Jingle Bells

I’m sure most people are thankful that Sufjan dedicates little of his Christmas catalog to the ubiquitous and immensely overplayed “Jingle Bells.” While he has two instantiations of this track, they collectively clock in at just under 2 minutes, and so, even if you don’t decide to skip them, you’ll hardly suffer long through the tracks.

Jingle Bells is virtually inescapable at the holidays. For those of us who’ve learned to ignore it, it’s simply part of the ambiance of Christmas shopping, and for those of us who haven’t, it’s akin to a mosquito buzzing in your ear for a month straight every time you go to the grocery store.

It is likely one of the most well-known and most oft-sung songs in American history. It’s one of the oldest songs put to record, dating back to 1889 when it was recorded on an Edison cylinder (a recording which has unfortunately been lost), and it is certainly the oldest Christmas song ever recorded. It was also the first song to be played in space when Astronauts in the Gemini 6 pretended to be picking up a signal from a low moving satellite traveling from the North pole southwards. They played the song with a harmonica as a little Christmas-themed prank for their friends on Gemini 7 and back home on Earth at Mission Control (you can hear the radio transmission of this historic performance on the “Jingle Bells” Wikipedia page if you’re interested!).

The 36-second version that Suf records on Songs for Christmas reminds me of what I imagine it might have been like to hear the song when it originally would have been circulating. Back in those days, when there was no radio, you’d gather with your siblings around the family piano, and Mom would pull out some sheet music and play all the popular tunes of the day. Of course, back then, Jingle Bells still would have maintained its enormous popularity, and so it would have definitely been one of the songs Mom would have played for you.

As the clunky piano keys on the track dance about, you can almost smell a log burning on the fireplace while a raucous mob of 19th-century children gather around Mom and Dad. They croon along to the classic Christmas classic, laughing uncontrollably when the song cues them to laugh and gobbling down little slices of fig pudding cake in celebration of the coming holiday.

But with a song like “Jingle Bells,” the further we go backward in time, the closer we come to the proverbial skeletons in the closet of the song. Surprisingly, this innocuous Christmas tune has some dark history that may make it harder to listen to than an R Kelly song (that is, if you’re among those who struggle to separate the art from the artist). However, it isn’t that surprising that the most popular song in American history is as tangled up in this country’s dark and complicated past as anything we’ve created.

To my knowledge, there’s nothing about the song in and of itself that any modern person would take issue with. However, it was considered a bit risqué for the Puritanical sexual ethic of the 1850s when the song was initially written. But you won’t get that from the abridged version of the song we often hear today, the controversial part comes from the little-known 4th verse:

Now the ground is white
Go it while you're young
Take the girls tonight
And sing this sleighing song
Just get a bobtailed bay
Two forty as his speed
Hitch him to an open sleigh
And crack, you'll take the lead

Again, this’d hardly raise any eyebrows today but back then, singing “Go it while you’re young / Take the girls tonight” was as scandalous as Elvis’ hip shaking would be a century later. 

So, the song itself is inoffensive enough for us moderns. And indeed, if you consider the increasing liberalization of sexual ethics to be a good thing, as I do, you might even see “Jingle Bells” as having moved us ever so slightly along the path of progress. 

No, it isn’t the song’s content that’s unsettling, but rather the songwriter behind it. While the track, which was originally titled “One Horse Open Sleigh,” is often erroneously attributed to a James S. Pierpont or sometimes even to John Pierpont, the song was originally composed by a man named James Lord Pierpont. Pierpont, unfortunately, is one of those figure in history who embodies all of the contradictions and complexities of American society, which is the context which makes that simple, innocent Christmas carol a bit harder to digest.

Pierpont was born in 1822 in Boston, Massachusetts, and was the son of John Pierpont, a famous abolitionist minister. From a young age, he was noted for his love of sleighs and snow. He wrote a letter to his mother while in boarding school telling her how much he loved these wintery creature comforts that would later inspire that immortal song which became his legacy.

But James, it seems, was led by a restless spirit. He ran away from boarding school at the age of 14 (and no, this isn’t the typical “I’m running away” story where he returns a few hours later). Instead, James joined the crew of a whaling ship called The Shark (at the age of 14, mind you), and from there, he rose through the ranks to join the US Navy where he served until 21.

That restless spirit of his then led him out west to join the Gold Rush. He’s said to have lived in San Francisco for a few years, where he played music in the local Unitarian church until he returned to Medford, Massachusetts, to reconcile with his family in 1851. 

There are a couple of different stories that describe when and where Pierpont wrote Jingle Bells. The first of these says he wrote it while living with his family in Medford, just after returning from his little expedition out west. Another says he wrote it after leaving Medford for Savannah, Georgia, where his brother John had a small Unitarian church. James played the organ for his brother’s church, and it’s here where we’ll find much of the juicy and uncomfortable information about the man behind the Bells.

James’ brother, John Pierpont Jr., like his father, was an abolitionist, and if you know anything about the 1850s, the Civil War was brewing, and Georgia was hardly a friendly place for someone who loathed the institution of slavery. John Jr. fled the state for the North when the church was forced to close due to its abolitionist position.

During this time, James did what many of us do during the course of our lives; he entered into a rebellious phase and rejected the ways of his Father. Unfortunately, that didn’t mean rejecting Christianity or Unitarianism, but instead, it meant James Pierpont rejected his family’s abolitionism and became a supporter of the Confederacy. And so, when the Rev. John Pierpont Jr. fled the state, his brother James remained.

He then went on to serve in the Confederate army as a company clerk, and while he did this, he put his talents to use, writing many songs in favor of the Confederacy, including “Our Battle Flag,” “Strike for the South,” and “We Conquer or Die.” The sheet music and lyrics for all of these songs can be found on the Library of Congress website.

However, these are not nearly the worst songs in the Library of Congress with the Pierpont name attached to them. That honor goes to the horribly racist “Colored Coquette,” which was a minstrel song that Pierpont wrote. Look that one up if you really want to vomit (Content Warning: there are quite a few racial slurs, and the whole thing is drenched in many of the sickening racial themes of the day, look it up at your own risk). 

Despite the fact that he is now the name behind “Jingle Bells,” that inescapable Christmas earworm, James Lord Pierpont was far better known for these songs in his day. “Jingle Bells'' wasn't very popular in his lifetime and found a much wider audience after Pierpont had died. In his day, Pierpont would have been better known for “The Colored Coquette'' or any of his other various pro-Confederacy songs than he was for “Jingle Bells.”

Perhaps another interesting but unrelated tidbit about the old racist songwriter is that his sister Juliet did the world the misfortune of birthing the greedy capitalist John Pierpont Morgan, also known as JP Morgan, who was one of those robber barons from the Gilded Age that you read about in history class and probably forgot. It’s perhaps ironic that the musician associated with the most famous Christmas song of all time is related to JP Morgan, who is about as antithetical to the Christmas spirit as you can get. I mean, imagine a combination of Ebenezer Scrooge, the Burgermeister Meisterburger, and Mr. Potter, and you’ll begin to get a sense of who JP Morgan was.

Even though this inoffensive little Christmas tune was born from the pen of a classic American racist, we sing it gleefully every Christmas and teach it to our children. There is perhaps nothing wrong with this. After all, Pierpont is long dead and won’t be making a cent from your giving the song another go on Spotify. But it is, at the very least, interesting to note that, like many of the things that have become part of the American cultural ambiance, this song was born out of our wicked past of oppression. 

Kevin Johnson is a Physics teacher, amateur historian, and all-around nerd living in New Jersey with his cat Oliver Twist.