Annie Zaleski

And he actually said, no, no, no, this is good, and made him take it back out of the trash so they could finish it.

And, you know, even then, you know, obviously it's such a pivotal part of Meet Me in St.

Louis as well.

And it actually almost didn't end up in the movie, apparently, because they were worried that it was a little bit too, you know, dour.

Absolutely.

And I think, you know, when I was talking about female vocalists, you know, just really nailing Christmas songs, she really did.

And this one as well.

So, you know, Richard Carpenter handled the music and Frank Pooler wrote lyrics and people might not necessarily know who he was.

What's interesting is that he wrote the song basically as a Christmas gift for a girl to get a crush on.

And, you know, it didn't work out or anything, but he kind of kept the song.

And he later became a teacher.

He was a choral director at California State University, Long Beach, and met Richard and Karen Carpenter.

And basically, you know, they asked, hey, do you have any Christmas song they could perform?

And he dug out his lyrics and Richard wrote music to it.

So, I mean, what a lovely story, you know, and he didn't realize that he was doing it.

Richard just kind of invited Frank to the studio and said, hey, I want you to listen to something.

And he put together the song.

And but oh, yeah, I mean, Karen's performance on this is just so I mean, there's almost no words to describe how beautiful it is.

And it's just so tender and dynamic.

And it's really, you know, that was fairly early in their career becoming hit makers.