An upstate New York school district has pulled the classic winter tune “Jingle Bells” from the music curriculum at an elementary school over concerns that it may have first been performed in Boston at a minstrel show in which white performers donned blackface.
On December 23, the Rochester Beacon first reported that the Brighton Central School District nixed James L. Pierpont’s song from the curriculum at Council Rock Primary School. The school’s principal Matt Tappon told the Rochester Beacon via email that it was being replaced with tunes without “the potential to be controversial or offensive.” Officials with the district, including Tappon, told the outlet that the decision to remove the song was in part based upon a 2017 article authored by Kyna Hamill, Boston University’s Director of Core Curriculum.
“She found documents showing that the song’s first public performance may have occurred in 1857 at a Boston minstrel show. Minstrelsy was a then-popular form of entertainment in which white actors performed in blackface,” the Rochester Beacon reports.
The Beacon reached out to Hamill, who said she was “shocked” over the district’s decision.
“I am actually quite shocked the school would remove the song from the repertoire. … I, in no way, recommended that it stopped being sung by children,” Hamill explained.
“My article tried to tell the story of the first performance of the song, I do not connect this to the popular Christmas tradition of singing the song now,” she continued.
“The very fact of (“Jingle Bells'”) popularity has to do (with) the very catchy melody of the song, and not to be only understood in terms of its origins in the minstrel tradition. … I would say it should very much be sung and enjoyed, and perhaps discussed,” Hamill stated.
The reporter shared Hamill’s statements with the elementary school, which prompted a response from Allison Rioux, the district’s assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction:
“Some suggest that the use of collars on slaves with bells to send an alert that they were running away is connected to the origin of the song Jingle Bells. While we are not taking a stance to whether that is true or not, we do feel strongly that this line of thinking is not in agreement with our district beliefs to value all cultures and experiences of our students.
“For this reason,” Rioux concluded, “along with the idea that there are hundreds of other 5 note songs, we made the decision to not teach the song directly to all students.”
Hamill countered stating, “The use of bells on enslaved peoples may be true,” but noted that her research did not find a correlation between the song and slaveowners placing bells on slaves to prevent them from running away.
“Perhaps finding a well-referenced source for this claim might be in order if that is what (school officials) want to determine as the cause for not singing it,” she added.
As the story gained media attention and outrage ensued over the removal of the classic holiday tune, the district’s Superintendent Kevin McGowan wrote a letter on the matter on December 28, in which he stated, “This wasn’t ‘liberalism gone amok’ or ‘cancel culture at its finest.’” McGowan added the district was not attempting “to push an agenda.”
The letter is posted to the school’s website and reads in part:
Second, it may seem silly to some, but the fact that “Jingle Bells” was first performed in minstrel shows where white actors performed in blackface does actually matter when it comes to questions of what we use as material in school. I’m glad that our staff paused when learning of this, reflected, and decided to use different material to accomplish the same objective in class. It is also important to note that a song so closely related to a religious holiday that is not celebrated by everyone in our community was not likely a song that we would have wanted as part of the school curriculum in the first place. Our staff found that their simple objective could be accomplished by singing any one of many songs in class and therefore they chose to simply choose other songs.
Third, choosing songs other than “Jingle Bells” wasn’t a major policy initiative, a “banning” of the song or some significant change to a concert repertoire done in response to a complaint. This wasn’t “liberalism gone amok” or “cancel culture at its finest” as some have suggested. Nobody has said you shouldn’t sing “Jingle Bells” or ever in any way suggested that to your children. I can assure you that this situation is not an attempt to push an agenda. We were not and are not even discussing the song and its origins, whatever they may be. This was very simply a thoughtful shift made by thoughtful staff members who thought they could accomplish their instructional objective using different material. The change in material is also not something being forced on children or propaganda being spread. The teachers have never taught about the song in any way when it was being used then or in the midst of deciding not to use it. In other words, suggestions that this situation is somehow being used as a way to indoctrinate children just doesn’t make sense either. It is as simple as this, we are using different songs, and we are not teaching about their history at this level. Nobody is discussing politics about the song or anything regarding its history with students. This is not a political situation, it was a simple, thoughtful curricular decision.
In her, work Hamill says the tune, was composed at a time when sleigh songs were extremely popular, the Rochester Beacon reports.
The outlet notes Hamill’s hypothesis as to why Pierpont composed the song, and why it may have been performed at minstrel shows:
Hamill hypothesizes that Pierpont “needed the work,” and therefore wrote the song and others like it to conform to the conventions of minstrel shows at that time, such as fast sleighs, bells, and young people courting and laughing. He wrote such songs, she says, “out of pure financial necessity.”
The New England Historical Society categorized the song as “the equivalent of a Beach Boy’s song about fast cars, pretty girls and sneaking off to be together in private.”
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