I've had more than on friend tell me that they were once captivated by this as one of the loveliest Christmas songs they'd ever heard, but then, on listening closely to the lyrics, noticed the last line quoted above, which transformed it into one of the saddest Christmas songs they'd ever heard. It was first made popular by Bing Crosby, but since then so many have jumped on the bandwagon of recording it that a list of who hasn't recorded it might be shorter than a list of who has, For that reason I cited the performer as "Various". For a long time I suspected the song must have started as a showtune, like "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas", and that like that song, it fit into a not-so-happy portion of some movie perhaps, where somebody's prospects of actually getting home for Christmas were bleak. But I never could determine a movie of its origin. Now, thanks to being able to look up the song on WIkipedia, I've found that it was always a freestanding song, not a showtune, from when Crosby first made it famous. Its context was not any bleak middle portion of any movie, but the depths of the second World War, when prospects of getting home for Christmas were bleak indeed for many military personnel.