I agree with Lee - the colour version of Holiday Inn is stupendous and it's the one to have - and vote for!

Years ago I saw James Stewart's "It's A Wonderful Life" that had been artificially coloured and I thought it was dreadful - an experience never to be repeated, so I initially resisted getting Holiday Inn, but technology has come a long way and what has been done is unbelievable in comparison. (I see that UK Channel 5 is due to show "It's A Wonderful Life" in colour shortly. Hope it's been improved since the one that I saw).

But, Lee, "Say One For Me"? Really? I think It's among the very few in Bing's "better not done at all" category, though I agree a couple of the songs stand up on their own merits, divorced from the film.


 

Don't remember that song in the film.

I voted for White Christmas, but for purely nostalgic reasons. The family gathering around the TV at Christmas for the annual screening of the film was my first introduction to Bing - as I'm sure it was for many people.
Having said that, I think Holiday Inn is the better film. Much as I like the pairing of Bing and Danny, Bing and Fred are peerless and the whole "look" of HI has much more of the Golden Age of Hollywood about it.
The "colorisation" question is interesting. I think it's very much horses for courses. I love the colour version of HI, but looking through a list of other great films released in 1942, I certainly wouldn't want to see Casablanca in colour. Yankee Doodle Dandy would be good, though...

If I could, I'd take both, but if I have to pick, it would have to be Holiday Inn, not only because I think it has better songs, but because the pairing of Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby is simply fantastic. White Christmas is a very good musical, possibly inspired to a certain extent by Holiday Inn, but the latter is simply a superb musical any way we look at it. From a present-day perspective, though, the blackface number on "Abraham" (not one of my favorite songs in the movie anyway) may have hurt Holiday Inn somewhat, because it's an unfortunate choice (anachronistic already in the '40s) and arguably makes it harder to sell this fantastic movie to present-day audiences.

STEPO wrote:

With the exception of the Abraham sequence i'd say 2Holiday Inn" is the better film of the two also as well as Bing's singing there's also Fred Astaire's brilliant dance routine with the firecrackers.

Even the Abraham number is okay musically speaking. The blackface is hard to wathc but I tend to look away and Bing was in fine voice for the song. It would have been a better number if Bing was dressed up as Abraham Lincoln in my opinion.
 

I believe Holiday Inn to be the better film. Although I am more sentimentally drawn to White Christmas for many reasons, I think Holiday Inn is a sharper enterprise with a more natural chemistry between the two male leads and also perhaps a better score of songs from Mr Berlin. The performances and pacing seem far peppier than White Christmas and the comedy seems less deliberate and more naturally assured. 

So far, I've always preferred the original toned versions of films from their original era. I also believe there's an era-honesty and artistic integrity to  keep films as they were initially filmed. As an act of curiosity, colourisation is of course an irresistible one. However, when considering black and white films were carefully  lit, costumed and carefully processed for their original form, the words of Orson Welles comes to mind when asking his future representatives not to allow "Mr Ted Turner" and his "paint box" anywhere near one of his works. 

Did I read somewhere that Astaire was originally offered the co-starring role in White Christmas but turned the script down? I believe this also might have been around the same time his beloved wife, Phyllis was seriously ill? 

In Australia, Bing's Decca record of 'Abraham' was pressed with  his 'Easter Parade'. The record sold well but musicologist David Kent included neither in his Australian Chart Book.