Why a teacher wrote All I Want For Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth)

Mr. Gardner wrote his famous song when he was a music teacher in the town of Smithtown on Long Island and selecting songs for the Christmas program.

“I didn’t yet have anything selected for the second-graders,” he told the Wellesley Townsman in the 1980s. One by one, he watched the children tell the teacher what they wanted that year. “They were all using the same phrase, `All I want for Christmas,’ ” he said.

“Then, the teacher said something funny and they all laughed, and I noticed that 16 of the 22 in the class were missing their front teeth.”

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