The story behind It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas
It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas walks down a main street and names the evidence. Toys fill a five and ten. A tree stands in the grand hotel. A child wants hopalong boots, the cowboy gear tied in memory to Hopalong Cassidy, a hero of that moment's Saturday mornings. Meredith Willson wrote the song in 1951, years before The Music Man turned him into a Broadway emblem. The eye in the lyric is already theatrical. It knows how a town dresses when it wants to be seen.
Perry Como and the Fontane Sisters, with Mitchell Ayres and his orchestra, made the first hit recording for RCA Victor in September 1951. Bing Crosby followed on the first of October for Decca. Two of the biggest voices in American popular song thus adopted a new inventory within weeks. The title has sometimes been remembered without the words a lot. The song the public kept includes them. Anticipation is the whole plot.
History and origins
Willson was a flutist, a radio bandleader, and a writer from Mason City, Iowa, already a craftsman and not yet the household name of 1957. The Music Man would premiere then and make seventy six trombones a national joke and a national love. In 1951 he was still the man who could write a single that Como might cut. Plymouth Music published It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas that year. Some notes give a shorter working title, It's Beginning to Look Like Christmas. The extra words in the familiar title are the right ones. They sound like someone peering into windows and upgrading the estimate.
Como's record, with the Fontane Sisters, is dated to a September 1951 release, RCA Victor 47-4314 on 45 and 20-4314 on 78. The Sisters' blend makes the street sound populated. Crosby's Decca side, recorded 1 October 1951, is more like a stroll with one genial guide. Neither man treats the song as a novelty to be winked away. They sing it as news about the neighborhood. That is why a shopping song could stand beside carols without apologizing. It does not compete with the nativity. It describes the week around it.
Willson later built the melody into Here's Love, his 1963 Broadway musical drawn from Miracle on 34th Street. There the song appears in counterpoint with a new piece, Pine Cones and Holly Berries. A writer recycling his hit into a stage score is an old Broadway habit. Here it also reveals the lyric's dramatic type. It belongs in a story about a department store, a parade, and belief in a public Santa. The five and ten and the grand hotel were already a set design. Here's Love simply raised the curtain that had been implied.
Later singers keep refreshing the windows. Johnny Mathis recorded it for Christmas Eve with Johnny Mathis in 1986, and that performance gained a second life when Home Alone 2 used it. Michael Bublé opened his 2011 Christmas album with the song and made it a streaming era doorbell. Choirs, meanwhile, sing it as if it were decades older than it is, which is the compliment a standard receives. Willson's Iowa ear for civic boast, the same ear that would itemize a boys' band, itemized tinsel first. The Music Man got the parades. This song got the storefronts.
Full lyrics
Excerpt
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Everywhere you go
Take a look in the five and ten
Glistening once again
The lines above are a short excerpt for identification and study. The full lyric is still under copyright. Replace this block with a licensed copy if you have the right to print the complete text.
Lyrics presented for educational and personal use. Sing along responsibly this holiday season!
Meaning and symbolism
The meaning is recognition. Christmas, in this lyric, begins when the objects change. Candy, trees, toys, and a hotel lobby are enough to flip the feeling of a street. There is no theology and no private heartbreak. The closest emotional stake is a child's wish, the hopalong boots, which dates the song and also keeps it human. Someone small wants something specific. The rest is atmosphere, and atmosphere is the point.
Shopping, in 1951, could still be sung as delight rather than as exhaustion. Willson does not inventory prices. He inventories gleam. That choice lets later listeners who dislike the commercial season still enjoy the walk, because the song is about looking, not about buying. The title's gradual verb, beginning to look, is honest. The change is not complete. It is starting. Much of December feels exactly like that, half dressed and already excited.
Fun facts and statistics
- Meredith Willson wrote words and music in 1951, published by Plymouth Music.
- A shorter title, It's Beginning to Look Like Christmas, is sometimes noted as an early form.
- Perry Como and the Fontane Sisters, with Mitchell Ayres, made the first hit recording in September 1951.
- Bing Crosby recorded his version on 1 October 1951 for Decca.
- The lyric pictures include a five and ten, a tree in the grand hotel, and hopalong boots.
- Willson later used the song in the 1963 musical Here's Love, in counterpoint with Pine Cones and Holly Berries.
- Johnny Mathis recorded it in 1986, and that cut gained attention from Home Alone 2.
- Michael Bublé opened his 2011 Christmas album with the song.
Top 5 most popular renditions
Perry Como and the Fontane Sisters
1951
Como and the Fontane Sisters, backed by Mitchell Ayres and his orchestra, released the first hit version on RCA Victor in September 1951. The Sisters make the street sound crowded, which suits a lyric about things seen everywhere you go. Como's ease keeps the shopping from feeling frantic. This is the record that established Willson's new title before Crosby had even finished his own session. It remains the cleanest way to hear the song as a fresh 1951 pop side rather than as a standard that has always existed.
