Ace Collins

If those three songs had been introduced in another time, would we still be singing them today?

I don't know.

I think the timing had a great deal to do with why those three songs still mean so much to us.

And by the way, Irving Berlin, when he wrote White Christmas for the movie Holiday Inn, he took it to

Bing Crosby, and said, Bing, the other songs in this movie I've written are really good, but I don't think this one's very good.

I'm going to play it for you, and then I'll go back and write you something better.

And after Bing Crosby heard White Christmas, he told Berlin, he said, no, man, this is perfect.

Don't change a word.

Candy canes were

originally introduced to the Christmas celebration to keep children quiet.

There was a choir master in Cologne, Germany in 1630 who had a real problem.

Every year when they gave the Christmas celebration at the church and the service was a couple hours long, it was the children's choir that began everything.

And then they had to sit for the next hour and a half up there in the choir loft and behave, and they never did.

They were just like children are today.

They got fidgety.

They started

They started kicking each other.

They started passing notes or whispering.

He was trying to come up with some way to keep them quiet.

And he walked by a candy store and saw these sticks, peppermint sticks, if you will, and was wondering, maybe I can use this.