John Bradshaw - Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
This is It Is Written. I’m John Bradshaw. Thanks for joining me. Among the songs you hear playing at Christmas, when you’re out shopping or listening to a playlist of Christmas tunes, you’re almost certain to hear, «Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas». It’s been recorded hundreds of times by some of the most acclaimed recording artists of modern music history. Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Tony Bennett, even the Muppets. You’ll find it on Christmas albums recorded by more recent artists such as Michael Bublé and Josh Groban. It began as a show tune of sorts.
«Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas» was written by a man named Hugh Martin. And while the song lives on today, the story behind the melody isn’t often heard. It’s a story about Christmas, about fame and fortune, about illness and depression. It’s a story about friends who become family. But mostly, it’s a story about encountering God and coming to learn that knowing Him is infinitely more meaningful than all the glitz and glamour that life can offer. Hugh Martin was born in 1914. Like many musicians whose names have appeared in lights, his love of music began when he was a small boy. His mother made frequent trips to New York, and she’d come home to Birmingham, Alabama with stories about the newest music she’d heard. Which encouraged Hugh to one day visit the Big Apple himself.
As an aspiring pianist, 20-year-old Hugh took a trip to New York City with his mother, and he met a woman named Helen Morgan, one of the major Broadway stars at the time. For Hugh, it was like a dream come true. Back home, he became a well-known pianist and singer, but he knew that if he wanted to make it big, New York was the place to be. Finally, the day came when Martin, with only a little cash in his pocket, but with a heart full of desire, made the big move. Like many other working musicians in Manhattan in the 1930s and 40s, he struggled to make a name for himself while playing as many gigs with as many groups as he could find. It was the golden age of music, and while motion pictures were on the rise, Martin was a creature of the theater.
He later wrote, «The theater was flourishing. Scores of playhouses were open and playing to good business. Plays and musicals made sense with the beginning and middle and end, an end that more often than not left the theater-goer satisfied, fulfilled, and edified. The musicals flowed with melody, even when the libretto didn’t make much sense, and the weightier plays profoundly comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable».
Along the way, Martin met Ralph Blaine, one of a wave of aspiring young musicians in New York. By the late 1930s, the pair became one of the great American songwriting teams for both stage and movie musicals. In 1937, Martin started a four-person vocal group he called The Martins, choosing Blaine as one of the singers of the group. In 1939, they caught their break when they were called to join Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney on the stage of the Capitol Theatre in New York for appearances MGM had organized to help promote the opening of the film The Wizard of Oz. It was the kind of opportunity Hugh had been hoping for, and it thrust him into the limelight.
Garland and Rooney were huge stars. This was the big time. Martin and Blaine collaborated for years, and his chance to meet and work with Judy Garland led to exciting opportunities. Martin looked up to Garland, writing, «There is little doubt in my mind that the greatest singer of pop songs in my lifetime, and possibly in anyone’s lifetime, is Judy Garland».
As a result of working with Garland, Martin and Blaine received an offer from MGM to work for the studio as songwriters. At the time, MGM was the dominant Hollywood film studio and the most profitable. Just prior to the offer, the songwriting duo had success with their first stage musical, Best Foot Forward, which was choreographed by Gene Kelly, another giant of the stage and screen. Hugh Martin was making it big, and at MGM, he again crossed paths with the woman he called «The Queen of the Lot,» Judy Garland. And it was there that Hugh would pen one of the most beloved Christmas ballads ever for a new film in which Garland was starring. But as big as that was, just around the corner, there was an even bigger engagement waiting for Hugh, bigger than MGM, and grander than performing with «The Queen of the Lot». It was a meeting with royalty, a life-changing encounter with the King of the Universe. How God changed a songwriter’s life in just a moment.
