The Brief

Nearly every pop music holiday song written in the past 80 years owes at least some of its DNA to one Christmas tune in particular: "White Christmas," written by Irving Berlin and sung by Bing Crosby, which he first recorded in 1942.

It's reportedly still one of the best-selling songs of all time in any genre, though chart data from decades ago is unreliable. Even given that murkiness, the Guinness Book of World Records named it as the best-selling physical single of all time in 2012.

"White Christmas" wrote the formula for modern secular holiday songs — despite its complex and troubling history.

Songwriter Irving Berlin wasn't destined to be a Yuletide magic maker. He was born Israel Baline in Siberia to an Orthodox Jewish family; his father was a cantor turned kosher butcher. But Berlin embraced assimilation — he married an Irish Catholic woman and had Christmas trees in his house. Even so, for Berlin, Christmas was a holiday shadowed by personal tragedy.

"On Christmas Day, 1928, his only son died. He always told members of his family that he disliked Christmas for this reason, that he could never, never get past the sadness that he experienced on Christmas Day," said author and New York Times contributing writer Jody Rosen, who wrote a book called White Christmas: The Story of an American Song.

The infant Irving Berlin Jr. died suddenly, less than a month after he was born. And at its heart, "White Christmas" is a deeply melancholic song.

Most Christmas carols and pop songs were unabashedly joyful. Berlin's song represented a turn, Rosen said: "It was strange to have a song that was all about this nose-pressed-up-to-the-glass feeling."

It also set a certain standard for Christmas songs that are about nostalgia, about some lost Christmas past. (Think, for example, of another enduring hit that came shortly after Berlin's smash: "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas," which Judy Garland sang in the 1944 film Meet Me in St. Louis, and which was written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane.)

But there's other stuff going on too. Irving Berlin was a hit machine as a Tin Pan Alley and Broadway songwriter. As a New Yorker and an immigrant himself, he was intimately familiar with a particular genre of songs, Rosen said: "That tradition of so-called 'home songs,' you know, songs that pine for a lost place, a lost ideal. These songs are so huge because we have an immigrant population, lots of people who've done a lot of moving. So there were songs about Irish people longing for Ireland and Italians longing for the old country there."

He said Berlin took that genre and flipped it into a Christmas song.

That's especially true of a largely forgotten, tongue-in-cheek introductory verse Berlin originally wrote for "White Christmas." The narrator is a New Yorker stuck in California (as Berlin frequently was, churning out songs for Hollywood): "The sun is shining, the grass is green, the orange and palm trees sway ... but it's December the 24th, and I am longing to be up north!" the protagonist sings.

Rosen said most people listening to "White Christmas" are missing additional subtext. He said that much of that nostalgic vibe in "White Christmas" — all that longing for a pristine, innocent Christmas of yore — is a reference to explicitly racist minstrel songs like Stephen Foster's "Old Kentucky Home," sung by Al Jolson and others — music that was still a staple in Berlin's day.

Foster was inspired by the Harriet Beecher Stowe novel Uncle Tom's Cabin and the song, hailed by Frederick Douglass and Paul Robeson, was meant to be empathetic to the abolitionist cause — the narrator is longing to be reunited with his wife and children, but their family has been torn apart by slaveholders. It later became a popular tune at minstrel shows, with its saddest lines omitted and its meaning twisted.

In "Old Kentucky Home," Rosen said, "You have, grotesquely, the freed Black man longing for life back below the Mason-Dixon line, back on the plantation. Here, instead of a Black man in the north longing for the sultry south, we have a well-to-do white person longing for the wintry north."

But the racial dynamics of "White Christmas" aren't just a matter of subtle references to older songs. Irving Berlin had great commercial expectations for "White Christmas." He built a whole movie around it: 1942's Holiday Inn, starring Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire.

Holiday Inn is stuffed with racist stereotypes and an entire blackface number. (That scene is usually excised from TV broadcasts today, but the whole film is available to stream online.) As Crosby and his love interest, played by Marjorie Reynolds, prepare to perform a song about Abraham Lincoln, Crosby spreads greasepaint on her face, as the orchestra plays "White Christmas" underneath. Not only is "White Christmas" the movie's biggest hit, it's also the film's romantic theme.

Blackface on stage and on screen was very much a recent memory for 1940s audiences, said scholar Brynn Shiovitz. She's the author of the book Behind the Screen: Tap Dance, Race, and Invisibility During Hollywood's Golden Age.

