Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Bogobam Here. Whether you're listening to the radio in Caribou, Maine, or Phoenix, Arizona, during the month of December, chances are you'll hear Bing Crosby singing the lyrics I'm dreaming of a White Christmas. A white Christmas, of course, refers to snowy weather on Christmas Day. If you wake up Christmas morning and look out the window to see a blanket of bright white snow, then you've officially experienced your very
own white Christmas. Hoping for one has become a tradition, just like putting up the Christmas tree and hanging stockings, and it isn't exclusive to the United States. It's such a big deal in London and Dublin, for instance, that people actually track odds and gamble every year on whether or not there will be any snowfall on December. Many people in the Northern Hemisphere anyway, associate Christmas in the holiday season with snow, even if we hardly ever get
snow where we live. Nostalgic illustrations like Norman Rockwell's snowy Christmas scenes may evoked a yearning for simpler time, and Bing Crosby's rendition of White Christmas is certainly fraught with a sense of longing. The song White Christmas, written by Irving Berlin in January of nineteen forty, is an extremely influential pop song. It's even listed in the Guinness World Records for selling more than fifty million copies worldwide. Hundreds
of artists have recorded the tune. Although Bing Crosby originally made White Christmas famous, starting with the version in the nineteen forty two film Holiday Inn, but everyone from Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald to the Carpenters to Willie Nelson to the cast of Glee has lent their voices to it.
Berlin's timing was perfect. The public started to catch on to White Christmas around the same time that the United States entered World War Two, and soldiers stationed overseas continued to request records of White Christmas during the winter months
after the war. Berlin and Crosby secured the song and its ties to World War Two and the public's consciousness with the film White Christmas, which, along with die Hard, I just don't feel like it's Christmas without It's enough nostalgia to make even those of us who live in a region where it's highly unlikely to get snowfall wish
for at least a dusting during the holidays. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has an interactive map that explores the historical probability of getting a white Christmas throughout the United States, and nearly half the country has less than a chance. Berlin even poked fun at the likelihood of
a place like southern California ever getting any snow. The original first verse of White Christmas refers to a sunny Christmas Day in Los Angeles, but it's often cut and the song's begun instead with the famous chorus, lending a deeper note of melancholy and perhaps a more relatable story for those of us who don't live in l A. But Hey, although we can look at lots of data and say that the chances of a certain area receiving snowfall during Christmas are low, nothing is impossible when it
comes to the weather. Case In point, New Orleans hadn't had a white Christmas for fifty years, but in two thousand four, the city finally recorded snowfall on Christmas Day. Today's episode was written by John Fuller and produced by Tyler Clang. The brain Stuff is a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. For more in this and lots of other festive topics, visit our home planet, how
stuff Works dot com. And for more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.