'White Christmas'— and white supremacy

I’m dreaming of a White Christmas, just like the one I used to know. Bing Crosby crooned it, as did Presley, Sinatra and Swift. It's a nostalgic holiday tune celebrating peace and filled with longing for a simpler, happier time. It’s a Christmas classic—perhaps the Christmas classic—and it’s deeply racist.

I can already see the comment section imploding at the mere suggestion. It’s just a color! He’s talking about snow! This is insane! You’re the racist one for bringing race into it in the first place!

And look, I get it. The color white means a lot to the everyday American. White is one third of the Stars & Stripes, a beautiful dove, the color of the dress your once warm wife wore on her wedding day. How can a dispassionate academic such as myself come at the color white when it represents everything pure and good and innocent in this world? That’s precisely the problem.

The indisputable fact is this song is destructive simply because of the explicit, singular and most importantly exalting emphasis it places on whiteness. This narrative of white as pure, white as enchanting, white as dreamlike, white as holy, even—repeated generation after generation, December night after December night—has instilled into our collective cultural conscience dangerous, dangerous notions about good and evil. The subtext is what matters here, and the subtext in this Christmas classic has always been obvious: white is right. It's no accident a song relevant for one month of the year is the best-selling single of all time. 

But context, they scream. It's about snow and sleigh bells and glistening tree tops, not skin color. All he's doing is wishing for a tranquil snowfall. Context matters, doesn't it?  Of course it does. And I would never deny that, on its surface, Bing's bigoted bop appears to be nothing more than a festive if lackluster little carol. But as students of history and culture it is incumbent upon us to dig deeper. The song topped the charts in 1942— is segregation sufficient context for you?

The symbols we adopt matter. I taught in the inner-city up until a few years ago when it became too much for my mental health post-Covid. It was December 17 and I was playing "White Christmas" before class started, the Drifters version, of course. I wasn't thinking anything of it, just trying to spread a little cheer and avoid a fight breaking out. Then one of my students, Damar, shuffled up to me shyly as we waited for the bell. He looked down at his off-brand Jordans, his dreads dangling over his dark forehead not unlike unlit holiday lights adorning a rooftop. "Why’s it always a white Christmas they be dreaming about," he said. I didn't have an answer. 

But wait. The Drifters. What about their version of the song, immortalized in 1990's Home Alone (a holiday "classic" that romanticizes violence in defense of property in a way that is uniquely and hideously American). The Drifters are black and they're also dreaming of a white Christmas so maybe I'm just whack, right? Wrong. That is actually even more problematic, but such an argument is beyond the scope of this piece and likely the comprehension of a large swath of the audience so just trust me on this one. It's not okay.

Let's finish with a thought experiment. I want you to close your eyes, and then I want you to picture this: black snow. Black snowflakes coming down on Christmas morning, blanketing the barren treetops. Black mounds piled high beside your mailbox. Black snowmen in the neighborhood yards, puffing on corn cob pipes from dawn to dusk, wasting away ever so slowly. Feels a bit…unsettling, doesn't it?

Why?

The hard, hard truth is that when you wake up on Christmas morning to see the cars and the street covered in a fresh coat of untouched snow, you think it's aesthetic pleasure making your heart flutter. But the truth is our perception is far too intricately and intimately intertwined with a cultural conception that sanctifies whiteness for us to truly know if it's beautiful or not. In other words, when you're singing along to a white singer driving around the white part of town taking in the pretty white lights on the pretty white houses and the pristine white snow on the ground, there is almost certainly a subconscious part of you, despite how festive and benevolent you might feel, that understands you’re singing about more than just snow, and that's why you really feel so merry. 

But maybe I'm crazy. Maybe the song's message is truly just one of good will and nostalgia and a longing for simpler times. Maybe it's just a holiday blessing. Its last line proclaims "May all your Christmases be white," after all. But that sounds an awful lot like a dogwhistle to me.