Joy Reid Exposes Shocking Racist Past of Beloved Christmas Carol Jingle Bells

Former MSNBC host Joy Reid has shared a video to her social media which claimed to reveal the racist background of the much-loved Christmas tune Jingle Bells as a blackface minstrel tune mocking African Americans.

The video showed a young man in a full Christmas outfit standing outside of the old Simpson Tavern in Medford, Massachusetts, where the song was allegedly written.

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A caption over the video said: ‘This plaque in Medford, MA, honors where James Lord Pierpont wrote ‘Jingle Bells’, but ignores its origins in blackface minstrelsy.’

The video added that Pierpont was in a poor financial position and turned to minstrel shows, writing ‘The One Horse Open Sleigh’ which debuted in Boston in 1857.

It claimed the song was used to ‘mock and caricature’ black people participating in winter activities.

It added that Pierpont later enlisted in the Confederate army and that the song was ‘whitewashed and happy myths about its creation became popular’.

Reid captioned her on post on the video with: ‘American history is a horror show’ {snip}

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The latest video shared to Instagram leans on a research paper from 2017 by Kyna Hamill, a Boston university theater historian.

In her paper, Hamill said: ‘The legacy of ‘Jingle Bells’ is one where its blackface and racist origins have been subtly and systematically removed from its history.’

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In the course of her research, Hamill discovered a playbill indicating that Jingle Bells was first performed under the title One Horse Open Sleigh in blackface, for a minstrel show at Ordway Hall in Boston in 1857.

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