It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

The song was originally titled "It's Beginning to Look Like Christmas". The song has been recorded by many artists, but was a hit for Perry Como and the Fontane Sisters with Mitchell Ayres & His Orchestra on September 18, 1951, and released on RCA Victor as 47-4314 (45 rpm) and 20-4314 (78 rpm). Bing Crosby recorded a version on October 1, 1951, which was also widely played.

Background and writing

A popular belief in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, holds that Willson wrote the song while staying in Yarmouth's Grand Hotel. The song refers to a "tree in the Grand Hotel, one in the park as well..."; the park being Frost Park, directly across the road from the Grand Hotel, which still operates in a newer building on the same site as the old hotel. It also makes mention of the five and ten which was a store operating in Yarmouth at the time.

It is also possible that the "Grand Hotel" Willson mentions in the song was inspired by the Historic Park Inn Hotel in his hometown of Mason City, Iowa. The Park Inn Hotel is the last remaining hotel in the world designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and is situated in downtown Mason City overlooking Central Park.

Meredith Willson incorporated the song into his 1963 Broadway musical Here's Love, where it is sung in counterpoint to the newly composed song "Pine Cones and Holly Berries".

Johnny Mathis recorded the song for his 1986 album Christmas Eve with Johnny Mathis; this version gained popularity after its inclusion in the film Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Gradually, Mathis's recording began to receive wide radio airplay, and in later years this version became a Top 10 Christmas hit.

Perry Como and The Fontane Sisters with Mitchell Ayres & His Orchestra released their cover of "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" on September 18, 1951. Their edition became one of the most successful versions of the song, which is still widely played today, with over 264 million streams on Spotify as of December 15, 2022. The song was used in the 2004 film The Polar Express.

Weekly charts

Certifications and sales

Canadian singer Michael Bublé's version was first released on October 24, 2011, as the first track of Bublé's Christmas album. However, it was then released as the album's second single on November 18, 2012, achieving greater success. In the UK, the song peaked at number 6 in 2022.

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Certifications and sales

In 2020, Meghan Trainor recorded a version of the song for her album A Very Trainor Christmas. This version peaked at number 27 on the Holiday Digital Songs chart.