STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Next we have an NPR investigation of a popular claim on the internet about a famous Christmas song.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JINGLE BELLS")
GWEN STEFANI: (Singing) Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. Oh, what fun it is to ride...
INSKEEP: Gwen Stefani belts it out there. Now, I called it a Christmas song, and that's really the question at hand. Is it really one?
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
And the reason that comes up is that every year around this time, people circulate the claim that "Jingle Bells" was actually written as a Thanksgiving song.
INSKEEP: What?
MARTIN: Kyna Hamill of Boston University is here to put that one to rest.
KYNA HAMILL: They're just sort of clickbaits that you click on. And you see it, and then it says, yeah, it was a Thanksgiving song. I mean, that's all you get. There's no evidence at all.
INSKEEP: That claim is apparently just one of those things people say to fill time at the holidays.
HAMILL: Look closely at the dates of the Thanksgiving claims, which are usually at the end of November. And then look closely at the claims of it being a Christmas song, and they're all done in December.
MARTIN: Hamill should know. She is an expert in "Jingle Bells." She studied it to help settle a debate between two cities. Savannah, Georgia, and Medford, Massachusetts, both claimed to be the birthplace of the song. She found no evidence to support either city. It was first performed elsewhere.
HAMILL: The answer to that question is - in a minstrel hall in Boston in 1857. In September, by the way, of 1857.
INSKEEP: Song was originally called "One Horse Open Sleigh," written by James Lord Pierpont. Now, you heard her also say minstrel. "One Horse Open Sleigh" was first performed by white men in blackface.
MARTIN: Hamill says Pierpont was not trying to write a holiday song. He was trying to cash in on a trend.
HAMILL: American minstrelsy was an American industry, and between about 1854 and 1859, sleigh songs were having a moment. And there's many, many listings of songs about sleigh-riding. It was a fun mode of transportation. Yes, there were races at times. It's sort of like the way that we have songs about cars in the 1950s.
MARTIN: Turns out the sleigh was the Little Deuce Coupe of its day.
INSKEEP: Having made that musical success, the song's author, Pierpont, went south from Boston and joined the Confederate Army during the Civil War. But he left behind this scrap of music that people enjoy in their own way.
HAMILL: Aside from that maybe uncomfortable history of the song, it is a traditional song that has been reembraced into a tradition that we all sort of enjoy, or not. Some people probably hate the song.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JINGLE BELLS (REMASTERED)")
BING CROSBY: (Singing) Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.
INSKEEP: (Singing) Oh, what fun...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JINGLE BELLS (REMASTERED)")
CROSBY: (Singing) Oh, what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh.
INSKEEP: Love it or hate it, we jingle all the way.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JINGLE BELLS (REMASTERED)")
CROSBY: (Singing) Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. What fun to ride and sing in a one-horse open... Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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