Here is a great festive pub quiz question for you. Which film was the song ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ written for? It’s likely, particularly if you’re below a certain age, that your first reaction will be surprise that it was written for a film in the first place. That’s a reflection not so much of the failure of the film in question – Meet Me in St Louis, which was the second highest-grossing film of 1944 – but of the enduring popularity of the song itself. In 2023, it was the 11th most played holiday song, according to the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

But just as the song has transcended the film, it has become unmoored from its original meaning. What was once a moving piece reflecting bittersweet melancholy has turned into a saccharine, cloying, soulless little ditty. I wish I could link this to the progressive, virtue-signalling ‘woke’ age, where culture and history are sanitised to remove any trace of discomfort, but the roots go back further than that.

The film moment for which the original was written is one of profound sorrow. The song is sung by Esther Smith, played by Judy Garland, to her much younger sister Tootie (Margaret........

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