Perry Como and the Fontane Sisters
Bing Crosby
1951
Crosby recorded the song for Decca on the first of October 1951, weeks after Como's release, and gave it the strolling warmth he brought to so many seasonal titles. He sounds like a man already sure the town will finish decorating. Because his voice defined American Christmas for that generation, his cover helped Willson sit beside Berlin and the other December landlords. The two 1951 records are a small duel that both singers won. Como had the first hit. Crosby had the larger seasonal aura. The song used both.
Bing Crosby
Here's Love company
1963
In 1963 Willson placed the melody inside Here's Love, his Broadway telling of the Miracle on 34th Street story, where it weaves in counterpoint with the new song Pine Cones and Holly Berries. The stage version makes the original lyric's storefront eye explicit. A musical about belief, shopping, and a public Santa was a natural home for a tune that had always been a walk past windows. Audiences who knew only the Como record could hear the same strain doing dramatic work. Recycling a hit became an act of authorship, not a shortcut.
Here's Love company
Johnny Mathis
1986
Mathis recorded the song for Christmas Eve with Johnny Mathis in 1986, wrapping Willson's walk in the plush vocal style of his later holiday albums. The performance might have stayed a collector's favorite if Home Alone 2 had not put it back in front of a wide audience. Film placement did what a new single sometimes cannot. It taught a fresh crowd the cadence of a 1951 title through a 1986 voice. Mathis neither hurries the street nor mocks the toys. He lets the looking remain gentle.
Johnny Mathis
Michael Bublé
2011
Bublé chose the song to open his 2011 album Christmas, a programming decision that treats Willson's inventory as a doorbell. Brass and a crisp tempo make the five and ten feel like a set he built for the record. Younger listeners who had not sorted Como from Crosby met the title here first and then walked backward. The track's success on seasonal playlists showed that a shopping song from 1951 still sounded like the start of something, which is exactly the verb Willson put in the title. Beginning, not finished.
Michael Bublé
Sheet music
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Notes for singers
If you place It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas in a December service, a school program, or a living room sing, teach 1951 Willson standard before you add harmony. A confident melody lets guests enter on the refrain. Say the names when you introduce it. The words are credited to Meredith Willson, and the music to Meredith Willson. The year to remember is 1951, and the place to name is United States.
This sits in the library as a popular song. Let that tradition set the tempo. A lullaby loses its point if it is hurried. A dance carol loses its point if every syllable is precious. Leave a breath at the end of the verse so the next line feels chosen rather than chased.
Meredith Willson wrote words and music in 1951, published by Plymouth Music. Hold that fact in the introduction you speak, not only in a program note. A shorter title, It's Beginning to Look Like Christmas, is sometimes noted as an early form. Those two details give a listener a reason to hear the song as a made thing, not as wallpaper.
When the group is small, one voice can carry the verse and everyone can take the refrain. When the group is a choir, decide in advance whether you are telling a story or painting a picture. Story songs want clear words. Picture songs can bloom. It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas will tell you which it is after a single unaccompanied read through.
Questions readers ask
Meredith Willson wrote both words and music in 1951, before The Music Man made him widely famous. Plymouth Music published it. He was already an experienced radio and popular writer, and the song's town detail forecasts the civic brag of the later musical. In 1963 he reused the melody on Broadway in Here's Love, set against a new counter melody called Pine Cones and Holly Berries.
Perry Como and the Fontane Sisters, with Mitchell Ayres and his orchestra, released the first hit on RCA Victor in September 1951. Bing Crosby recorded his Decca version on 1 October 1951. The nearness of those dates shows how quickly a new seasonal title could be claimed by the two dominant male pop voices of the period. Both readings remain reference points.
They are a child's wish in the lyric, cowboy boots named for Hopalong Cassidy, the screen hero whose merchandise filled early 1950s childhoods. The detail dates the song and makes the shopping specific. A generic toy would have been blurrier. Willson also points at a five and ten and at a tree in the grand hotel, so the boots are one exhibit in a street of exhibits.
Johnny Mathis cut it in 1986, and Home Alone 2 gave that recording a new public. Michael Bublé opened a blockbuster 2011 Christmas album with the song and turned it into a modern playlist starter. Choirs sing it as a standard. The pattern is familiar for Willson's era. A theater writer pens a single, big voices record it at once, and decades of pictures and playlists do the maintenance.
Why this song endures
It endures because the evidence keeps being true. Towns still put trees in hotel lobbies and toys in windows. The hopalong boots can be explained in a sentence, or swapped in the mind for whatever a child wants now, without breaking the tune. Willson's melody has the stride of someone who is not late. You can walk to it. Songs you can walk to survive malls, parades, and kitchen chores.
It also endures as a prelude to a famous career. People who know only The Music Man can be surprised that this December standard is his. The surprise is useful. It shows a theatrical writer practicing civic detail before he built a whole musical out of an Iowa brag. The song does not need the later show. The later show makes the song's eye more legible. He was always counting what a town puts on display.