FROM THE ARCHIVES : "BUT IT OCCURRED TO IRVING BERLIN":

When something's that big, you take it for granted. If you've heard 'White Christmas' in a shopping mall or elevator or while stuck in touch-tone hell trying to make a telephone booking, you don't usually think, 'Gee, "White Christmas" again. That must be the 50th version this month.' But, if you did, you'd want to know how it got that way. What particular combination of circumstances blessed 'White Christmas' out of all the other songs written that month? Berlin, wrote Jody Rosen in his book about the anthem, 'had tried to kick-start the Tin Pan Alley Christmas song some years before.' In 1912, the year after his first big hit with 'Alexander's Ragtime Band', he'd published 'Christmas Time Seems Years and Years Away', which, from his point of view, it was. Before radio, before a real record industry, the sheet-music business couldn't see the point of working a song that would be dead on 26 December. The notion that it might be a seasonal insurance policy, returning year after year for decade after decade, never occurred to them.

But it occurred to Irving Berlin.

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