Judy Garland - Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

This is the only good version of this song: the original lyrics, which capture the exquisite melancholy of being separated from someone you love at Christmas. Note the date: 1944. Bing Crosby's and Karen Carpenter's voices were fantastic, but they ruined it by trying to make it more "positive" and "upbeat". I don't know the story behind the changing of the lyrics, but I can just picture Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra saying "Say, how 'bout we make this a little more upbeat? This song is depressing!" Bah, same mentality that added that dumb final verse to "Gloomy Sunday" about waking up and finding it was all a dream when they translated it to English. But by taking away the melancholy of the song, they took away its deeper meaning; because it's also a song of courage, and of hope. Foolish hope, perhaps. Many, many people who were separated from their loved ones in 1944 were never going to spend another Christmas with them. But when you're living on hope, it's all you have, and you have to do just what the song says: make the best of here and now, and keep hoping that that thing, whatever it is, is going to get better. Otherwise, the only alternative is melancholy's hideous cousin, despair.