Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

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Judy Garland introduces the song in the original 1944 film version, singing to Margaret O’Brien in Meet Me in St. Louis.

Michael Bublé’s 2011 recording, featuring the “shining star” line written for Frank Sinatra in 1957.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
Written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, 1943

This tender Christmas song was written in 1943 for the MGM musical Meet Me in St. Louis, which reached theaters in 1944 with Judy Garland in the starring role. In the film it comes on Christmas Eve. Garland’s character, Esther, sings it to comfort her little sister Tootie, played by Margaret O’Brien. Tootie is heartbroken because the family is about to leave St. Louis for New York.

The song very nearly never happened. Hugh Martin said it began with a little madrigal-like melody he liked but couldn’t make work. After fussing with it for a few days, he threw it in the wastebasket. Ralph Blane had heard the tune and told him it was too good to throw away, so the two of them dug through the trash until they found it. Years later Blane said he was grateful they did.

The words gave them even more trouble. Martin’s first lyric was so gloomy that it suggested this Christmas might be the family’s last. Judy Garland refused to sing it. As Martin remembered it, she told him that little Margaret would cry and audiences would think she was a monster. The director, Vincente Minnelli, wasn’t happy with it either. Martin, young and a little stubborn by his own account, didn’t want to change a word. It was Tom Drake, the actor who played the boy next door, who took him aside and told him he’d be sorry if he didn’t finish the song. Martin went home and wrote the gentler version heard in the film. It still has its wistful touch, the hope that we’ll all be together “if the fates allow,” and that we’ll “muddle through somehow” until then.

The song changed once more in 1957. Frank Sinatra was recording his holiday album A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra and asked Martin for a brighter line in place of “muddle through.” Martin gave him “hang a shining star upon the highest bough,” and that’s the line most people sing today.

Garland’s recording reached No. 27 on the Billboard charts in early 1945. The song has since been recorded by a remarkable range of singers, and Martin himself said Garland’s version was always his favorite. The American Film Institute later named it one of the top 100 songs in American film history. Today it sits among the best-loved songs of the season. Its quiet mix of hope and longing is part of why it means so much to anyone who has spent a Christmas missing someone.