The classic Christmas song “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” was originally written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane for the 1944 movie musical Meet Me in St. Louis, starring Judy Garland. The movie chronicles a year in the life of the Smith family leading up to the 1904 World’s Fair. In the fall, the family learns that the father will be sent to New York on business and the family will move there after Christmas. The song “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is meant to be melancholy and is sung by Garland to her youngest sister, Tootie, played by Margaret O’Brien, who expresses concern about what the move will mean for the family. The original lyric was “Have yourself a merry little Christmas/It may be your last/Next year we may all be living in the past.” Judy Garland protested that the song was too harsh to sing to a sad seven-year-old and the lyrics were changed to “Let your heart be light/Next year all our troubles will be out of sight.” It’s hard to believe this standard would have become as popular as it did if the original lyric had been kept.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
Next year all our troubles will be out of sight
Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Make the Yuletide gay
Next year all our troubles will be miles away
Once again, as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Will be near to us once more
Someday soon we all will be together
If the fates allow
Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now

The original song landed at #27 on the Billboard charts in 1944.

In 1957, Frank Sinatra was planning to record an upbeat album of holiday songs called A Jolly Christmas. He contacted Hugh Martin and asked him to revise the lyric “until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow” to make it more in line with the album theme. Martin came up with the lyric “hang a shining star upon the highest bough” and after Sinatra recorded it, that became the preferred lyric. Judy Garland sang the revised version of the song to her children Joey and Lorna Luft on her Christmas Special in 1963. Since then, hundreds of musical artists have recorded their own renditions of this Christmas classic.