JUDY WOODRUFF: Next for this holiday season: a new way to look at a classic song, Bing Crosby's "White Christmas." It's the best-selling single of all time with more than 50 million copies sold.

Before “White Christmas,” Bowers explained, most Christmas songs were liturgical; with this song, Berlin created a popular idiom—and industry!— for secular holiday hymns.

By September, the popularity of "White Christmas" grew, as evidenced by growing sales of the song’s sheet music. Holiday Inn, US lobbycard, Bing Crosby (center), 1942. (Photo by LMPC via Getty ...

On Christmas Day 1941, crooner Bing Crosby stepped up to the microphone to introduce his new song. He was performing live on his hugely popular national radio show on NBC, “Kraft Music Hall.” ...

Many people don’t realize it, but Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” – the most recorded holiday song of all time, because it’s also the most recorded song of all time – is written from the point of ...

When Crosby’s iconic “White Christmas” came out 75 years ago this year, it was welcomed as readily as a sleigh full of gifts, becoming one of the most successful songs in the history of ...

The slow, wistful and almost melancholy tune of "White Christmas," written by Irving Berlin, stands in contrast to all the unabashedly happy songs of the season. (Think of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed ...

Bing Crosby premiered “White Christmas” ahead of the film’s release on his 1941 radio Christmas show just after Pearl Harbor. Crosby later recorded the song.

Plus, this is usually one of the first songs radio stations decide to play upon switching over to Christmas music in late November (or if you're lucky, earlier!). 6. White Christmas - Bing Crosby ...

30. The Waitresses 'Christmas Wrapping' (1981) This New Wave standard rocks the mic like Debbie Harry on the "Rapture" tip with an impossibly elastic bass line, punch-drunk horns slurring the ...

Billboard's staff picks the 100 greatest Christmas songs for this holiday ... Nobody’s totally de-schmaltzing “White Christmas,” but a cover this lithe and rubbery is about as close as you ...