Thanks for joining me on It Is Written. Sometime before 1944, Hugh Martin and Ralph Blaine received the call from MGM to write the music for the film «Meet Me in St. Louis,» which produced a couple of hit songs. And although both Blaine and Martin received credit for composing the song, it was Martin who wrote the melody known today as «Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas». At first, it wasn’t well received. When she heard the song for the first time, Judy Garland refused to record it. She said, «The audience will think I’m a monster». It was written to feature in a scene in which a man tells his family they must move from St. Louis to New York City.
Garland’s character comes home to find her little sister, heartbroken, at having to leave her home behind. So, she sings her sister a song. «Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas». It may be your last. Next year, we may all be living in the past. «Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas». Pop that champagne cork. Next year, we may all be living in New York. No good times like the olden days, happy golden days of yore. Faithful friends who are dear to us will be near to us no more. And so on to, «So, have yourself a Merry Little Christmas now». Not the jolliest of songs. You can understand why the superstar Garland wasn’t keen on singing it. But after protesting strongly, Martin rewrote the words and created the Christmas song still heard 80 years later.
«Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas. Let your heart be light. Next year, all our troubles will be out of sight. Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas. Make the yuletide gay. Next year, all our troubles will be miles away». Once again, as an olden days, happy golden days of yore, faithful friends who are dear to us will be near to us once more. And ending with those well-known words, «So, have yourself a Merry Little Christmas now». And so was born a Christmas song that would still be getting airplay eight decades later. Hugh Martin’s name was now on par with the greatest songwriters of the golden age of music. But that wasn’t the end of the story for «Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas». Nor was it the end of Hugh’s story because God was about to make his big entrance.
Although Hugh would continue to write for MGM and share the stage many times over with Judy Garland, it was in 1960 that his journey would take a very different turn, one that would quite literally change his life from that point on. While crossing the Atlantic for an engagement in London, Hugh suddenly became very ill, so ill that he wasn’t able to sleep or keep any food down. He fell into such a deep depression that he committed himself to a mental health facility in London. One day he wandered to the basement of the facility and found a chapel. There he became what he described later as a small terrified child. He prayed a desperate prayer, «I don’t even know that there is a God, but if there is, if you can hear me, please, please pull me out of this miry pit».
It was the first time he’d ever spoken to God in a real and meaningful way. There, in a cold, dark basement, far from the stage and lights and glamour, Hugh Martin had an encounter with God, the impact of which wouldn’t be fully felt until years later. When he got well and returned to the States, he continued to write songs. Then, 14 years after that initial illness, he fell ill again and was admitted to St. Vincent’s Hospital in his hometown of Birmingham. As he tells the story, when he and his brother arrived at the hospital, he heard a voice which said clearly, «Hugh, share your room».
Arrangements had already been made for Hugh to have a private room, but when he heard the voice a second time, he insisted they checked with reception to see if he could share a room. He was told it couldn’t be done. The hospital was full. And things couldn’t be changed. But then the phone rang and Hugh heard the lady at reception say, «Really»? A shared room had all of a sudden opened up and Hugh was admitted to a double room. He wrote in his autobiography, «My roommate turned out to be William Lester, an assistant pastor in a local Seventh-day Adventist church. He said I was surprised, more than that, impressed. I felt I’d been led to that room for a specific reason. It seemed orchestrated from above.
The mysterious voice in the foyer, the sudden availability of a room for two patients, the unusual coincidence of my roommate being a devout Christian, most of all his genuine reverence. Put them all together and it seemed undeniable that it was the most important day of my life». He had many meaningful conversations with Pastor Lester and becoming convicted of the truth of Scripture, he gave his life completely to Christ.
Going from the glamour of MGM to a small inpatient hospital room brought Hugh, a famous musician, in contact with the living God. His life in show business now seemed to be far less important and was certainly unimportant in comparison to the good news of eternal life. Suddenly the man behind the song became the man God made new. The old life was gone and a new life lay ahead. Hugh devoted his life to his faith in Jesus. But even that wouldn’t be the end for Hugh. Years later, as his name became obscure and very little came from his composer’s pen, he became part of a new family that ended up caring for him until the end of his life. I’ll be back with that story and with the man who became Hugh’s friend in just a moment.
