OT Advent Calendar Day 10: I’ll Be Home For Christmas

Advent has always been my favorite time of year. Not only does it lead up to the festival of Christmas, but my birthday falls right around half way through. What’s more, I grew up in snowy Central New York—that’s the barren hinterlands of Upstate, for those in the city so nice they named it twice—and if I didn’t get a White Christmas, the Great Lakes were good for a storm around my birthday so there’d at least be a good beginning to the winter.

Advent is far from an untouched subject around these parts, so I’m clearly not alone.

Your OT Advent Calendar this year will be musical. We’ll talk about diamond-in-the-rough traditional tunes just waiting for renewed popularity, crimes against Christmas, the silly songs and the songs that have become modern traditions. We’ll also talk about the notion of true Christmas Carols, those which address the twelve days festival beginning on Christmas itself, including not just the one day-counting song but another. 

Let’s dive in, shall we?

Today’s tune is “I’ll Be Home For Christmas.”

“I’ll Be Home for Christmas” was written by Kim Gannon (lyrics) and Walter Kent (music). Released on Decca Records in 1943 for troops overseas and recorded by Bing Crosby, the song was an almost immediate hit.

Oddly enough, the song was a source of controversy on two fronts. First, a fellow named Buck Ram sued on the grounds that he’d written a song of the same name prior to Gannon and Kent, and had even shown the pair his song in 1942. Though the lyrics and music were completely different, all future releases would add Ram’s name as a co-writer.

Second, Decca’s top brass were concerned about the melancholy last couplet of the song (“I’ll be home for Christmas/If only in my dreams”). Though they overcame their objection, and released the song as is, the BBC—which just loves, I tell you, loves banning songs—banned it over a worry that it would negatively impact morale.

For a song so detrimental to morale, it was the most requested song by GI’s at USO shows, and was released for the Army and the Navy by the War Department’s in-house record label, V-Disc.

And, yes, it’s “plan”—not “count”— in the opening lines.

Here’s the Carpenters.

And, last but not least—I mean it! Everybody has covered this song—Al Green.