Christmas, Gratitude, and America
Robert Allen and Al Stillman wrote a very American song in 1954, and “Home for the Holidays” is grounded in the trips that get underway in the song’s bridge.
A big favorite in our house is Perry Como’s “(There’s No Place Like) Home for the Holidays.” Unlike a lot of the Christmas music we listen to, I wasn’t familiar with Como’s recording of the song when I was a kid. It wasn’t a part of my mom’s record collection, so it was never in regular rotation at our house. Now it’s a streaming world, and my daughters have been attached to “Home for the Holidays” for most of their young lives, perhaps because it mentions Pennsylvania. It’s a personal thing, heading to Pennsylvania for some homemade pumpkin pie—Hey, we do that! When Robert Allen and Al Stillman wrote the song in 1954, it’s doubtful that they imagined teenage girls adding it to Apple Music playlists nearly seventy years later, but here we are.
Perry Como recorded two versions of the song, one in 1954, and another in 1959. Como brings another Pennsylvania connection since he hailed from Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, about twenty miles from Pittsburgh. Born in 1912, Como’s youth was not unlike my own parents’ childhoods. He was the son of Italian immigrants living in Western Pennsylvania and didn’t speak English until he started school. With his father ailing and unable to work, Como had his own barbershop by the time he was fourteen—he practiced cutting hair on his dad. Eventually, Perry Como sang for his customers, but the universe had plans for the crooner that didn’t require scissors and electric clippers. Perry Como was a radio and recording star beginning in the 1930s and sold 100 million records, a fact that shocked even me.
It’s often difficult to describe why we like certain songs more than others, and I’ll freely admit that most of my Christmas favorites are from the middle of the 20th century. For me, that might be generational, but how do I explain Perry Como, Bing Crosby, and Frank Sinatra on my daughters’ playlists? Dean Martin and The Andrews Sisters? There’s plenty of modern Christmas music (even Taylor Swift), and sure Mariah Carey and Michael Bublé show up from time to time, but not that much. As a family, we are traditionalists who recognize that the older songs articulate a message that’s been lost in the 21st century. What is it in our brains that pulls us to this music, and why does it mean so much?
As you might have guessed, I have a theory. The initial attraction and annual return to Perry Como is more than nostalgia and, instead, commences with the idea that great art is invested with emotion. Sometimes those emotional components are deep enough to contain several things at once. Don’t laugh, but I’ve heard the same thing in polka records recorded during the 1940s, something that resonates deep within the sons and daughters of those European immigrants. To be precise, the thing that emanates from “Home for the Holidays” is a mixture of optimism and gratitude that lives within someone who deeply loves their country and the opportunities it offers. It’s not so different from my uncles, all first generation Americans, serving their country during World War II, or my dad enlisting in the army in 1948. Their parents were immigrants, but they saw themselves as Americans. My grandparents liked the idea of America as a cradle of freedom—home to a concept they hadn’t known in Europe.
Robert Allen and Al Stillman wrote a very American song in 1954, and “Home for the Holidays” is grounded in the trips that get underway in the song’s bridge: Tennessee to Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania to Dixie’s sunny shore. There are specific reasons for that heavy traffic from Atlantic to Pacific (it’s terrific). After World War II, Americans were working, flush with cash, and moving into newly minted suburbs. They were buying cars in numbers unheard of before the war. I might suggest that this newfound prosperity and the mobility that went with it defined the penultimate American in 1954.
In this regard, Stillman and Allen echo early rock and rollers like Chuck Berry and Ike Turner who were aware of this phenomenon: disposable cash and mobility. It was no accident that Chuck Berry often wrote about cars, and no accident that his songs are filled with the names of American cities. Berry, Stillman, and Allen were products of their times, and the music reflected the prosperity and freedom that seemed a given. Perhaps mobility in an American car was a gift that had to be acknowledged.
My thesis begins and ends with the premise that Perry Como’s Christmas song is also a song about America, and maybe the America he sang about doesn’t exist anymore. Is it nostalgic to recognize that and listen to the song again and again? Is it a yearning for a thing that’s lost? I don’t know if the sort of pride and optimism that drove the sons and daughters of European immigrants, or a Black rock and roll poet from St. Louis, are a part of the zeitgeist in 2023. The reasons behind Christmas run deeper than patriotism, and yet it’s worth noting that Bing Crosby’s “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” was written from the perspective of an American soldier who would not be home for the holiday during World War II. That soldier would only be home in his dreams, and the dreams are good and necessary.
If nothing else, we can attach a certain type of gratitude to Como’s 1954 sentiments, then. Home and safe, the ability to drive across several states to join a family celebration—these things are worth celebrating every day in the decade after World War II, and especially at Christmas. If there’s a distinctly American flavor to these songs, there’s no need for an apology from Como or the songwriters. The type of freedom America offers now, and the kind it offered in 1954, are worthy of lyrics like the ones Stillman and Allen wrote. Christmas seems to be worthy of gratitude and optimism and, in fact, might require that type of sentiment. You can call it patriotism, but I see it as a kind of awareness. One can hope that a thankful and positive attitude exists in Americans in 2023, and maybe in American songwriters. If it’s not on the current hit parade, we always have Perry Como. And if it is, I suppose I’ll recognize it immediately.
I always wondered about that lyric "Oh the Traffic is Terrific" when I was backed up on 81 heading north before Christmas with that tune in the tape deck.
Excellent writing, Gerry. I think you're right on point here. There are reasons why the America we knew and that we still remember is mostly gone now, but this is not the time nor the place to go into all that. So I'll just say, Thanks for your insightful and knowledgeable piece, and wish you and your family a truly Merry Christmas. Take care, sir.