In Holiday Inn, Shiovitz said, "We get a pairing of nostalgia for Christmas, but also nostalgia for blackface, because so many of the people that were watching Holiday Inn when it premiered in the theaters grew up watching vaudeville, grew up watching their parents maybe even perform in blackface."

Audiences loved the song "White Christmas" and its spotlight in Holiday Inn — and American GIs stationed abroad during World War II clamored for the Armed Forces Radio Service to play the song. "White Christmas" was so sturdily successful that Hollywood made another movie centering the song in 1954 — also called White Christmas — this time starring Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen.

Since then, legions of musicians have recorded their own versions of "White Christmas" — including The Drifters, Elvis Presley, Iggy Pop and Sabrina Carpenter. And of course, each generation adds new layers of meaning to the song as it is stitched into our holiday season each year, said Shiovitz.

"With all of these other memories that people have of Christmas, whether it's being piped in while you're shopping, or it's playing on the radio in the car as you're driving to visit family — it's easy to kind of separate it from its history. People develop new memories with it. People have their own ideas of what the song represents, so it's just incredibly complex," Shiovitz said.

Today's audiences and artists don't necessarily hear or even know about the song's racist history, Shiovitz said — but that doesn't mean it's not there.
This story was edited for radio and digital by Jennifer Vanasco.
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An East Hollywood nursing home that nearly lost its license this year because of repeated state citations for deaths of residents at the facility was cited again last month after another person died.

The California Department of Public Health cited Brier Oak on Sunset after a 92-year-old resident bled to death on Sept. 27. Staff members had continued injecting her with blood thinners over a 40-hour period in violation of clinical guidelines.

It’s an AA citation, the most severe the department issues when violations of care standards are determined to be a substantial factor in someone’s death. The facility faces a $120,000 fine.

These kinds of citations are rare. The department has recently issued, on average, fewer than 20 AA citations yearly across more than 1,200 skilled nursing facilities in California.

Brier Oak has received three AA citations for patient deaths since late 2022.

State regulations require authorities to suspend or revoke the licenses of any facilities that get two AA citations within a period of 24 months.

The state Public Health Department began that process with Brier Oak in May based on resident deaths in 2022 and 2024. But officials dropped that effort later because they say they determined the two patient deaths had occurred 26 months apart — just outside of the two-year window.

A spokesperson for the company that owns Brier Oak told LAist it has appealed the first two citations and is considering whether to appeal the third.

Advocates for nursing home residents say the recent death could have been avoided if the state had taken action.

“There were red flags, and a lot of these red flags existed prior to the death of this poor resident,” said Tony Chicotel, senior staff attorney with  California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform.

The state said Brier Oak has until Dec. 19 to notify the department if it intends to appeal.

What led to the patient deaths?

In the recent death at Brier Oak cited by the state, multiple communication and technical failures by nursing staff led to the patient bleeding out over a period of 40 hours, according to the citation.

The 92-year-old patient was immobile and had been prescribed a blood thinner called heparin to help prevent blood clots from forming. But once a patient is bleeding, those injections make bleeding worse, and potentially fatal.

When nursing staff found bright red blood in the resident’s diaper the day before she died, Brier Oak failed to follow established processes for documenting the bleeding or communicating it to a nurse practitioner or medical doctor, according to the citation.

Nurses told state authorities they delayed informing physicians because they “get mad” when contacted in the middle of the night.

The facility’s staff also failed to fully assess the patient to determine the possible causes of the bleeding and or to properly monitor the issue during crucial periods, according to the citation.

She suffered four internal bleeding episodes over 40 hours and continued to receive blood thinner injections.

The citation says a nurse practitioner at Brier Oak told state licensing authorities later that if she’d been informed about the patient’s ongoing bleeding, she would have stopped the blood thinner and sent her to a hospital.

In 2022, Brier Oak received a AA citation after a 62-year-old woman died from respiratory failure in part because nurses hadn’t been trained to operate her breathing machine.

In 2024, the nursing home got another AA citation. This time, a 63-year-old woman with paraplegia and severe obesity fell from her bed and died while a nursing assistant was changing her. The assistant was alone, even though the woman’s care plan required two staff members.

Who owns Brier Oak?

Brier Oak on Sunset is primarily owned by Genesis Healthcare, a publicly-traded nursing home operator that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July.

Once the largest nursing home operator in the U.S., Genesis was facing billions in debt when it declared bankruptcy, according to court filings. That includes millions in potential damages from lawsuits related to patient care failures.

