jingle bells

Jingle_Bells in G music and lyrics

“Jingle Bells” is an American song and one of the most commonly sung Christmas songs in the world. It was written by James Lord Pierpont. It is an unsettled question where and when Pierpont originally composed the song that would become known as “Jingle Bells”. It was published under the title “The One Horse Open Sleigh” in September 1857. Although it has no original connection to Christmas, it became associated with winter and Christmas in the 1860s and 1870s, and it was featured in a variety of parlor song and college anthologies in the 1880s. It was first recorded in 1889 on an Edison cylinder; this recording, believed to be the first Christmas record, is lost, but an 1898 recording—also from Edison Records—survives.

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 the center of Medford Square 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. Previous local history narratives claim the song was inspired by the town’s popular sleigh races during the 19th century. Researcher Kyna Hamil proposes that the song was composed in Boston, before Pierpont moved to Savannah in the fall of 1857.