Like so many of the songs we have come to associate with Christmas, “Winter Wonderland” is not a holiday song per se, but a nostalgic recitation of the magic of snowbound winters and the spell it casts. The lyric was written in 1934 by Richard Smith, a tuberculosis patient while he was passing the time while under treatment at the West Mountain Sanitarium in Scranton, Pennsylvania by entering jingle and poetry contests. A native of Honesdale, a rural community just outside Scranton, Smith based his poem on his many memories of the beauty, activity and joy of the oft-snow-covered Honesdale Cenral Park. Assured that his tuberculosis was in remission he moved with his wife back to New York where they had met, collaborated with bandleader/composer Felix Bernard to put the poem to music, wrote a couple more songs, and lived long enough to hear Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians play the song. He succumbed to his disease in September, 1935. Our version tonight follows Johnny Mercer & The Pied Pipers’ 1946 cover, which charted at #4 that year.