You can count or plan on me? Reportedly, there was confusion. “In the TikTok post, the person played several versions of ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas,’ including those performed by artists Bing Crosby, Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and the Carpenters.” Only Carpenters used “count.” Later versions tended to lean toward “count.”
From the Library of Congress: “On October 4, 1943, Crosby recorded ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’ with the John Scott Trotter Orchestra for Decca Records. Within about a month of its being copyrighted, the song hit the music charts and remained there for eleven weeks, peaking at number three. The following year, the song reached number nineteen on the charts.
“It touched a tender place in the hearts of Americans, both soldiers and civilians, who were then in the depths of World War II, and it earned Crosby his fifth gold record. ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’ became the most requested song at Christmas U.S.O. shows in both Europe and the Pacific. Yank, the GI magazine, said Crosby accomplished more for military morale than anyone else of that era.”
I attended a holiday concert in the late 1990s at a venue in the College of Saint Rose. The show featured Kim and Reggie Harris and the duo Magpie. Someone told a story—the details are lost to me—about how so many GIs did not make it home for Christmas. All I know is that by the time they sang, “If only in my dreams,” I was weeping. And it still makes me melancholy.
Another lyric change
Here’s Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas by Judy Garland, from the movie Meet Me in St. Louis, which Kelly convincingly argues is better than the lyric changes Sinatra made. She sings:
Someday soon we all will be together,
if the fates allow;
Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow,
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.
He changes the “muddle” line to “Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.” It’s more optimistic, but the film’s situation doesn’t call for it. And I relate to “muddle through.”
The late Diane Hall
Until she died, I did not know this: “‘First Christmas’ is Diane Keaton’s debut Holiday Song. A reflection on cherished memories and moments of the stories of life. The song and video celebrate the joy and peace found in holding these memories close. The original song was co-written by the legendary Carole Bayer Sager and Jonas Myrin, with Myrin also taking the helm as producer. “
It echoes another song mentioned here:
Hearing “I’ll Be Home For Christmas”
It only makes me miss him
When you love someone for so, so long
Yet they’re not coming home
The snow falls on my window
I wish that I could let go
It’s a silent night
It’s another year
The first Christmas without you here
Several commenters believed she recorded this knowing she was dying. I have no idea, but it is poignant.
If Bing Crosby was big in 1934, he was massive a decade later, as the #1 hits of 1944 show. He sang on six of the 17 songs on the charts, two with the 
In Joel Whitburn’s A Century of Pop Music, an interesting note. “The recording industry enjoyed booming success during the early 1940s until the era’s dominant big bands were stilled on August 1, 1942, when the American Federation of Musicians joined in a ban on recording due to a dispute over musicians’ royalties.
By 1931, in the midst of the Depression, the music business plummeted. According to A Century of Pop Music by Joel Whitburn, record sales hit only six million in 1932 compared “to the peak of 140 million only five years earlier. The opportunity to hear all the popular songs on the radio for free… also contributed to the desperate slump.”
Here’s a space oddity: David Bowie was only 69 years and two days old when he left us on January 10, 2016. That is not old at all, especially if you are a sexagenarian.