Original Lyrics to ‘Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas’

In December 2022, TikTok user @realityshowreject shared a video about the original lyrics to “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” stating that Judy Garland objected to them:

@realityshowreject Does Christmas make anyone else incredibly sad? It always just makes me want to cry. What other sad Christmas songs should I sing? #fyp #christmas #christmasmusic #haveyourselfamerrylittlechristmas #GenshinImpact33 #voiceeffects ♬ original sound – Reality Show Reject

Before singing the song with the “original lyrics,” @realityshowreject said:

I learned from TikTok that the original lyrics for Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” were “too sad,” so Judy Garland made them rewrite the entire song … so I found the original lyrics …

At the end of the clip, @realityshowreject added:

Yeah, I can see why they rewrote them.

“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” remained a well-known and often played Christmas song in 2022, with the following lyrics:

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
From now on our troubles
Will be out of sight

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Make the Yuletide gay
From now on our troubles
Will be miles away, oh ooh

Here we are as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore, ah
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us, once more, ooh

A Wikipedia entry for “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” provided a succinct origin story for the carol. It mentioned Judy Garland as the individual who introduced the song in a 1944 film:

“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is a song written in 1943 by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane and introduced by Judy Garland in the 1944 MGM musical Meet Me in St. Louis. Frank Sinatra later recorded a version with modified lyrics. In 2007, ASCAP ranked it the third most performed Christmas song during the preceding five years that had been written by ASCAP members. In 2004 it finished at No. 76 in AFI’s 100 Years…100 Songs rankings of the top tunes in American cinema.

Revisions to the song were referenced in a December 2019 Macleans.ca article about the “best” Christmas songs. In that piece, a contributor accused Sinatra of altering Garland’s version:

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

The crescendo at the end of the commonly sung version—“Hang a shining star upon the highest bough”—is the hideously tacky ornament on a tree hastily redecorated at Frank Sinatra’s order. Before recording the tune written for Judy Garland in 1944’s Meet Me in St. Louis, Sinatra demanded the songwriter revamp the gently bittersweet and hopeful lyrics into unadulterated treacle for his A Jolly Christmas album. The “shining star” line replaced, “Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow”—a line that reflects the anxious moment for the film’s Smith family, and for many resembles the quiet struggles which Christmastime masks with tinsel and mulled-wine buzzes.

More egregiously, the Ol’ Blue Eyes-ordered rewrite changes the whole song to present tense, from future. Garland’s recording goes, “Next year all our troubles will be miles away,” not “From now on our troubles will…” The song was intended as a musical wish for a rosier future, not a celebration of how great everything is. Because often it’s not, as much as the modern version bids to gloss over everything.

Let Sinatra do it his way. Close your eyes, channel Judy, muddle through this little Christmas and hope for a better 2020.

In December 2017, the Chicago Tribune published a story on the topic (“Original lyrics to ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ were anything but merry”), and analyzed the tone of the “dark” original lyrics to “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”:

The song was written by Hugh Martin for the 1944 movie “Meet Me in St. Louis.” The movie’s star, Judy Garland, found the lyrics depressing and pleaded with Martin to change them, which he did, reluctantly, though later he conceded that the original was “hysterically lugubrious.”

In his original, he included the lines:

Faithful friends who were dear to us

Will be near to us no more

That’s about as merry as an empty stocking on Christmas morning.

In 2007, Entertainment Weekly published the original lyrics to “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” observing that they drew attention in the period after September 11 2001:

“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”
ORIGINAL VERSION

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 were dear to us
Will be near to us no more

But at least we all will be together
If the Lord allows

From now on, we’ll have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now

A December 2022 TikTok post by @realityshowreject suggested that the original lyrics to “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” were “too sad,” and that Judy Garland requested a rewrite for the song for a 1944 film. Although less popular, the “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” original lyrics routinely made an appearance in entertainment news in December, of any year.