Download   Several weeks ago, I was commissioned to do the opening backup music for a high school Christmas production (actually an arrangement I did years ago and now is all over the web). They wanted to begin their program with “Winter Wonderland”.  Here’s how I saw it:  a dark stage (maybe one blue spot) and an audience full of anxious parents.  Then, out of nowhere, bells chime, and the music flows through the auditorium.  The students quietly move onto the stage  (undercover of the blue spot) and begin singing at precisely the right time (they have rehearsed, after all).  The lights come up… and the parents relax and enjoy.

A chap named Richard Smith penned the words to “Winter Wonderland” after watching the snow fall in a city park in Honesdale, Pennsylvania.  There is no mention of the Christmas holiday in the lyrics, so how it became a Christmas favorite is a bit puzzling.  I guess the “Sleigh bells ring” part makes it so.  The Guy Lombardo orchestra had a top-ten  hit with this tune in 1936, as did Johnny Mercer and Perry Como in later years.  Johnny Mathis recorded it in 1958 (unfortunately), but screwed around with the arrangement so much as to make it unappetizing.

In the first bridge section, the snowman’s name was “Parson Brown”.  However, in the second bridge, the snowman was referred to as a “circus clown”.  Odd, don’t you think?  Oh, well… it was never supposed to be a Christmas song anyway.