A professor at Boston University says the Christmas tune loved by many, “Jingle Bells,” is actually racist and has a “problematic” origination.
Boston University theater professor Kyna Hamill argues the song has “racist origins” and was first performed in blackface as a mockery of African Americans.
“As I mentioned in my article, the first documented performance of the song is in a blackface minstrel hall in Boston in 1857, the same year it was copyrighted,” the professor told Fox News. “Much research has been done on the problematic history of this nineteenth-century entertainment.”
“The legacy of ‘Jingle Bells’ is one where its blackface and racist origins have been subtly and systematically removed from its history,” wrote Hamill in a research paper, called Theatre Survey.
“Although ‘One Horse Open Sleigh,’ for most of its singers and listeners, may have eluded its racialized 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,” wrote the professor.
According to Hamill, the song’s “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.”
There are also apparent “elements of ‘male display,’ boasting, and the unbridled behavior of the male body onstage,” says Hamill.
Here’s Hamill’s hot-take on the allegedly troubling lyrics, via Fox News:
The song’s lyrics, which Hamill adds “display no real originality,” and reference things like “Miss Fanny Bright” and “dashing through the snow” connect the song to blackface dandy, according to the research paper.
“Words such as ‘thro,’ ‘tho’t,’ and ‘upsot’ suggest a racialized performance that attempted to sound ‘southern’ to a northern audience,” Hamill wrote.
If you want to be politically correct and thus can’t play “Jingle Bells” this holiday season, there are many other Christmas tunes you can play — just avoid “Baby it’s Cold Outside” (the sexist tune perpetuates rape culture), “White Christmas” (more blatant racism), or “Mary, Did You Know” (Christmas should be more inclusive than just Christianity).
Actually, just shut up and drink from your Starbucks cup that has a lesbian couple plastered on it, and like it.
Bigot.
