I'll Be Home For Christmas (If Only in my Dreams) (1943)

Written by Kim Gannon and Walter Kent

Read the Originals about this song

"I'll Be Home for Christmas" is a Christmas song recorded in 1943 by Bing Crosby who scored a top ten hit with the song. Originally written to honor soldiers overseas who have longed to be home for Christmastime, "I'll Be Home for Christmas" has since gone on to become a Christmas standard.

The song is sung from the point of view of an overseas soldier during WWII, writing a letter to his family. In the message, he tells the family that he will be coming home, and to prepare the holiday for him including requests for "snow", mistletoe, and "presents on the tree". The song ends on a melancholy note, with the soldier saying "I'll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams." Kim Gannon claimed on at least one occasion that he was not thinking of the soldiers when he wrote the lyrics but of all people who are unable to be home for Christmas. When he pitched the song to people in the music business, they turned it down because the last line quoted above was too sad for all those separated from their loved ones in the military. When playing golf with Bing Crosby, however, Gannon sang the song for Crosby, who decided to record it. It ended up as the flip side of "White Christmas," ensuring that it would be a hit.

The song was written by the lyricist Kim Gannon and composer Walter Kent. Buck Ram, who previously wrote a poem and song with the same title, was credited as a co-writer of the song following a lawsuit brought by Ram's publisher, Mills Music. The original 1943 release of the song by Bing Crosby on Decca Records listed only Walter Kent and Kim Gannon as the songwriters on the record label. Later pressings added the name of Buck Ram to the songwriting credit.

On October 4, 1943, Crosby recorded the song under the title "I'll Be Home For Christmas (If Only In My Dreams)" with the John Scott Trotter Orchestra for Decca Records, which was released as a 78 single, Decca 18570A, Matrix #L3203, reissued in 1946 as Decca 23779. Within a month of release, the song charted for eleven weeks, with a peak at number three. The next year, the song reached number nineteen on the charts.

The U.S. War Department also released Bing Crosby's performance of "I'll Be Home For Christmas" from the December 7, 1944, Kraft Music Hall broadcast with the Henderson Choir, J.S.T., on V-Disc, as U.S. Army V-Disc No. 441-B and U.S. Navy V-Disc No. 221B, Matrix #VP1253-D5TC206.[5][6] The song from the broadcast has appeared through many Bing Crosby compilations.

The song touched the hearts of Americans, both soldiers and civilians, who were in the midst of World War II, and it earned Crosby his fifth gold record. "I'll Be Home for Christmas" became the most requested song at Christmas U.S.O. shows. Yank, the GI magazine, said Crosby "accomplished more for military morale than anyone else of that era".
1945 V-Disc release by the U.S. Army of "White Christmas" and "I'll Be Home for Christmas" by Bing Crosby as No. 441B.

Despite the song's popularity with Americans at the front and at home, in the UK the BBC banned the song from broadcast, as the Corporation's management felt that the lyrics might lower morale among British troops.

In December 1965, astronauts Frank Borman and Jim Lovell while on Gemini 7 requested "I'll Be Home for Christmas" be played for them by the NASA ground crew
(wikipedia)