A white Christmas is a Christmas with the presence of snow, either on Christmas Eve or on Christmas Day, depending on local tradition. The phenomenon is most common in the northern countries of the Northern Hemisphere. This is because December is at the beginning of the Southern Hemisphere summer, and so white Christmases there are extremely rare - with the exception being Antarctica, the Southern Alps of New Zealand's South Island, and parts of the Andes in South America as well as the southern tip of the continent, in places like Ushuaia, Argentina.

"White Christmas" is an Irving Berlin song reminiscing about an old-fashioned Christmas setting. The song was written by Berlin for the 1942 musical film Holiday Inn. The composition won the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 15th Academy Awards. Bing Crosby's record topped the Billboard chart for 11 weeks in 1942 and returned to the number one position again in December 1943 and 1944. His version would return to the top 40 a dozen times in subsequent years.