Songfacts®:

• The Orioles, a pioneering doo-wop group from Baltimore, Maryland, were the first to have a hit recording with Frank Loesser's 1947 love song, landing at #9 on the R&B chart. Loesser was a Broadway legend known for writing and composing music for shows like Guys and Dolls and How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. He also penned the wintry classic "Baby It's Cold Outside."
  
  It was the second holiday hit for the Orioles, who charted in 1948 (#8) and 1949 (#5) with "(It's Gonna Be a) Lonely Christmas" on the Juke Box charts.
• The narrator has just fallen in love and poses the title "jackpot question in advance," hoping to ring in the New Year with the object of his affection. The song has been included on many holiday collections, which proves that nearly everyone misses the point. "It is early spring," Loesser's daughter Susan wrote in A Most Remarkable Fella: Frank Loesser and the Guys and Dolls in His Life. "The singer, madly in love, is making a (possibly rash) commitment far into the future. ('Maybe it's much too early in the game. Ah, but I thought I'd ask you just the same - What are you doing New Year's, New Year's Eve?') It always annoyed my father when the song was sung during the holidays."
• Pop group Dante & the Evergreens bubbled under on the pop chart at #107 with this in 1960. Jazz singer Nancy Wilson's version charted twice: #17 on the Christmas Singles chart in 1965 and #24 on the same chart in 1967.
• Rod Stewart recorded this as a virtual duet with the late Ella Fitzgerald (who recorded her own version in 1960 for Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas) on his 2012 holiday album, Merry Christmas, Baby. Trumpeter Chris Botti also performed on the track.
• Harry Connick Jr. included this on his best-selling Christmas album, When My Heart Finds Christmas (1993).
• Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt performed this on a popular YouTube video released in 2011.
• Both Seth MacFarlane (Holiday for Swing) and Idina Menzel (Holiday Wishes) recorded this separately in 2014.
• The Carpenters version was released on the 1984 album An Old-Fashioned Christmas, a year after Karen Carpenter's death.