Eighty years ago this week, Judy Garland walked into an MGM studio and recorded Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas for the first time. It was written for the musical Meet Me in St Louis (1944), only part of which is set at Christmas – but no matter. Its music and lyrics by Hugh Martin have come to represent the epitome of the classic Christmas song.
Eighty-two years ago this week, the bombing of Pearl Harbor drew the US into the second world war. Sixteen million Americans signed up to the armed forces, and many American women responded to the Rosie the Riveter campaign by joining workplaces for the first time. Family life was profoundly changed: there was a sense of displacement, absence and loss.
Popular music responded with conventional war songs (see Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition by Frank Loesser of Guys and Dolls fame) but it was the Christmas song that best expressed the heartache.
