Results: I'm Dreaming Of A White Christmas

We all know the song...but who here knows exactly what constitutes a White Christmas? According to the U.S. National Weather Service a white Christmas is when there is officially at least 1" of snow on the ground at 7 AM local time on December 25. Environment and Climate Change Canada defines a white Christmas as one where there's an official report of at least 2 cm of snow on the ground at 7:00 a.m. on December 25th. This is often unpredictable. For example, New Orleans had not had a white Christmas in 50 years, but it did in 2004. Canada is one of the few countries where there's a good chance of a white Christmas, but Toronto (which used to have about a 68 per cent chance of white Christmas) in the last 25 years, it's down to about 40 per cent. Do you live in an area that looks to have a white Christmas this year?

If South Texas was your idea of a "winter getaway" for Christmas 2004, you weren't just disappointed, but stunned. In 2004, an upper-level swirl in the atmosphere swung over South Texas on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, 2004. Typically when this happens in winter, it's a chilly rain for the Gulf Coast. In this case, however, arctic air was plunging through the state changing any initial rain to snow, just in time for Christmas. Suffice to say, records were blown away. According to the National Weather Service, this was the first white Christmas ever recorded in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. In Corpus Christi, this event was the first measurable snow there since February 1973. The only other previous Christmas with snow there was in 1918, and that was only 0.1 inch, not quite meeting the 1 inch snow depth criteria for a true white Christmas. Parts of the Houston metro weren't left out either. Put simply, this was considered the most significant snow for Deep South Texas and the Coastal Bend since February 1895. Have you ever lived or visited an area that is known to NEVER get snow, but did?

Now, getting back to that famous White Christmas. Written by Irving Berlin (in 1941) for the 1942 musical film Holiday Inn, the song won the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 15th Academy Awards. Originally sung by Bing Crosby, it topped the Billboard chart for 11 weeks and returned to the number one position again in December 1943 and 1944. His version would return to the top 40 a dozen times in subsequent years. Since its release, "White Christmas" has been covered by many artists. Crosby's version is the world's best-selling single. Do you know the words to this song?

The first public performance of the song was by Bing Crosby, on his NBC radio show The Kraft Music Hall on Christmas Day, 1941, a few weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. In 1954, the song was featured in the movie White Christmas, starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. How many times have you watched the movie White Christmas?