“Jingle Bells” is one of the most familiar holiday songs in America—played in stores, remixed by hip-hop pioneers, and sung by kids who may not know it wasn’t even written as a Christmas song.
However, a viral video is drawing renewed attention to the tune’s lesser-known history and to historical documents linking its earliest performances to 19th century minstrel shows.
The clip, shared by former MSNBC host Joy Reid (which, according to The New York Post, contributed to its virality), shows a man standing beside a plaque in Medford, Massachusetts, marking where James Lord Pierpont is believed to have composed the song’s earliest version.
The captions claim Pierpont wrote the piece “to make fun of Black people,” pointing to his later decision to join the Confederate Army and to minstrel traditions popular during the mid-1800s.
While the video frames these points sharply, the broader conversation connects to research that has been unfolding for years.
Much of the factual basis comes from a 2017 peer-reviewed study published in Theatre Survey by Boston University theater historian Kyna Hamill. Hamill’s work documented the earliest confirmed performance of the song—then titled “One Horse Open Sleigh”—through a playbill she discovered in the Harvard Theater Collection.
According to the playbill currently held at the Library of Congress, the song debuted on September 15, 1857, at Ordway Hall, a well-known Boston venue for minstrel entertainment. It was performed by Johnny Pell, a recognizable figure in minstrel theater whose career earned him an entry in the 1911 directory Monarchs of Minstrelsy.
Hamill’s research also linked the song’s original sheet music to the minstrel community. The 1857 cover explicitly dedicates the work to John P. Ordway, the owner of Ordway Hall and a significant figure in the minstrel circuit.
From there, she examined dozens of similar sleigh-ride songs of the era, noting that many relied on tropes and comedic setups commonly used in minstrel acts. These themes included fast sleighs, winter scenery, comedic wipeouts, and upbeat refrains—often paired with caricatured depictions of Black Americans.
The viral video also claims that certain lyrics, such as “laughing all the way,” may reference minstrel comedy routines of the period. While the academic community has not reached consensus on that interpretation, Hamill’s research confirms that the song emerged squarely from a performance tradition steeped in racial stereotyping, even if the lyrics themselves are not overtly derogatory.
Despite longtime local claims that the song originated in Medford—or in Savannah, Georgia—Hamill concluded that Pierpont likely wrote it in a Boston boardinghouse, shortly before moving south in late 1857.
Hamill emphasizes that the song’s place in history is complex: it was not written for Christmas, it was not written for children, and its earliest verifiable use ties it to a minstrel stage—not to a holiday celebration.
And while “Jingle Bells” remains a holiday staple, its path to becoming one—and the performance culture from which it emerged—continues to raise new questions about how even the most familiar songs entered American tradition.