The First Day of Christmas at SBPDL: Holiday Inn

Everybody loves the song White Christmas, for the season isn't complete without hearing Bing Crosby sing those familiar notes.

White Christmas is one of the nations favorite Christmas songs, and puts everyone who hears it in the Christmas spirit. Of course, the song comes from the movie of the same name, right?

Nope. You'd be wrong and the reason of this oversight is simple: the movie that originally had the first rendition of White Christmas is one of the most horribly offensive movies ever made, for an infamous Black-face scene completely places the soon to be discussed film in the category of unwatchable.

Holiday Inn, starring Bing Crosby is that film, and the film has the incredible honor of being one of the most offensive films for Black people to watch in the history of cinema:

"Holiday Inn is a 1942 film starring Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire, with music by Irving Berlin. The film has twelve new songs, one brief use of "Oh How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning," written in 1917 for the World War I musical "Yip Yip Yaphank" which was reprised on Broadway in 1942 under the title "This Is the Army" and a complete reuse of "Easter Parade," written for the 1933 Broadway review "As Thousands Cheer". An original song from this movie is "White Christmas".

Beginning in the 1980s, some broadcasts of the movie have cut out the "Abraham" musical number entirely, undoubtedly because of its depiction of a blackface minstrel show incorporating what is now considered offensively stereotyped mannerisms and dialect.^[1] Turner Classic Movies has left the "Abraham" number intact during their screenings of Holiday Inn both for historical purposes, and because it is TCM's policy to show films uncut."

Oh no. Much like Al Jolson, Holiday Inn uses Black-face in a prominent scene that induces cries of racism and insidious intentions on the part of white people to lynch and "keep down" Black people:

"The New York Times has been running an end-of-year appreciation of classic holiday movies. Today, A. O. Scott actually appreciated the Bing Crosby movie “Holiday Inn.”

"I have already expressed my view of this movie in this blog. Its (horribly) extended blackface song sequence, with whites singing in “Negro dialect” about “Fadder Abraham” is unconscionable, sickening, and impossible to excuse or rationalize. A. O. Scott does both.

The problem with this terrible racist scene, for Scott, is that it “dates” the film “somewhat”, and makes it “unpalatable” for “current sensibilities.” But “it’s important to remember that this movie is more than 65 years old.” Problem solved! My current sensibility is satisfied now.

Racism is never excusable because there was simply never a time in history when people did not know racism was used to hurt and oppress others. And frankly, to excuse a movie playing when people I know were alive for being from some ancient, distant time (65 years ago) is beyond lame. There is no place for accepting and softening crap like this in the United States of America at any time, but perhaps especially now."

Oh no. A movie with Black-face, made by people who comprised The Greatest Generation and Pre-Obama America... yikes!

Let's be straight-forward: the day will come when anything unpalatable to Black people is thrown into a great big funeral pyre that will represent the purging of Pre-Obama America from the new world Disingenuous white liberals have created for us all.

Holiday Inn, a timeless classic that has the unfortunate scene of white people dressed incognito behind a facade of Blackness, will be one of the first films to be decimated in that funeral pyre.

For the time being, Stuff Black People Don't Like includes Holiday Inn, for this film is the 1st Day of Christmas at SBPDL. It prominently features a Black-face scene that wasn't met with antipathy when it debuted in the 1940s, for this wasn't a 'racist' act then. Only recently have people decided that every brick of Pre-Obama America must be pulled down and the singing of Bing Crosby while wearing black make-up represents a pivotal yule-block of that nation.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, or so it has been said, but in the case of Black-face, it is grounds for having your classic movie boycotted or being expelled from college.