Hugh Martin was no stranger to fame and fortune, writing songs for and working with some of Hollywood’s biggest names on both the musical theatre stage and at MGM, the fabled movie studio during the golden age of Hollywood. But it’s the second activist life which few people know anything about. What happened to Hugh Martin after MGM? Did he continue to write and captivate audiences with his music? In a way, yes. What history records of the first act of his life pales in comparison to what came after Hollywood. A series of providential events would lead him in the 1970s to the town of Ensenitas, 20 miles north of San Diego, California.
By now, music had changed enormously. With the dawn of a rock and roll, much of the old movie and theatre music had become a thing of the past. And Hugh’s conversion had led him to make a choice that not many in the music industry ever make. In Matthew 16, 26, Jesus said, «For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul»? In Matthew 6, 24, Jesus makes clear that you cannot serve both the world and God. No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. Hugh was deeply convicted by those words and others like them, and he chose to serve God and only God. If it meant giving up the world he’d known before, he reasoned it was well worth it to finally find eternal life in Christ.
Although show business had made him famous and earned him money, he realised that while he had it all by the world’s standards, he was still missing the one thing that mattered most. Like Paul wrote in Philippians 3, verse 7, «But what things were gained to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed, I also count all things lost for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish that I may gain Christ». It was around 1975 that Hugh began attending a little church in Encinitas.
One day a woman named Elaine Harrison noticed an older man coming to church all by himself. Dressed in a long army overcoat and wearing a black gaucho hat, he carried a cane and sat right up on the front row. Elaine noticed that he came and left by taxi, wondering who this lone stranger was, Elaine introduced herself and offered him a ride home after church. That ride turned into a weekly shuttle service. By this time, Hugh had suffered from more health problems but mentioned to Elaine that they didn’t affect his work. Asking what work he did, she was surprised to learn he was a songwriter. When she asked if she would know any of the songs he’d written, Hugh rattled off a few titles.
Elaine couldn’t believe who she’d been driving for the last few weeks. She couldn’t wait to tell everyone that the man attending her church was Hugh Martin. Elaine and her husband Fred became fast friends with Hugh, and feeling sorry that he was alone and had no family, they offered to have him stay with them for a month or two. That month or two turned into more than 25 years. Hugh stayed with Fred and Elaine until his death in 2011. Elaine essentially became Hugh’s manager, handling his correspondence, publications, engagements and more. Two years after Hugh died, Elaine passed away. Her husband Fred still lives in Southern California. I sat down with Fred and asked him to give me some insight into Hugh’s sunset years.
Fred Harrison: The world had sort of dropped off all the golden era composers, Gershwin, Kerns, etc. and taken over by Elvis Presley and Chubby Checker. He really didn’t have any work. He didn’t have any particular contacts. He lived in Leucadia, and he lived in an area which was adjacent to the little shopping center in the middle of Leucadia. He went out one night and either the truck driver didn’t see him or he didn’t see the truck and he was struck and broke his hip and broke his shoulder. Subsequently, he was hospitalized and had surgery at Scripps, Encinitas. When it came time to be discharged, at that time there was not a rehab setup at all. You were given the date when you could be discharged and go home, which he did, except that my wife found that out and said, «Oh, you can come recover at our house for a few days or a week,» which he did, and he never left.
John Bradshaw: So tell me what this man was like. What was he like as a person?
Fred Harrison: He was very quiet, very humble, not outspoken, not boisterous. He was a very private, humble individual.
John Bradshaw: Did it appear to you that that fame affected him?
Fred Harrison: None whatsoever. At least it wasn’t obvious at all. I mean, he was not a public individual. He did not put himself out. He did not even appear at these places. He would promptly run off the stage when they were done. He did not stay around to sign autographs to make a chit-chat or say anything at all.
John Bradshaw: Did you get to see how faith was something that was important to him?
