The girl seldom puts them on or removed them; rather it is hers to wear them, and as a slave, for as long or briefly as masters see fit. (Credit: Deirdre)The “Jingle Bells” composer was the son of a fiercely abolitionist Unitarian minister, Reverend John Pierpont. At the time, ‘Jingle Bells’, written by James Lord Pierpont, was considered to be a festive standard. Given the songwriter’s rebellious nature, it shouldn’t be surprising that “Jingle Bells” has a bit of a rebel-without-a-cause attitude. Cruel and humiliating deterrent to runaway slaves. The “Jingle Bells” composer was the son of a fiercely abolitionist Unitarian minister, Reverend John Pierpont. One thing that is not in dispute is that Pierpont drew upon snowbound memories of sleigh rides and sleigh races in Massachusetts, not Georgia, when writing the song. The lyrics “go it while you’re young” in the final verse of the secular standard is hardly about a holy or silent night.A set of the classic four-leaf shaped jingle bells. A professor at Boston University has proclaimed Christmas carol favorite “Jingle Bells” to be a “racist song” and is urging people to shun the jaunty tune. Though the penalties for running away could be horrific—whipping, branding, maiming, and the forced donning of heavy iron collars—some individuals risked punishment and separation from their families in hopes of escaping bondage, if only for a short time. Several months after the death of his first wife in 1856, the songwriter married a daughter of Savannah’s mayor and left the two children from his first marriage back in the North with their grandfather. (Credit: Public Domain)Nine days before Christmas in 1965, the two astronauts aboard Gemini 6 had just completed a rendezvous with Gemini 7 when the crew suddenly gave a troubling report to Mission Control: “We have an object, looks like a satellite going from north to south, up in a polar orbit. But it started out in 1857 as a song called ‘One Horse Open Sleigh’, a slightly racy romance song about an unchaperoned ride. This collar with bells would have been used to deter attempted escape by a slave that had previously tried to win his or her freedom by running away. (Hamill surmises that Pierpont wrote the song in the early summer of 1857 while temporarily living in a Boston rooming house.) During the Civil War, Pierpont wrote Confederate anthems including “Strike for the South,” “We Conquer, or Die!” and “Our Battle Flag!” The songwriter remained in Georgia after the war and lived out his final years in Florida before his death in 1893. Now the song is an absolute classic of popular music and would have made him a multi-millionaire.Outside of the jazz world, ‘Jingle Bells’ has been recorded by thousands of artists, including Motown And Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have A Dream Speech“It Seemed Like Fate Was Always Leading Me To The Right Door”: Glen Campbell In His Own Words "Jingle Bells" is one of the best-known and commonly sung American songs in the world. (Credit: Public Domain)A historical plaque in the Boston suburb of Medford, Massachusetts, claims that Pierpont wrote his famous tune while nursing a drink in the Simpson Tavern in 1850, a year after his father took over a nearby Unitarian church. He died without making big money from ‘Jingle Bells’, and ended his days teaching piano to make ends meet. Print Page. “Jingle Bells” may not have started out as a Christmas song, but now, more than 150 years after its initial publication, it has become staple of the winter holiday season. At the time, ‘Jingle Bells’, written by James Lord Pierpont, was considered to be a festive standard.