Joy Reid is at it again—because apparently even Jingle Bells isn’t safe from the MSNBC-born culture-war machine. The former cable host lit up Instagram with a dramatic new claim: that one of America’s most beloved Christmas songs is actually a sinister relic of racist blackface minstrel shows. And naturally, she topped it off with her trademark doomsday flourish, declaring, “American history is a horror show”, complete with a spray of red exclamation marks.
Reid reshared a video featuring a young man decked out in full Christmas gear standing outside the old Simpson Tavern in Medford, Massachusetts—the spot where a plaque proudly states James Lord Pierpont penned Jingle Bells before copyrighting it in 1857. But the Instagram caption took a sledgehammer to that wholesome narrative, insisting: “This plaque in Medford, MA, honors where James Lord Pierpont wrote ‘Jingle Bells’, but ignores its origins in blackface minstrelsy.”
If you think that sounds familiar, it’s because Reid has carved out a niche for herself by seeing racism lurking behind every snowbank. (This is the same pundit who accused Western media of caring about the Ukraine war because the victims were “white and largely Christian.”)
The video Reid reposted leans heavily on a 2017 research paper by Boston University theater historian Kyna Hamill, who argued, “The legacy of ‘Jingle Bells’ is one where its blackface and racist origins have been subtly and systematically removed from its history.”
Hamill originally set out to settle a tug-of-war between Georgia and Massachusetts over where Pierpont actually wrote the tune. Instead, she says she stumbled on a playbill suggesting Jingle Bells—originally titled One Horse Open Sleigh—was performed in blackface at Ordway Hall in Boston in 1857. Hamill claims elements of minstrel performance appear in the lyrics and music, as well as the “male display” and theatrical antics typical of the era.
Her paper doesn’t hold back: “Its origins emerged from the economic needs of a perpetually unsuccessful man, the racial politics of antebellum Boston, the city’s climate, and the intertheatrical repertoire of commercial blackface performers moving between Boston and New York.”
And she concludes that although most people today sing the tune innocently enough, “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.”
The video Reid amplified also emphasized that Pierpont was financially struggling when he turned to minstrel shows, later enlisted in the Confederate Army, and that the supposedly joyful holiday classic was “whitewashed” as “happy myths about its creation became popular.”
Meanwhile, historical records (such as those in the Historical Marker Database) still note Pierpont served as music director at a Unitarian church in Savannah—another rival claim to the song’s birthplace.
If you’re wondering where this leads, look no further than the real-world consequences: a New York school actually banned Jingle Bells in 2022 after staff read Hamill’s paper. Council Rock Primary School replaced the song with safer, sanitized alternatives “that don’t have the potential to be controversial or offensive.” Many parents, unsurprisingly, revolted.
So now, thanks to activists, academics, and Joy Reid’s social media megaphone, even the simple act of singing about a one-horse open sleigh is enough to risk getting placed on the naughty list.
Because nothing says Christmas like turning a classic carol into the latest front of America’s racialized culture war.
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