Fred Harrison: Well, he was very spiritual. There was no question of that. He always had morning and evening prayers. His lifestyle consisted of prayer and Bible study, and then he would occasionally, he had a voluminous correspondence, and he would go over a lot of letters, and then I think resting, and that was it. I mean, he was just very happy and content with the lifestyle that he lived as long as I knew him.
John Bradshaw: So tell me what this man was like. What was he like as a person?
Fred Harrison: He was very quiet, very humble, not outspoken, not boisterous. He was a very private, humble individual.
John Bradshaw: Did it appear to you that that fame affected him?
Fred Harrison: None whatsoever. At least it wasn’t obvious at all. I mean, he was not a public individual. He did not put himself out. He did not even appear at these places. He would promptly run off the stage when they were done. He did not stay around to sign autographs to make a chit-chat or say anything at all.
John Bradshaw: Did you get to see how faith was something that was important to him?
Fred Harrison: Well, he was very spiritual. There was no question of that. He always had morning and evening prayers. His lifestyle consisted of prayer and Bible study, and then he would occasionally, he had a voluminous correspondence, and he would go over a lot of letters, and then I think resting, and that was it. I mean, he was just very happy and content with the lifestyle that he lived as long as I knew him.
Hugh Martin achieved his childhood dream of performing and writing songs. Then after working in New York City and Hollywood, he started a new life as an unassuming follower of Jesus Christ. He continued to play, but instead of bright lights in big cities, he accompanied Christian singers in far more humble locations. The popular Christmas song that Hugh Martin had given the world so many years before now seemed to him to be incomplete. He wanted the song to reflect his faith in God and what he believed was the true meaning of Christmas. The result was «Have Yourself a Blessed Little Christmas,» the third version of the song.
«Have Yourself a Blessed Little Christmas. Christ the King is born. Let your voices ring upon this happy morn. Have Yourself a Blessed Little Christmas. Serenade the earth. Tell the world we celebrate the Savior’s birth. Let us gather to sing to Him and to bring to Him our praise, Son of God and friend of all to the end of all our days and ending with, have yourself a blessed little Christmas now». An extraordinarily talented man who achieved more as a musician than most people could hope for. And he came to understand that his talents had been given to him by his creator. Near the end of his autobiography he wrote, «Sharing the Palace Stage with Garland,» «Arthur Freed Musicals at MGM,» «Hit Shows on Broadway with Long Lines at the Box Office and Rave Reviews from the Newspapers».
None of these could ever hold a candle to a good old-fashioned camp meeting with all the stops pulled out. Give me that old-time religion. Hugh Martin figured out that his secular career didn’t satisfy the longing of his heart. And there are many people in that same situation today. You might be one of them. Success is good. But success without Christ isn’t success. If God gives you success in your career, your vocation, that’s great. Unless it isn’t. There are many people who have allowed success to lead them away from faith, away from their commitment to God. Athletes and artists and musicians and business people and professionals having success and not having Jesus. It simply isn’t worth it.
Think of Jesus, the divine Son of God, the creator of the world, the one who said, «The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many». He could have lived in a palace. He could have been popular and powerful, but his primary objective was to glorify his father. That was it. And although it took him a few years to do so, Hugh Martin figured that out. You don’t want to waste that time. Put Jesus first. Let him take you to where he wants you to go. Do it his way and you’ll have no regrets. Choose heaven. Choose eternity.
Paul wrote to the church in Philippi and said, «One thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus». This Christmas, press toward the goal. Let your goal be a life lived for the glory of God and have yourself a blessed little Christmas now. Before we hear the song, let me pray with you.
Father in heaven, we come to you in Jesus' name and we thank you that you have given this world the greatest gift imaginable, salvation. I ask Lord that you would move in our hearts that we would put Jesus first. May we have Jesus now and forever and be ready to meet him on that great day when he comes back to take us home to be with you forever. We thank you and we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.