Things you didn't know about The Carpenters' 'Merry Christmas Darling'! Behind the Christmas Hits

What began as a Christmas present to a high school crush in 1944 turned into a #1 Christmas hit more than 25 years later.  Here are things you didn't know about Merry Christmas Darling, by The Carpenters.

Merry Christmas, Darling was recorded in 1970 by The Carpenters.  It went to #1 on Billboard’s Christmas chart in 1970, 1971 and 1973.  

It started off as a high school crush.  The original lyrics were written in 1944 by an 18-year-old named Frank Pooler about a girl he had a crush on at the time.  

Frank Pooler was a high schooler in Onalaska, Wisconsin.  In the summer of ‘44, Frank spent all his free time with a girl he was smitten with – the younger sister of the Onalaska High School Band and Choir director.  

Even after the summer was over, Frank kept thinking about this girl.  Frank hadn’t written many songs, but he wanted to write one for her.  He once told The LaCrosse Tribune newspaper “I was 18 and the hormones were raging.”  Unfortunately, before he gave her his present, they broke up.  But Frank held on to those lyrics.    

Flash forward 22 years, Frank was a choral director at California State University at Long Beach and there were two siblings in his class: Karen and Richard Carpenter.  

The Carpenters were having some success getting local gigs and asked their professor if he had ideas for something they could do at Christmas.  They were tired of singing the same standards over and over and wanted something new.  Pooler passed on lyrics to the Christmas song he wrote when he was a teenager.  Richard Carpenter took the lyrics, but wrote a different melody for them. The song we now know was co-written by two 18-year-old guys, a generation apart.

The Carpenters went on to a lot more than just playing local gigs and by 1970, they charted their first two hits: Close to You and We’ve Only Just Begun.  

Still tight with his music teacher, Richard Carpenter called Frank Pooler and invited him to a recording studio at A&M Records.  When Frank arrived, Richard pushed play and Frank couldn’t believe it.  He didn’t recognize it right away but about 10 seconds later, he was totally floored.  

Frank Pooler died in 2013, but before he did, he had a chance to track down that girl he wrote the song for.  Again, telling The Lacrosse Tribune, that they got together and the subject of the song came up.  She knew that he had written the song, but Frank asked her if she knew he had written that song about her.  She said “no…but now I have a treasure.”     

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