In a brief statement to LAist, a company spokesperson said it's still considering whether or not to appeal the recent citation at Brier Oak.

The citation should trigger a suspension or revocation of the facility's license, according to state regulations. The latter means it would have to close its doors. The two most recent deaths and citations at the facility occurred within the two-year window.

The California Department of Public Health confirmed it cited Brier Oak on Nov. 26.

The department said the facility submitted a required written response before a Dec. 6 deadline, showing how it will fix the problems and prevent them from happening again..

The department determined Brier Oak was back in compliance during an onsite visit last week, a representative told LAist.

Brier Oak on Sunset currently houses about 150 patients, according to state records.

A bankruptcy judge has stalled the proposed sale of Genesis Healthcare to an affiliate of one of its investors.

Experts say it’s unclear whether the state would revoke the license of an owner who is actively trying to sell and turn over operations to someone else.

It’s been a rough start to ski and snowboard season for California mountain towns. Snowfall is well below average, but Christmas could come with some of the white stuff. Here's where things stand:

Hmmm. Didn’t we just have a record storm?

Yes. That big atmospheric river that hit Southern California last month made it one of the wettest Novembers on records. But since then, it’s been unusually warm and dry, which is not good for mountain towns that depend on snow, and the outdoor enthusiasts that flock to them.

How bad is it?

California’s snowpack is about 20% of normal for this time of the year, according to the state’s snow-tracking website. Southern California isn’t quite as bad off — we’ve gotten about half our normal snowfall so far.

As for the resorts, only about 20% of the terrain at Bear Mountain in Big Bear is open. About 35% of Mammoth Mountain is open.

Can’t they just make snow?

They are, but the unusually warm temperatures have curbed resorts’ ability to make enough snow to open more terrain. “If you're blowing water into 40-degrees, it's going to stay water,” said Justin Kanton, a spokesperson for Big Bear Mountain Resort. “ So as much as people probably would want us to just crank the snow guns all day, every day up here and just get things moving, that's not really possible.”

But there’s a silver lining!

The dry weather has allowed Caltrans to make good progress toward opening Highway 38, said Evan Engle, who chairs the board of the Big Bear Chamber of Commerce. The road typically handles up to 40% of traffic up to the mountain town, Engle said. But it’s been closed since September when it got washed out by Tropical Storm Mario.

Getting it open as soon as possible is key to keeping visitor traffic manageable, and getting supplies to Big Bear.

What’s the snow outlook?

SoCal mountains are likely to see some precipitation around Christmas, said Kyle Wheeler, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. But with temperatures not expected to drop much, it’s uncertain how much of it will be white, Wheeler said.

If you go to Big Bear: 

• If you plan to hit the slopes, get on it early, when the snow is at its best given the warm conditions. 
• No snow? There’s more to do than ski and snowboard. Check this list of winter fun events.  
• Worried about traffic? Consider going up earlier in the week. If you can’t do that, consider taking Highway 18 through Lucerne Valley. It’s a longer route if you’re coming from L.A., but less traveled, and less likely to make you car sick (fewer tight curves). 

The Los Angeles Police Department used more than 2,400 crowd control munitions in response to protests from June 6 to 14, according to a new report.

Officers used a total of 2,431 less-lethal projectile rounds and 35 canisters of tear gas over the nine days, according to LAPD reports. The department recorded 12 injuries officers caused with those weapons.

The LAPD released the missing report last week after LAist identified the use of crowd control weapons on four different days in June that had not been reported according to state law. Assembly Bill 48, which went into effect in 2022, limits when and how crowd control weapons can be used, and requires law enforcement agencies to publicly release reports on their use within 60 days.

A 30-day extension for these reports can be granted in some cases, but the LAPD released this report about three months late even if an extension was justified.

Officials acknowledged they were out of compliance on Dec. 10 before releasing the report, saying the delay “stems from the extraordinary volume and complexity of incidents” over that time.

This report is different from others

It is unusual for a crowd control report to include more than one day, and the report for June 9 through 14 covered six days and “45 sepearte [sic] non categorical use of force incidents.”

It does not describe any of those use of force incidents specifically, and the LAPD has not yet responded to LAist’s request for more detailed descriptions of those incidents.

The report also considered the entire six days to have been one continuous protest, though it included several anti-ICE protests over the week and the national “No Kings” protest on June 14.

Two reports released earlier this year for June 6 and 8 covered single days and provided more detailed descriptions of incidents where the LAPD used less-lethal munitions against protesters.