Annie Zaleski

You know, it's a very kind of longing song.

It's full of nostalgia.

It's very wistful that with the hope that maybe one day, you know, everyone will be together.

Christmas will be better again.

And it really kind of summed up the time.

You know, it was a very anxious time in the world, a very fraught time.

Families were being separated and it was sort of a beacon of comfort, I guess.

Yeah, it just fit at the time.

No, I mean, he wrote this movie.

So Holiday Inn had a couple of other holiday-themed songs that were kind of included on the movie soundtrack.

And it did not, you know, obviously, I think when World War II broke out, it was one of those right place, right time things.

The song just really summed up the mood.

What I love about this song, The Origins, that I did not realize until doing this book is that it was written during the summer.

There was actually a lot of Christmas songs that were written during the summer.

And so this was written by Mel Torme and Robert Wells.

And actually what happened is that Mel was going to Robert's house just for, you know, a writing session.

And it was a very, very hot summer day.

It was excessively hot, as he put it.

And he happened to see on the piano, there were some lyrics that referenced Christmas carols, roasting chestnuts.

And he was like, you know what, getting in the Christmas spirit, writing this Christmas song, maybe this will cool me down.