Happy New Year 2026
When trying to think of New Year’s song (as opposed to a New Year’s Eve song) a few years ago, I don’t know why this didn’t spring to mind. After all, it’s from one of my favorite, but little-seen today holiday movies – Holiday Inn, with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire, and a great score by Irving Berlin. In fact, that score includes “White Christmas,” which won the Oscar as Best Song – as well as “Easter Parade,” though that wasn’t written for the movie. But “Happy Holidays” was – as was this song, “Let’s Start the New Year Right.”
For those who haven’t seen it, the 1942 Holiday Inn was the original film on which the now far-better known movie White Christmas is a remake of. The stories are different, though they overlap in a lot of places – mostly in two song-and-dance men putting on shows at a hotel during the holidays.
Fun Fact: I can’t swear to the validity of this story, but I can swear to reading it in the newspaper. (I believe it was the Chicago Daily News.) The story the article told was that many decades ago, a man was away on business, about to sign a contract the next day for a company he was about to start, although he didn’t yet have a name for it. That night in his hotel, he watched the movie on his room’s TV and thought the title would be a wonderful name, Holiday Inn, for that hotel chain he was about to incorporate the next day.
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