It’s that time of year, and what would we do without progressive academics being Debbie Downers during all the holiday cheer? Take Boston University’s theater professor Kyna Hamill, who says the timeless Christmas tune “Jingle Bells” has a “problematic history” because it was “originally performed to make fun of African Americans.” “The legacy of ‘Jingle Bells’ is one where its blackface and racist origins have been subtly and systematically removed from its history,” Hamill told Fox News. The
professor wrote a research paper titled “’The story I must tell’: ‘Jingle Bells’ in the Minstrel Repertoire” in which she says 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. READ MORE
