The Origin of Jingle Bells

 

I divide Christmas music into two categories. A Christmas Carol sings God's praises. while Christmas Songs sing secular praises, often with religious undertones. But there are two things any Christmas music must never ever do. It must not promote depravity and it must not celebrate hate. Yet, according to Time Magazine, the 7^th most popular Christmas song in America is steeped in both those very things, and worse, racism and misogynistic arrogance.  And even worse, it was written by a deadbeat dad, with deep, deep daddy issues of his own.

James Lord Pierpont (above) was born on Thursday, 25 April, 1822 to 35 year old Mary Sheldon Lord and her fourth cousin and over achiever, 47 year old John Pierpont. 

The pater Pierpont  (above) started life as a merchant, then became a lawyer and then an educator before becoming a Professor of Divinity at Harvard College. But kneeling among the congregation did not suit John. He needed to stand out front, with the congregants looking up to him. He proved to be “a quaint, eloquent speaker”, but always for the twin revolutionary causes of abolition and temperance. John Pierpont  as one of the founders of Unitarianism in the United States. He achieved literary fame six years before James' birth with publication of his book length poem, “The Airs of Palestine” - a 48 page  retelling in rhyme of the Old Testament. Within a year public demand had driven it through three printings.

“What mine, exploding, rends that smoking ground?

What earthquake spreads those smouldering ruins round?

The sons of Levi, round the city, bear

The Ark of God, their consecrated care,

And, in rude concert, each returning morn,

Blow the long trump, and wind the curling horn.

No blackening thunder, smok'd along the wall:

No earthquake shook it; Music wrought its fall.”

The year James was born,  John was pastor of Boston's Hollis Street Unitarian Church (above). He was always busy but always in service of a cause. Many in the congregation found his never ending passion exhausting. And growing up in his shadow must have been intimidating for James. At the age of 10, either for his own good or because he was too much trouble, James was shipped off to a boarding school in New Hampshire. He was miserable and wrote home-sick letters recalling the warmth of being wedged between his parents on winter sleigh rides. It did no good, he had to stay at school.

Then, on 2 May, 1836 his eldest sister, 20 year old Juliet Pierpont (above, a later photo), married a partner in J.M. Beebe and Company, which ran one of the largest retail stores in Boston, and one the largest dry goods importers in the nation - 33 year old Junius Spencer Morgan. That snapped something  in the 14 year old, and James ran away from school, joined the crew of a whaling ship and spent the next nine years before the mast on the open sea.

The Prodigal Son returned in 1845, but to a new home. What the Reverend Pieront described as his “7 year's war” had ended in defeat, when the conservatives in the Boston congregation fired him. The passionate preacher found new employment at the First Unitarian Church in Troy, New York, at the southern terminus of the Erie Canal (above). 

Like so many young men, running away had not resolved James's search for self worth.  So the 24 year old now tried to meet his father's expectations head on. James found a “high tech” job in bustling Troy (above),  fell in love and married the faithful Millicent Cowee, and gave his father a namesake grandson – John - and a granddaughter, with the religious title of Mary.

By now the ever exercised reverend had begun composing temperance songs and plays, such as “The Drunkard, or The Fallen Saved” which had a successful run at Moses Kimball's Boston Museum - actually a theatre.  James followed suit, but his aesthetic was attracted to minstrel shows, which had been growing in popularity during the 1830's. These were a vaudeville performed by white actors in black face, usually playing crude racial stereotypes. During the 1840's, from the pen of white artists like composer Stephen Foster, they flirted briefly with broader issues, even the reality of slavery. But by 1850 reality had become so unpleasant to white audiences that they preferred the simpler and racially vulgar comedies like white performer Thomas Dartmouth Rice's “Jump, Jim Crow” (above), which was to give it's name to an entire era..

Then in 1849, leaving Millicent and the children in the care of his parents, James again grabbed an opportunity to strike out on his own - the California Gold Rush. This was no desperate dig for instant wealth, but rather a calculated risk. James opened up a daguerreotype studio in San Francisco, making images of miners and bankers. 

And evidently James was reasonably successful – until just before Midnight, Saturday, 3 May, 1851, when a wind whipped fire destroyed 2000 buildings – including James' studio - in the first great San Francisco fire (above). Either James had no insurance, or more likely, his insurance company collapsed under the run on funds. The 32 year old James returned home in 1852, flat broke, to find Millicent had been stricken by tuberculosis. It was a real low point for the young man.  And Millicent, of course.

