‘My Favorite Things’ qualifies as a Christmas song

Sixty years ago, the television cameras zoomed in on vocalist Julie Andrews, who performed during a special holiday episode of the “Garry Moore Show.”

On that program, which aired Dec. 19, 1961, Andrews “introduced” viewers to a new Christmas season song, “My Favorite Things.” 

Whoa. Hold on a second. Wasn’t “My Favorite Things” a show tune from the 1959 Broadway musical “The Sound of Music” about the von Trapp family singers? 

Yes, it was, but Cait Miller, a music reference specialist at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., gives her stamp of approval. 

Give Julie Andrews credit for envisioning that “My Favorite Things” – even though it wasn’t written as a Christmas song – “definitely works” as a legitimate seasonal classic, Miller said.

 

“Many of us,” Miller said, are wishing and hoping for “‘brown paper packages tied up with strings’ arriving at our doorsteps” in time for Christmas Day. 

Writing for Billboard.com, Fred Bronson commented that “My Favorite Things” contains “lyrical references to sleigh bells, snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes, warm woolen mittens and silver-white winters”…as well as the brown paper packages.

 

In the 1960s, the song was included in the Christmas season repertoires offered by artists such as Jack Jones, The Supremes, Andy Williams, Eddie Fisher, Barbra Streisand and Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, Bronson said. 

“Since those early holiday recordings, ‘My Favorite Things’ has appeared on Christmas albums through five more decades, performed by Johnny Mathis, Kenny Rogers, the Carpenters, Lorrie Morgan, Luther Vandross, Petula Clark, Perry Como, Barry Manilow, Anita Baker, Dionne Warwick, Kenny G, Rod Stewart, Carole King, Chicago, Kelly Clarkson, Mary J. Blige, Tony Bennett and many more,” Bronson added. 

“My Favorite Things” was composed by Richard Rodgers, with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. “The Sound of Music” was a huge success on Broadway and won five Tony Awards at the 1960 awards ceremony.

 

20th Century-Fox acquired the film rights, and when the time came to make the movie in 1964, Rodgers insisted that Julie Andrews star in the leading role as Maria. 

It was not because Rodgers had seen and heard her sing “My Favorite Things” on television, but because he had been impressed with her Broadway stage debut in “The Boy Friend” in 1954. 

He interviewed Andrews for the leading role in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “Pipe Dream,” which premiered on Broadway in 1955. 

But during their conversation, Rodgers learned that Andrews had auditioned for the part of Liza Dolittle in “My Fair Lady,” a project of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. 

“You should take that,” Rodgers said. “We would love to use you, but that would be phenomenal for you.” 

“Can you imagine how grateful I was for that advice?” Andrews would say later. “My Fair Lady” premiered in 1956 and won six Tony Awards. 

In between “My Fair Lady” on stage and “The Sound of Music” on film, Andrews delighted audiences with her performance in the Walt Disney film “Mary Poppins,” a blockbuster musical fantasy. 

Andrews, now 86, said: “Personally, ‘My Favorite Things,’ is the song I love to sing the most. The lyrics are so great, and so evocative; one could picture brown paper packages” and many other things that are nonmaterialistic.

Examples are “raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles…crisp apple strudels…schnitzel with noodles, wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings….

 

When I’m feeling sad,

I simply remember my favorite things,

And then I don’t feel so bad.