LGBTQ+ wags have had fun with the "Make the yuletide gay" line since Paul Lynde was a pup, and in a quarter century of drawing cartoons for the LGBTQ+ press, I'm sure I must have at least alluded to it once. I thought, however, that this particular verse had resonance for 2020.
Later, when I went on line to get the lyrics for pitching the idea to my editors, however, the words didn't seem as a propos as I had thought they were in the car.
I thought about changing the words, but that would have required changing the cartoon to excuse my bowdlerization. Then, when I looked up the writers of the song, I found that there have been a number of revisions of the lyrics, including this particular stanza.
"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" is from the Judy Garland film, "Meet Me In St. Louis." In case you haven't seen it, Judy sings this song to her little sister, who is upset that the family has to move away from the titular city right before Christmas.
Years later, when Frank Sinatra wanted to sing the song on a Christmas album of his, he complained that the line "Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow" was too much of a downer; so he got the line changed to "Hang a shining star upon the highest bough."
That was the line I found when looking up the lyrics. It really doesn't make a whole lot of sense in the context of the stanza, but I'd never really noticed that there was more than one version of the verse before.
If Frank didn't like the muddling through stuff, he would have hated the original first verse:
Have yourself a merry little Christmas:It may be your last.Next year, we all may be living in the past...
Garland, co-star Tom Drake, and director Vincent Minelli certainly hated those lyrics, and practically had to twist Hugh Martin's arms and screw his thumbs before he finally agreed to "let your heart be light" instead.
If he hadn't given in, that's one Christmas Standard none of us would ever have heard.
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