At the same time the father, John,  was more famous and successful than ever. John was a now a regular correspondent with the leading abolitionists of the day, and was pastor at the First Parish Unitarian Church, 3 ½ miles northwest of Boston in the Mystic River port town of Medford, Massachusetts (below). 

The job included a comfortable parsonage (above),  large enough for the entire family. During the 1840's John even had campaigned for Governor , and in 1850 for Congress. 

The old warrior lost both elections, of course, but with the publication of his book, “Phrenology and the Scriptures”, the Reverend John Pierpont (above) became a sought after lecturer - not only on religion but now spiritualism and discerning sins by reading the bumps on the sinner's head.

Frustrated and needing money, James began writing songs for John Ordway's “Dandy Darkies”, who preformed minstrel shows at Ordway Hall, opposite the Old South Meeting House in downtown Boston. His first sale in 1852, seemed harmless enough - "The Returned Californian”. But the Reverend Pierpont could not have been impressed. The Minstrel shows were now even more commonly studded with sexual double entendres and demeaning images of drunk, lazy, stupid and over sexed blacks. James could not have picked a source of income more likely to insult his father's passion.

Oh, I'm going far away, but I don't know where I'll go,

I oughter travel homeward but they'll laugh at me I know.

For I told 'em when I started I was bound to make a pile.

But if they could only see me now, I rather guess they'd smile.

If of these United States I was the President,

No man that owed another would ever pay a cent.

And he who dunned another should be banished far away.

And attention to the pretty girls, is all a man should pay.

After little more than a year, in 1854, James sought escape again, this time to work for his older brother, the Reverend John Pierpont Junior. John Junior had been hired as the minister for the brand new Unitarian Church built on Oglethorpe Square in Savanna, Georgia (above). The salary was a handsome $1,500 a year, but it was combat pay.  The sect was preaching abolition in a bastion of slavery.  

The original church had been destroyed by fire in 1814. And there  had been 2 attempts to burn down the replacement.  John Junior had to write his father that “...everything in his church was at a standstill…sermon and lecture listeners remained a tiny, unsubstantial core.” It was in this tense environment that James worked as the church's organist and musical director. But he seems to have fallen in love with a young woman in Savannah, and made a meager living offering music lessons.

Then in 1856, the long suffering and twice abandoned Millicent Cowee Pierpont died of tuberculosis. There was not much delay in putting the infectious lady underground, but James made no attempt to return to Boston and showed no interest in his now orphaned children, who continued to live with his parents. And in August of 1857 James broke his last remaining ties to his family when he remarried, to 26 year old Eliza Jane Purse (above) , daughter of the superintendent of the Central Of Georgia Railroad and a past Savannah alderman, Thomas Purse senior.

Also that August, back in Boston, Oliver Ditson and Company, published the sheet music for yet another James Pierpont minstrel song. This one, dedicated to John Ordway, was titled “One Horse Open Sleigh” (above). 

And on 15 September of 1857 the song was performed by one of Ordway's Dandy Darkies, a white man in black face, Mr. Johnny Pell  (above).

Dashing thro' the snow,

In a one-horse open sleigh,
O'er the hills we go,
Laughing all the way;
Bells on bob tail ring,
Making spirits bright,
Oh what sport to ride and sing
A sleighing song tonight.

Jingle bells, jingle bells,

Jingle all the way;
Oh! What joy it is to ride
In a one-horse open sleigh.

A sleigh pulled by a single horse was a speedy little carriage, favored by 19^th Century upper middle class men and women for the same purposes automobiles were used by couples in the 20^th Century.  Bells set to jingling by the horse's movements announced the sleigh's arrival on silent runners at intersections. A warm blanket spread across the passengers' laps provided privacy for displays of intimate affection. And should the sleigh be parked in some isolated corner of the woods, the jingles on the reigns set off by the passengers' movements announced progress of another kind. As the late music historian James J. Fuld suggested, “the word jingle in the title and opening phrase is apparently an imperative verb." It was an order, at least to reluctant inebriated young women facing an alternative long, cold walk home.

A day or two ago

I tho't I'd take a ride
And soon Miss Fannie Bright
Was seated by my side.
The horse was lean and lank
Misfortune seemed his lot
He got into a drifted bank
And we—we got upsot.

Jingle bells, jingle bells,

Jingle all the way;
Oh! What joy it is to ride
In a one-horse open sleigh.

