(NEXSTAR) – “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is already more melancholy than most classic Christmas songs, but its earlier version was a downright downer.
The song, which is credited to the late songwriting partners Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, was written for the 1944 musical “Meet Me in St. Louis” starring Judy Garland. In the film, Garland’s character sings a version of the song to her character’s younger sister, who is saddened about their family’s upcoming move to New York City. The youngster, crying throughout, listens as her older sibling croons melancholy lyrics about “troubles” that will soon be “out of sight” or “miles away,” and “faithful friends” they’ll reunite with someday.
But Martin — who had later suggested he was the song’s sole composer and lyricist — had originally written different lyrics that never made it into the film. Among them, he opened the song with “Have yourself a merry little Christmas, it may be your last,” he confirmed in a 2006 interview with Entertainment Weekly. And instead of “faithful friends” gathering near once more, he initially wanted “faithful friends who are dear to us, will be near to us no more.”
“Judy [Garland] was saying, 'If I sing that … they'll think I'm a monster!'” Martin told EW.
Martin initially balked at the idea of changing it, telling the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) in 2005 that he preferred the “lugubrious” lyrics. He said he told the producers of the movie to “take it or leave it,” but he eventually changed his tune — and wrote the more familiar lyrics sung in the film.
“I could see that I was being stubborn. So I went home and wrote the [new] lyric that is in the movie,” he said.
In the movie version, however, there are still a few noticeable differences from the song that’s often played on today’s Christmas radio stations. For starters, Garland says “next year” their troubles will be out of sight, rather than “from now on.” That line about “faithful friends” is also in the past tense rather than the present tense, with Garland singing “faithful friends who were dear to us,” rather than “are dear to us.”
Perhaps more noticeable is an early line from the next couplet, which Garland sings as “Someday soon, we all will be together if the fates allow. Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow.”
According to Martin, it was Frank Sinatra himself who requested to change that line for his upcoming Christmas album, he told EW. (Sinatra, having already recorded the earlier version, wanted to “jolly up” the song, Martin said.) Martin, in turn, offered to change it to "Hang a shining star upon the highest bough," a line which might be more familiar to today’s listeners.
“You don’t say no to Frank Sinatra,” Martin told NAMM.
Martin’s favorite version, though, was Judy Garland’s, once calling it “tops with me” in a 2006 interview with NPR’s Fresh Air. But he's also said (more than once) that he enjoyed Twisted Sister’s “strange” cover of the song, even if they decided against using the original 1940s lyrics.
"Twisted Sisters, is that the group's name?” he asked EW, when prompted about the myriad recordings of his tune. “That's a hoot!"
