All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth And A Phone Call From Oprah and Michael Buble

I wonder how many of us thought of the line “all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth”!  I know I did.  I knew the melody that accompanies that specific line, but I couldn’t remember anything else - or even ever hearing the song being sung, for that matter.  Who would write a Christmas song about their two front teeth, I wondered?

So I hauled my carcass over to Google to find out more.  It’s a cute story.  In the early 1940’s  Donald Yetter Gardner and his wife Doris lived in Smithtown New York and taught music at the local elementary school.  In 1944, at the age of thirty-three, Donald took over Doris’s second grade class when she fell pregnant.

As the festive season approached he was asked to write a song for the holiday concert.  Gardner heard a teacher ask his pupils what they wanted for Christmas, and he noticed that 16 out of 22 children had at least one front tooth missing and spoke with a lisp!

A light bulb went on in Gardner’s musical head and he wrote the song - in all of thirty minutes!  It brought the house down at the concert.  Donald thought no more of it, though, and left his teaching job to go and work for a text-book publisher.  He offered them his song for free but they turned it down.

I guess he didn't like being told "no".  He took it to a New York music publisher, who was also reluctant to publish it, telling Gardner it might sell a thousand copies but it would never be a hit.  Gardner lied, saying he had had an offer elsewhere, and started to walk out the room.  The oldest trick in the book, but it paid off.  The publisher called Gardner back in as he reached the door.

On December 6 that year, the song was recorded by Spike Jones & His City Slickers with George Rock as the lead vocalist.  It reached the top of the pop charts in 1949.  Since then it’s been recorded by Danny Kaye with the Andrews Sisters, The Platters, George Strait, Dread Zeppelin, The Kelly Family, Nat Kind cole, The Hampton String Quartet, The Chipmunks, the Three Stooges, Count von Count of Sesame Street, and Mariah Carey!

In 1995 Gardner was interviewed about his song and said he was “amazed at the way that silly little song was picked up by the whole country” (Wikipedia, “All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth”).  But he was proud of his achievement, and spoke of how a local newspaper had claimed that he "captured a universal moment in childhood and turned it into a lasting memory."  (Song Facts.)  Which indeed he did.

Well, since I’ve got my two front teeth, let’s see, what would I like for Christmas?  I’d like Oprah to call me on Christmas day and say “girl, I read your book from cover to cover in one sitting and I LOVED it and I’m going to tell the world about it!”  Then Michael Buble can give me a ring and say “you haven’t been writing about me lately, what’re you trying to do, break my heart?  You busy?  Fancy getting together to sing a few numbers?”

But I can dream, can’t I?

Song Facts: http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=9570

Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_I_Want_for_Christmas_Is_My_Two_Front_Teeth