 recording)
- Genre
- Traditional pop
- Length
- 3 : 02 (1942 recording) 3 : 04 (1947 recording)
- Label
- Decca (1942–1973 issues) MCA (1983–1985 issues)
- Songwriter
- Irving Berlin
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Genre
- Christmas music
- Composer
- Irving Berlin
- Performer
- Gwen Stefani
- Tonality
- A major
- Lyrics by
- Irving Berlin
- Significant event
- 15th Academy Awards
Show 7 more facts
- publication date
- 1942-00-00
- different from
- White Christmas
- language of work or name
- English language
- title
- White Christmas
- form of creative work
- song
- music created for
- Holiday Inn
- Commons category
- White Christmas (song)
Sources (3)
via Wikidata · CC0
~15 min read
Encyclopedic overview
"White Christmas" is a song reminiscing about an old-fashioned Christmas setting. Written by Irving Berlin for the 1942 musical film Holiday Inn, the song won the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 15th Academy Awards.
Introduced by Bing Crosby, it topped the Billboard chart for 11 weeks and returned to the number one position again in December 1943 and 1944. His version would return to the top 40 a dozen times in subsequent years, the most recent being 2025. Crosby's version is the world's best-selling single (in terms of sales of physical media), with estimated sales in excess of 50 million physical copies worldwide. When the figures for other versions of the song are added to Crosby's, sales of the song exceed 100 million. It also remains one of the best-selling singles in the United States with estimated physical copies sold between 10 and 12 million as of 1963.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “White Christmas” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.