What is the biggest selling Christmas song of all time?

22 December 2023, 19:46

The story of White Christmas, not only the biggest Christmas song, but the biggest-selling single of all time!

Is it Band Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas? Slade's Merry Christmas Everybody, that's 50 years old now? Or the modern favourite, Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas Is You?

• Just what is the biggest selling Christmas song of all time?
• Well, it's the obvious answer: Bing Crosby's White Christmas.

Not only is this evergreen ballad the biggest-selling Christmas song ever, in terms of physical sales, it's the biggest-selling single in history.

The sentimental tune that refers to the times when "the treetops glisten and children listen" was first released as a single in 1942 and in the intervening 81 years, it's sold more than 50 million copies.

Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas Is You has only "done" 16 million copies in the past 30 years, which pales in comparison.

White Christmas (1947 Version)

White Christmas was written by the legendary composer Irving Berlin back in 1940 for the movie musical Holiday Inn, which was then in production. The film's story takes in a number of public holidays from the US calendar, but the Valentine's Day number, Be Careful It's My Heart was pencilled in as the big hit.

By 1942, Bing Crosby was a huge star of US radio and films. He first sang White Christmas on a radio show on Christmas Day 1941 - coming a couple of weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the sentimentality of the song must have hit a nerve with the American audiences, who were about to be plunged into war.

Meanwhile, the film Holiday Inn received a release in August the following year. By Christmas 1942 - at the height of the Second World War, White Christmas had been a hugely successful single in America, spending 11 weeks at the top of the charts.

Another musical, called White Christmas after the hit song, was released in 1954 to cash in on the song's popularity - Crosby had already re-recorded the track in 1947 when the original master was damaged and that's the version we hear today.

While the song was included on compilations countless times in the post-years - and Crosby himself became synonymous with the season thanks to his annual Christmas specials on American televisions - White Christmas didn't chart in the UK until December 1977.

This was mainly down to Crosby's death at the age of 74 on 14th October 1977, shortly after he'd made a TV special in the UK with a guest appearance by David Bowie. The pair's duet on Little Drummer Boy/Peace On Earth would become another Christmas hit.

• Read more: Why David Bowie sang with Bing Crosby on Little Drummer Boy

White Christmas peaked at Number 5 at Christmas 1977 (Wings' Mull Of Kintyre was that year's festive chart-topper) and has occasionally returned to the chart.

As for the number of sales of White Christmas, the Guinness Book Of Records has the total number of worldwide sales at 50 million - with many of these coming before the existence of a centralised chart.

These days, the Guinness Book Of Records put Sir Elton John's 1997 version of Candle In The Wind as the world's official, "modern day" biggest seller, with 33 million copies sold, but White Christmas takes the crown as the most popular record ever made.

Happy Christmas!