Jingle Bells

Lore & Background

James Lord Pierpont originally copyrighted the song with the name "The One Horse Open Sleigh" on September 16, 1857. The songwriting credit given was "Song and Chorus written and composed by J. Pierpont." Possibly intended as a drinking song, it did not become a Christmas song until decades after it was first performed. Pierpont dedicated the song to John P. Ordway, Esq., an organizer of a troupe called "Ordway's Aeolians". It is not known where and when Pierpont originally composed the song that would become known as "Jingle Bells". A plaque at 19 High Street 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. Researcher Kyna Hamil proposes that the song was composed in Boston, before Pierpont moved to Savannah in the fall of 1857. The song was republished in 1859 by Oliver Ditson and Company with the new title "Jingle Bells; or, The One Horse Open Sleigh". "Jingle Bells" was first performed on September 15, 1857, at Ordway Hall in Boston by blackface minstrel performer Johnny Pell. 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 Church.

Reader's Guide

James Lord Pierpont's 1857 composition "Jingle Bells" became one of the most performed and most recognizable secular holiday songs ever written, not only in the United States, but around the world. In recognition of this achievement, James Lord Pierpont was voted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. The song was first recorded by banjoist Will Lyle on October 30, 1889, on an Edison cylinder, but no surviving copies are known to exist. The earliest surviving vocal recording was made by the Edison Male Quartette in 1898, also on an Edison cylinder. The song became a Christmas favorite in the early twentieth century. "Jingle Bells" was one of the first songs to be broadcast from space, in a Christmas-themed prank by Gemini 6 astronauts Tom Stafford and Wally Schirra on December 16, 1965. The astronauts produced a smuggled harmonica and sleigh bells, and broadcast a rendition of "Jingle Bells". The harmonica was donated to the Smithsonian in 1967. The song's tune is used in French and German songs, although the lyrics are unrelated to the English lyrics. Like many simple, catchy, and popular melodies, "Jingle Bells" is often the subject of parody, and has been since the mid-1880s.

Did You Know?

• The song was originally copyrighted as 'The One Horse Open Sleigh' on September 16, 1857.
• It was first performed on September 15, 1857, by blackface minstrel performer Johnny Pell.
• The first recording, made in 1889 on an Edison cylinder, is lost; the earliest surviving recording is from 1898.
• It was one of the first songs broadcast from space, performed by Gemini 6 astronauts in 1965.