“White Christmas” and the Jewish Immigrant Who Wrote It
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 26 December 2025
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, for generations, “White Christmas” has served as the soundtrack to the holiday season. Its lyrics and melody helped define what Christmas sounds like in America, shaping holiday music for decades. Yet the man who wrote it, Irving Berlin, did not celebrate Christmas. He arrived in the United States as a Jewish immigrant from Russia and built his career as one of the most influential songwriters in American history. Our host, Lee Habeeb, shares the story.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an IHeart podcast. |
| 0:02.3 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:12.4 | The first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me a portrait in a prayer tree. |
| 0:30.0 | Mm-hmm. A partridge in a pear tree The second day of Christmas My true love gave to me |
| 0:32.1 | Two turtle ducks |
| 0:34.3 | And a partridge in a pet tree. |
| 0:44.7 | The third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me. |
| 0:49.3 | This is our American stories, and today we're telling the story of a song. |
| 0:54.4 | And since it's Christmas time, we thought we'd do it |
| 0:57.0 | about one of our most beloved Christmas songs. |
| 1:01.2 | And that's Irving Berlin's White Christmas. |
| 1:04.8 | Now, Irving Berlin was a Jewish immigrant from Russia, |
| 1:06.9 | who came to America fleeing anti-Semitism. |
| 1:10.9 | That's right. |
| 1:12.3 | The man who gave us white Christmas, |
| 1:14.3 | one of the most popular Christmas songs of all time, was Jewish. |
| 1:19.7 | By the way, he also wrote God Bless America, and he was from Russia. |
| 1:24.3 | Only in America, folks. |
| 1:26.8 | Irving Berlin had no formal musical education. |
| 1:29.8 | He could not read or write music and taught himself how to play piano. |
| 1:34.6 | In fact, he only used the black keys. |
| 1:37.6 | At one point, Berlin even boasted of his ignorance of music. |
... |
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