Jingle Bells
| "Jingle Bells" | ||
|---|---|---|
| song | ||
| Published | late 1857 | |
| Genre | Christmas | |
| Composer(s) | James Lord Pierpont | |
| Lyricist(s) | James Lord Pierpont | |
| Language | English | |
| originally known as "One Horse Open Sleigh"
|
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"Jingle Bells" is one of the best-known and commonly sung American songs in the world. It was written by James Lord Pierpont (1822–1893) and published under the title "One Horse Open Sleigh" in the autumn of 1857. It has been claimed that it was originally written to be sung by a Sunday school choir; however, historians dispute this, stating that it was much too "racy" (and secular) to be sung by a children's church choir in the days it was written.
Although not originally intended on having any connection to Christmas, it became associated with Christmas music and the holiday season in general decades after it was first performed on Washington Street in Boston in 1857. Some area choirs adopted it as part of their repertoire in the 1860s and 1870s, and it was featured in a variety of parlor-song and college anthologies in the 1880s. It was first recorded by the Edison Male Quartette in 1898 on an Edison cylinder, and became a Christmas favorite in the early twentieth century.
It is an unsettled question where and when Pierpont originally composed the song that would become known as "Jingle Bells". A plaque at 19 High Street in the center of Medford Square in Medford, Massachusetts commemorates the "birthplace" of "Jingle Bells," and claims that Pierpont wrote the song there in 1850, at what was then the Simpson Tavern. According to the Medford Historical Society, the song was inspired by the town's popular sleigh races during the 19th century.
"Jingle Bells" was originally copyrighted with the name "One Horse Open Sleigh" on September 16, 1857. Mrs. Otis Waterman, one of Pierpoint's friends, described the song as a "merry little jingle", which became part of its new name when published in 1859 under the revised title of "Jingle Bells, or the One Horse Open Sleigh." The song has since passed into the public domain.
The date of the song's copyright casts some doubt on the theory that Pierpont wrote the song in Medford, since by that date he was the organist and music director of the Unitarian Church in Savannah, Georgia, where his brother, Rev. John Pierpont Jr., was employed. In August of the same year, James Pierpont married the daughter of the mayor of Savannah. He stayed on in the city even after the church closed due to its abolitionist leanings.
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Wikipedia