White Christmas (song) the John Scott Trotter Orchestra and the Ken Darby Singers and for Decca Records in just 18 minutes on May 29, 1942, and it was released on July 30 as part of an album of six 78-rpm discs from the musical film "Holiday Inn". At first, Crosby did not see anything special about the song. He just said "I don't think we have any problems with that one, Irving." The song established that there could be commercially successful secular Christmas songs—in this case, written by a Jewish-American songwriter. The song initially performed poorly and was overshadowed by "Holiday Inn"'s first
White Christmas (film) screen, has made it possible to endow "White Christmas" with a fine pictorial quality. The colors on the big screen are rich and luminous, the images are clear and sharp, and rapid movements are got without blurring—or very little—such as sometimes is seen on other large screens. Director Michael Curtiz has made his picture look good. It is too bad that it doesn’t hit the eardrums and the funnybone with equal force." "Variety" liked it: ""White Christmas" should be a natural at the boxoffice, introducing as it does Paramount’s new VistaVision system with such a hot combination as Bing Crosby,