Controversy Surrounds ‘Jingle Bells’ as Joy Reid Calls It Racist

Former MSNBC host Joy Reid recently expressed concern over the beloved Christmas carol “Jingle Bells,” sharing a video that labels the song as racist. This clip has gained traction online and stirred up discussions about the song’s history, although the scholars involved in the research assert that was not their original aim.

The video features a man dressed in festive attire examining a plaque in Medford, Massachusetts, which acknowledges James Lord Pierpont as the song’s author. It suggests that early renditions of the song were used to ridicule Black individuals. The clip goes on to delve into Pierpont’s history of using racial dialects and slurs in his other compositions, as well as noting his enlistment in the Confederacy to uphold slavery.

The video opens with the caption: “This is where racist Confederate soldiers wrote ‘Jingle Bells’ to make fun of black people.”

According to the video, Pierpont penned the original “The One Horse Open Sleigh” during a time when he faced financial challenges. It claims that this version was performed by white actors donning blackface, who satirized Black people for their efforts to join in winter festivities.

Reid, who departed from MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” earlier this year, shared the video with her 1.3 million followers on Instagram, commenting, “Lord, have mercy.” The video references a 2017 article from Cambridge University Press titled “The Story I Must Tell: The ‘Jingle Bells’ of the Minstrel Repertoire.”

In her research, author Kaina Hamill highlights that the legacy of “Jingle Bells” often suffers from a “common misreading” regarding much of 19th-century popular music. She emphasizes that the song’s blackface origins have been subtly erased from collective memory.

However, Hamill has clarified that her findings have been misconstrued. She has stated that she never intended to imply that “Jingle Bells” was created as a tool for racist mockery. Instead, her research focuses more on the performance history and context of the piece rather than Pierpont’s original intent.

As she mentioned in a 2017 interview, “I never said it was racism now,” adding that she wouldn’t dictate which songs should or shouldn’t be sung during the holiday season.