The "Jingle Bells" Carol

Vintage sheet music of "Jingle Bells" with lyrics, CC.

       "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 "The 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, or as a drinking song. Although it has no original connection to Christmas, it became associated with Christmas music and the holiday season 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 in 1889 on an Edison cylinder; this recording, believed to be the first Christmas record, is lost, but an 1898 recording also from Edison Records survives.
       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. Previous local history narratives claim the song was inspired by the town's popular sleigh races during the 19th century.
       "Jingle Bells" was originally copyrighted with the name "The One Horse Open Sleigh" on September 16, 1857. The song was first performed on 15 September 1857 at Ordway Hall in Boston by the minstrel performer Johnny Pell. Pierpont's lyrics are strikingly similar to lines from many other sleigh-riding songs that were popular at the time; researcher Kyna Hamill argued that this, along with his constant need for money, led him to compose and release the song solely as a financial enterprise: "Everything about the song is churned out and copied from other people and lines from other songs - there's nothing original about it."
       By the time the song was released and copyrighted, Pierpont had relocated to Savannah, Georgia to serve as organist and music director of that city's Unitarian Universalist Church, where his brother, Rev. John Pierpont Jr. served as Minister. In August 1857, Pierpont married Eliza Jane Purse, the daughter of the mayor of Savannah. Pierpont remained in Savannah and never went back North.
       The double-meaning of "upsot" was thought humorous, and a sleigh ride gave an unescorted couple a rare chance to be together, unchaperoned, in distant woods or fields, with all the opportunities that afforded. This "upset", a term Pierpont transposed to "upsot", became the climactic component of a sleigh-ride outing within the sleigh narrative.

"Jingle Bells" by Kimié Miner