“Upshot” was a mid-19^th Century slang for getting tipsy on alcohol. Oddly, the song was received in religiously conservative New England with little enthusiasm. 

But it was noticed by John (above) as yet another mocking of his life's work by his own son. This was capped in 1859, when the experiment in Savannah proved a failure. The church was closed. John Junior returned home. But James did not come with him. 

However, two years later, James did renew the copywrite on his song, changing the name to “Jingle Bells, or One Horse Open Sleigh”.

Now the ground is white

Go it while you’re young,
Take the girls to night
And sing this sleighing song;
Just get a bob tailed bay
Two forty as his speed.
Hitch him to an open sleigh
And crack, you’ll take the lead.

Jingle bells, jingle bells

Jingle all the way.

Oh what a joy it is to ride,

In a one horse open sleigh.

When open combat split the nation, the 76 year old John Pierpont senior (above) became regimental chaplain for the 22^nd Massachusetts Infantry.  But after just 2 weeks duty, sanity inspired someone to give the old minister a job as a clerk at the Treasury Department. Just how much work he actually preformed is doubtful, and when he died after the war, in 1866, he was back home in Medford, Massachusetts.  Harper's Weekly, said upon his death, "As an American poet he can not be ranked with the best; ...but some of his religious poetry has rarely been excelled for strength and simplicity."

The war also inspired the almost 40 year old James Lord Pierpont to enlist,  as private in a cavalry unit called Lamar's Rangers. After 2 hard years duty in Tennessee, during which the rangers were consolidated into the 5^th Georgia Cavalry,  James was made the company clerk. Evidently he found enough time to also compose patriotic songs, like “Strike for the South.” His unit surrendered to Federal forces in mid April of 1865.

After the war, James, Eliza and their 3 children – 16 year old Lillie, 8 year old Thomas and 5 year old Josiah - moved to the new railroad town of Valdosta, Georgia (above), where James taught music, and where his final child, Maynard Boardman Pierpont, was born. 

Then in 1869 there was a scandal. Whether it revolved around James – he was called by his nephew, the now famously wealthy banker James Pierpont Morgan, a “good for nothing” - or Eliza - she had evidently given birth to Lillie 3 years before she married James – it no longer matters. The family moved to nearby Quitman, Georgia, where James became the organist at the Presbyterian Church, and gave piano lessons. Eventually he secured a job teaching music at the Quitman Academy, and retired as head of their Musical Department.

In 1880, Jame's son, Dr. Josiah Pierpont, renewed the copywrite on “Jingle Bells”, fighting to ensure his father's name remained tied to the increasingly popular and rewritten song. However the family never enforced the copywrite and never made a dime off the music. 

James Lord Pierpont died on Saturday, 5 August, 1893, living with his son in Clearwater, Florida,  He was buried back in Savannah. Soon there after the copywrite was allowed to die.  

The lack of royalties required must have played a part in why “Jingle Bells” was chosen by the skinflint Thomas Edison to be recorded by the Edison Male Quartet (above) on an Edison cylinder in 1898.

In 1902 it was recorded again by the Hayden Quartet. After that, it has never been “out of print” or out of press. At the moment there are almost 300 recorded English versions. The 1935 cover of “Jingle Bells” with rewritten with censured lyrics by Benny Goodman's Big Band reached number 18 on the “charts”, and Glen Miller's 1941 version hit number 5. 

In 1943 Bing Crosby and the Andrew's Sister's (above) sold over a million copies of their version. Guitarist Les Paul had a number 10 best selling record in 1951 with no words at all. And in 1955 dogs Pussy, Pearl, Dolly, King and Caesar, barked the tune and sold a million 45 rpm records. And a slightly insane laughing version was released by “The Hysterics” in 1981 and climbed all the way to number 44 in the United Kingdom.

“Jingle Bells” remains the most unusual Christmas song ever written, because it was never intended to be a Christmas song.  But it remains popular I think because hidden somewhere in the chords and melodies, if not the words - what ever version of the words you sing - is an angry spirit. As the old poem goes, "Monday's child is fair of face, Tuesday's child is full of grace Wednesday's child is full of woe, Thursday's child has far to go, (Friday's child is loving and giving, Saturday's child works hard for a living),”

And maybe, sometimes, because we are all, all of us, all of those children, we all need a little “ in your face”, “I'm going to have fun, damn-it” kind of Christmas. Because, sometimes, that's what real life gives you.  It's what life gave to James Pierpont. And listen to what he did with it.

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