BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — You know it, you’ve heard it: the News 4 holiday greeting song.
The song has now been playing on News 4’s airwaves for over 30 years. But do you know the history behind the jingle?
On Thursday, News 4’s Jacquie Walker talked to Jolly Demis, the singer and songwriter of the Christmas song.
Demis said he wrote the song in 1988 while waiting for a friend to pick him up to go to the airport in Colorado, he watched the snow falling and wrote the song in about 10 minutes. When he got back, he recorded the song and the rest is history.
News 4 along with a station in St. Louis and a station in Phoenix have all been playing their own versions of the song for over 30 years. Some other stations have used it in the past, but nobody as long as Buffalo, St. Louis and Phoenix.
“It’s been all over. Some people use it a couple years, some people five years, but Buffalo has been my favorite,” Demis said. “You guys have been the longest with Phoenix as well as St. Louis, so you guys are all in the 30-year club.”
Demis knows about the song’s popularity in Buffalo and enjoys all of the positive feedback that it gets.
“People go ‘why don’t you write more of those?’ I said, if you could you would do it, but there’s just something about this song when it came out in my head and when the music notes hit the chart it just had something that’s so hooky and people love,” Demis said. “It’s just wonderful, it makes me feel like a million dollars.”
Lovers of the song can download an original version on both iTunes and Spotify.
You can watch the full segment in the video player above.
Aidan Joly joined the News 4 staff in 2022. He is a graduate of Canisius College. You can see more of his work here.