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Music is part of our history, it's an expression of who we are and the times we've known. Our highs, our lows, and so much that we love. Take away American music from the American story and you take away a good part of the soul of the story. It's impossible to imagine life in America without it. Without "Shenandoah," or "Amazing Grace," or "Over the Rainbow," or "Oklahoma," or "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," or "America the Beautiful." Or Gershwin, or Copland, or Scott Joplin, or the music of Christmas in America.

I would like to tell you the story of a classic American Christmas carol and song, two of my favorites, they both figured in one of the darkest times ever, during the second World War. Shortly before Christmas 1941, Prime Minister Winston Churchill at considerable personal risk crossed the Atlantic in great secrecy to meet with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The attack on Pearl Harbor had taken place only weeks before. On Christmas Eve, from a balcony at the White House, the two leaders spoke to a crowd of twenty thousand gathered in the twilight. As reported in the Washington Post, "A crescent moon hung overhead To the southward loomed the Washington Monument as the sun dipped behind the Virginia hills."

President Roosevelt pressed a button to light the Christmas tree, then he spoke to the crowd, and by radio, the world was listening. "Our strongest weapon in this war," he said, "is that conviction of the dignity and brotherhood of man which Christmas day signifies." Churchill began his remarks, "Here [he] was," he said, "far from [his own] country, far from [his] family, yet I cannot truthfully say that I feel far from home. Here in the midst of war, raging, roaring over all the lands and seas, creeping nearer to our hearts and homes, here amid all the tumult, we have tonight the peace of the spirit in each cottage and every generous heart. Here, then, for one night only, should be a brightly lighted island of happiness and peace."

The following morning, Christmas day, the Prime Minister and the President went to church, where with the congregation they joined in singing, "O Little Town of Bethlehem," which Churchill had never heard before.

The words of the hymn, one of the most beloved of Christmas carols, had been written long before by a famous American clergyman, Phillips Brooks, after a visit to the Holy Land. On Christmas Eve in Jerusalem in 1865, Brooks road through the dark by horseback to the place above town where he was told the shepherds had gathered with their flocks. After returning to his church in Philadelphia, in an effort to put down on paper what he had felt that night, Brooks wrote a poem. Then a few days before Christmas, 1868, he asked the organist of the church, Lewis Redner, to put the poem to music, that it might be sung at the Christmas service. Redner tried, but with no success. Christmas Eve he went to bed feeling he had utterly failed. "My brain was all confused," he later said, "but I was roused from sleep late in the night hearing an angel strain. Seizing a piece of music paper I jotted down treble of the tune."

Churchill had spoken in his remarks from the White House balcony of every home as "a brightly lighted island" in the dark. In the first stanza of "O Little Town of Bethlehem" is the line, "Yet in thy dark streets shineth, the everlasting light." I like to think of Churchill and Roosevelt singing that line in particular, at that time. And as would be said of the Prime Minister, he always sang lustily, if not exactly in tune.

By 1942, with the war still raging, more then one million Americans were serving over seas, in sixty-five parts of the world. And it was with those men, and women, and their families in mind, the two talented New Yorkers, lyricist Kim Gannon and composer Walter Kent went to work on a new Christmas song. Walter Kent had already composed "The White Cliffs of Dover" which had become nearly an anthem in Britain. Now they wrote "I'll Be Home for Christmas," which in simplest terms, expressed the longing for home and light in the darkness felt by so many, so very many. "I'll be home for Christmas, there the love light gleams. I'll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams." When recorded by Bing Crosby in 1943 it became the most popular holiday song of the time, more even then "White Christmas."

History isn't just dry dates and statistics, history is human, history can be a great source of strength and affirmation, an aid to navigation, especially in dark and dangerous times. And the words and music we love, and that have stood the test of time, mean still more when we know their story.

Episode 4187. Aired 13 Dec 2009