Chag Molad Sameach L’kulam
Many Americans would be surprised to learn that some of the most beloved Christmas songs ever written, White Christmas, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Let It Snow, Silver Bells, and The Christmas Song, were composed by Jews.
This wasn’t a coincidence. In the early to mid-20th century, Jewish composers and lyricists were central figures in Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and Hollywood. Irving Berlin, Sammy Cahn, Jule Styne, Johnny Marks, Mel Tormé, Jay Livingston, and others helped define what Americans came to recognize as the sound of the holiday season.
What’s especially striking is that most of these songs are not religious. They focus instead on winter, nostalgia, love, longing, home, and hope, universal themes that transcend faith. For Jewish immigrants and their children, writing Christmas music was not an expression of religious belief, but a form of cultural participation, a way to engage fully in American life while remaining Jewish.
Irving Berlin, born Israel Beilin, provides the most famous example. He wrote White Christmas, the best-selling song of all time, as someone firmly outside the religious tradition it evokes. Berlin once described his work this way: “I don’t write American music. I write music, and it turns out to be American.” The quote neatly captures how his songs expressed belonging without assimilation.
That distance may be precisely what gave White Christmas its lasting emotional power. It captured a feeling rather than a faith, an atmosphere rather than a doctrine. And of course, it’s worth remembering that not just the music, but the figure at the center of Christmas, Jesus, whose birth is celebrated, is Jewish, grounding the holiday in its historical and cultural origins.
This pattern appears again and again in American cultural history. Jews, often excluded from older institutions, helped build many of the modern ones, music, film, theater, and publishing, from the inside out. Christmas music is simply one particularly visible example.
So when those familiar melodies play each December, they tell a broader story. Not just about Christmas, but about America itself, and about the quiet, enduring Jewish influence woven into its culture.
מיט וואַרעמע גרוסן
Mit vareme grusn
With warm regards
Doris Wise, Jews Can Shoot and Stay-Armed.
