Merry Christmas!
I love “Christmas” songs that are really about winter (like “Let it Snow” and “Winter Wonderland”) and I think the most exuberant of these is “Sleigh Ride.” It’s considered one of the most popular Christmas songs worldwide, even though the holiday is never mentioned. Other trivia: did you know it was originally an instrumental piece? Read on to learn more about this classic song.
Composition
“Sleigh Ride” was composed by American composer Leroy Anderson (1908-1975; learn more about his life here). He conceived the idea in July 1946 while staying at his mother-in-law’s cottage in Woodbury, Connecticut — while digging ditches during a heat wave, no less! He thought of it as “a musical depiction of the winter season long ago.” He finished the piece in Brooklyn on February 10, 1948. Its premier performance was on May 4th of that year, performed by the Boston Pops Orchestra with Arthur Fiedler conducting.
Lyrics
The lyrics to “Sleigh Ride” were written by Mitchell Parish in 1950.
Just hear those sleigh bells jingling, ringting tingleing, too,
Come on, it’s lovely weather for a SLEIGH RIDE together with you,
Outside the snow is falling and friends are calling “Yoo Hoo,”
Come on, it’s lovely weather for a SLEIGH RIDE together with you.
Giddy-yap, giddy-yap,giddy-yap, let’s go,
Let’s look at the show,
We’re riding in a wonderland of snow.
Giddy-yap, giddy-yap, giddy-yap, it’s grand,
Just holding your hand,
We’re gliding along with a song of a wintery fairyland,
Our cheeks are nice and rosy, and comfy cozy are we,
We’re snuggled up together like two birds of a feather would be.
Let’s take that road before us and sing a chorus or two,
Come on, it’s lovely weather for a SLEIGH RIDE together with you.
INTERLUDE
There’s a birthday party at the home of Farmer Gray,
It’ll be the perfect ending of a perfect day,
We’ll be singing the songs we love to sing without a single stop,
At the fireplace while we watch the chestnuts pop.
Pop! Pop! Pop
There’s a happy feeling nothing in the world can buy,
When they pass around the coffee and the pumpkin pie,
It’ll nearly be like a picture print by Currier and Ives,
These wonderful things are the things we remember all through our lives!
Here is Leroy Anderson’s description of his collaboration with Parish:
“I always work with Mitchell Parish, he has written lyrics to six or seven of the things that I’ve done, and when there was so many demands for say choral editions and things like that of ‘Sleigh Ride’ after it had become popular, then we decided to get together and write a lyric to it. Mitchell Parish is unusually good at this because he has the ability, he’s written many lyrics to instrumental numbers, and this is quite a knack because you see when you write a song, the lyric writer has free rein; he’s usually the one who contributes the title and other things. But here, he was stuck with the title, he had the title already, and that was not only the’ subject, but he had to get the word “Sleigh Ride” in somewhere, he had to fit that word in and he had to build the lyrics around it.” (I highly recommend reading the rest of Anderson’s comments here.)
Recordings
Take a listen to one of three versions of “Sleigh Ride” recorded by the Boston Pops Orchestra over the years.
In 1950 the Andrews Sisters recorded the first vocal version.
One of the most popular recordings is the Ronettes’ 1963 version.
I hope you like this song as much as I do and enjoyed learning about its background.
Sources
- “Leroy Anderson Foundation, Sleigh Ride”
- Leroy Anderson Lyrics
- “Mitchell Parish” via PBS
- “Sleigh Ride” via Wikipedia
Do you have a favourite (religious or secular) Christmas song? (Or are you sick of Christmas music by now?!)
P.S. Two years ago I looked at the context of “We Three Kings.”