The New York Jew and the most beloved Christmas song in American history

Holiday Inn is a 1942 film starring Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire, which featured the music of Irving Berlin. The film features twelve new songs, one brief use of "Oh How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning," written in 1917 for the World War I musical "Yip Yip Yaphank" which was reprised on Broadway in 1942 under the title "This Is the Army" and a complete reuse of "Easter Parade," written for the 1933 Broadway review "As Thousands Cheer". An original song from this movie is "White Christmas", a tune that is still very popular in the United States.

The song that would eventually become "White Christmas" was originally conceived by Berlin on the set of the film Top Hat in 1935. He allegedly hummed the melody to Astaire and the film's director Mark Sandrich as a song possibility for a future Astaire-Ginger Rogers vehicle. Astaire loved the tune, but Sandrich passed on it. Berlin's assignment for Paramount was to write a song about each of the major holidays of the year. He found that writing a song about Christmas was the most challenging. When Crosby first heard Berlin play "White Christmas" in 1941 at the first rehearsals, he did not immediately recognize its full potential. Crosby simply said, "I don't think we have any problems with that one, Irving."

Information source: Wikipedia