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“Jingle Bells” began life as “The One Horse Open Sleigh,” published by James Lord Pierpont in 1857 and first publicly performed in a minstrel show in Boston that September, not as a church carol . Loc...
The tune now called “Jingle Bells” was written as “One Horse Open Sleigh” by James Lord Pierpont and published in the late 1850s; its earliest known professional performances occurred in Boston minstr...
Urban legends that recast “Jingle Bells” as a song about murders, funerals, or other macabre events grow out of a tangle: the song’s real 19th‑century roots in minstrel performance, later attempts to ...
Scholarly research and contemporary reporting show that "Jingle Bells" entered the public sphere in the 1850s as "One Horse Open Sleigh" and was performed in minstrel contexts — including a documented...
Research shows “Jingle Bells” was written in the 1850s as a sleigh‑ride song (first published as “One Horse Open Sleigh” in 1857) and was tied into popular northern sleigh‑race culture and minstrel pe...