It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas
"It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" is a Christmas song written in 1951 by Meredith Willson. 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. History. 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 makes reference 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. In popular culture. 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 "". Gradually, Mathis's  recording began to receive wide radio airplay, and for the past several years this version has been a Top 10 Christmas hit. Perry Como version. 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, becoming one of the biggest versions of the song, which is still widely played today, with over 128 million streams on Spotify as of August 30, 2020. Michael Bublé version. 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 7 in 2018.