’Tis the season for gift-giving, well-wishing, and the recently acquired American tradition of selecting which Christmas carols are racist. This year’s pick is “Jingle Bells,” one of the most beloved and recognizable classics worldwide.
According to Boston University theatre professor Kyna Hamill’s paper on the subject, “Although ‘One Horse Open Sleigh,’ for most of its singers and listeners, may have eluded its radicalized past and taken its place in the seemingly unproblematic romanticization of a normal ‘white’ Christmas, attention to the circumstances of its performance history enables reflection on its problematic role in the construction of blackness and whiteness in the United States.”
What is this is even saying?
It seems Hamill is assuming the race of the sleighers when there is actually no mention or even inference of race is in the lyrics of the carol. The only “white Christmas” that any casual observer singing “Jingle Bells” is thinking about is a snow-covered landscape.
I hate to break it to Hamill, but snow is, in fact, white. Acknowledging this has absolutely nothing to do with race is similar to acknowledging that the grass is green and the sky is blue. If snow were pink, we would all be dreaming of a pink Christmas.
This isn’t the first time that a “white” Christmas and snow have been perceived as having a racial animus. This is just the latest attempt to take current mainstream American culture and vilify white people. I have yet to meet one person of any racial heritage that is offended by “Jingle Bells.” Even if they take Hamill’s suggestion and suddenly become offended, should that stop everyone else from merrily singing carols?
One of the great advantages of living in America is that we can choose what songs we to sing, listen, and enjoy. I know plenty of friends who for some mysterious reason don’t even turn on Christmas carols at all until after Thanksgiving. While they are crazy, that’s their choice.
Do we really need to be offended?
“Jingle Bells” is one of the few carols that I thought was innocuous and therefore permitted in today’s ultra-secular society because it doesn’t specifically reference the birth of Jesus or use the word “Christmas.” And just because a one-horse open sleigh is “iconic” for the holiday season, that doesn’t mean it is intentionally racist. Perhaps it is just memorializing holiday seasons of old.
Hamill actually recognizes this, but conceals it nicely in her academic verbiage and writes an abstract that sounds more like a Sherlock Holmes plot.
“The narrative works extremely hard to convince through evidence: we have a date, an eyewitness, and the events that inspired the song’s conception. Since it is written in bronze and mounted on stone, the story seems fixed and immovable. However, cracks have begun to form in the beloved ‘Jingle Bells’ narrative, and as with many such sentimental stories, we find there is always more to uncover,” she writes.
The bronze writing she refers to is a plaque at 19 High Street in Medford, Mass. that is known as the composition “birthplace” of “Jingle Bells.” According to the Medford Historical Society, which is responsible for the plaque, “Jingle Bells” tells of the town’s sleigh races held in the early 1800s – nothing racist about that.
Yet, Hamill’s work even claims the use of the word “upsot,” which suggests “a racialized performance that attempted to sound ‘southern’ to a northern audience.”
Here’s the line from Jingle Bells:
The horse was lean and lank
Misfortune seemed his lot
He got into a drifted bank
and then we got upsot
According to Your Dictionary, “upsot” is a poetic way to alternatively say upset, or to tip or overturn something. In context, it appears rational that “we,” the riders in the sleigh, “got upsot” and the song’s composer simply made the ending rhyme with “lot.” In fact, the entire song rhymes in that regard.
Hamill told Fox News that her research has been public for two years and has nothing to do with Christmas, so perhaps it’s more about being offended at literally everything and creating controversy. But “Jingle Bells?” Really? Even Charles Dickens’ Scrooge had more tolerance than Hamill when he said, “Keep Christmas in your own way and let me keep it in mine!”
As a peer reviewer, I give Hamill’s paper an enthusiastic “Bah humbug.”
Jenna Ellis (@JennaEllisorg) is a constitutional law and criminal defense attorney, a law professor at Colorado Christian University, where she directs the legal-studies program, a fellow at the Centennial Institute, and the author of The Legal Basis for a Moral Constitution.
