'Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas'
Written during wartime it was always essentially a song about separation and the heightened awareness of this at Christmas time. But the original lyrics were considered so depressing that they have been tinkered with not once, but twice through their history, in an attempt to remove some of the more wrist-slashingly gloomy lines.
For instance, did you know that the first version has the song opening like this - "Have yourself a merry little Christmas / It may be your last"? That’s right. In your face Santa! By the time Judy Garland sang it in Meet Me In St Louis that line had become "let your heart be light", which is somewhat perkier. Later still, Frank Sinatra requested that a little more melancholy be edited out, so "until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow" became "hang a shining star upon the highest bough". Nice try Frank. It still sounds sad.
http://thequietus.com/articles/10996-tracey-thorn-christmas-songs
