Christmastime Is Here: A Song History

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Vince Guaraldi wrote "Christmas Time Is Here," a slow waltz, as the title theme for A Charlie Brown Christmas, the animated special that CBS first broadcast on December 9, 1965, and the tune was used for its opening scene.[1] At first it was purely instrumental, but producer Lee Mendelson wanted it sung; finding no one else to write the words, he supplied them himself, later recalling that he jotted them on an envelope "in about 10 minutes."[1] The singers were children from the choir of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in San Rafael, California.[1] According to NPR, the children's first session took place in September 1965, and Guaraldi had worked with the same singers on an earlier project, Vince Guaraldi at Grace Cathedral.[2]

Colored lithograph of crowds of skaters on a frozen pond in a snowy park, with an arched bridge behind

Charles Parsons, Central Park, Winter – The Skating Pond, hand-colored lithograph, 1862. Shown for its wintry subject; it has no connection to the song.

Fantasy Records released the soundtrack album in December 1965, timed to the broadcast.[1] Current editions of the album include the song twice, once as an instrumental and once with the children's vocal.[3] The album entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2007,[4] and the Library of Congress named it to the National Recording Registry among the additions announced in May 2012.[5] In the account of Guaraldi biographer Derrick Bang, the earliest cover came from jazz guitarist Ron Eschete (Christmas Impressions, 1982), and a long line of artists have recorded it since, among them Tony Bennett, Sarah McLachlan and Mariah Carey.[1]

Butch Ross includes it in The Crash Bang Dulcimer Christmas Book, a 41-page book of offbeat dulcimer tab versions of Christmas classics that comes with MP3 recordings of each song.[6]

Our book that contains the song "Christmastime Is Here"

Sources

  1. Library of Congress: "A Charlie Brown Christmas—Vince Guaraldi (1965)" (essay by Derrick Bang).
  2. NPR: "60 years ago, young choir singers made history in 'A Charlie Brown Christmas'".
  3. Craft Recordings: "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (CD).
  4. GRAMMY.com: "Vince Guaraldi Trio's 'A Charlie Brown Christmas': For The Record".
  5. Library of Congress Blog: "Ten Years of Touchstones".
  6. Fingers Of Steel: "Butch Ross, The Crash Bang Dulcimer Christmas Book".
  7. Image: Charles Parsons, Central Park, Winter – The Skating Pond, hand-colored lithograph, 1862. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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