Christmas Is a’Comin’

We’ve been exploring Christmas songs in these blogs. We’ve mentioned several that are products of contemporaries. How about one that perhaps you have never heard?
I’m sure we could create a long list of Christmas songs that never got published or recorded. Poems about Christmas that could become songs no doubt could be found in old desk drawers or among the attic belongings of those long since departed. Perhaps you yourself have written a few. “Christmas is a’Comin'” was recorded by Bing Crosby, and that’s probably why we know anything about it. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I had ever heard it before I heard it on You Tube. The song is based on a nursery rhyme that went like this:

Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat
Please put a penny in the old man’s hat
If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do
If you haven’t got a ha’penny, then God bless you!

Part of the song, as presented by Bing Crosby, goes like this:

Christmas is a coming and the bells begin to ring,
The holly’s in the window and the birds begin to sing.
I don’t need to worry, and I don’t need to fret,
And the more you give at Christmastime the more you get.
God bless you, gentlemen, God bless you!
The more you give at Christmastime the more you get.