Jingle Bells Gets the Joy Reid Treatment: Now It's Racist, Because Why Not Ruin Christmas?

Look, if there's one thing we've learned over the years, it's that nothing says "holiday spirit" quite like a former cable news host dredging up century-and-a-half-old minstrel show trivia to declare war on a tune that's been jingling bells since before the Civil War. Enter Joy Reid, the ex-MSNBC personality who parted ways with "The ReidOut" earlier this year, timing that, let's be honest, feels like a gift to anyone tired of prime-time grievance theater. 

She's got 1.3 million Instagran followers hanging on her every biased repost, and this week, she decided to drop a Yuletide bombshell: "Jingle Bells" isn't just a sleigh ride classic; it's a covert Confederate dog whistle mocking Black folks.

The clip she shared, now going viral faster than fruitcake at a family gathering, features some guy decked out in a Santa hat and ugly Christmas sweater, eyeballing a plaque in Medford, Massachusetts, where James Lord Pierpont supposedly penned the ditty back in 1857. "This is where a racist Confederate soldier wrote ‘Jingle Bells’ to make fun of Black people," blares the on-screen caption, like a Black Friday sale sign for outrage. 

The video piles on: Pierpont was broke, so he whipped up the original "One Horse Open Sleigh" for minstrel gigs where white actors in blackface lampooned Black people fumbling through winter frolics. Oh, and get this—Pierpont later ditched his abolitionist kin up North to fight for the Stars and Bars, cranking out pro-slavery anthems on the side.

Reid, never one to let a good grievance go unamplified, slapped her own caption on it: "Lord have mercy." That's her way of saying, "See? Even Santa's got skeletons in the sleigh." The video name-drops a 2017 Cambridge University Press paper, "The Story I Must Tell: ‘Jingle Bells’ in the Minstrel Repertoire," where author Kyna Hamill observes, "The legacy of ‘Jingle Bells’ is, as we shall see, a prime example of a common misreading of much popular music from the nineteenth century." Hamill adds, "Its blackface and racist origins have been subtly and systematically removed from its history."

Fair enough; history's messy, and minstrelsy was a vile stain on 19th-century pop culture. But here's the kicker, and it's a big one: Hamill herself has been pushing back hard against this exact spin for years. Back in 2017, she told the Boston Herald flat-out, "I never said it was racist now," stressing that her work zeros in on the song's performance history and origins, not some grand verdict on Pierpont's authorial intent or a call to cancel carols. She's not out here auditioning for the Grinch; she's a theater historian unpacking how tunes like this got sanitized over time. Yet here we are, 2025, with Reid's repost breathing fresh life into the distortion, turning academic nuance into social media napalm, because everything in Joy's joyless mind is racist if you can think it so.

Over on Fox's "Outnumbered," panel treated Reid's share like the latest front in the endless culture skirmish. And the X-verse is lit up like a Christmas tree on fire, with people blasting out parodies ("Jingle bells, Joy Reid smells...") and eye-rolls about how this is peak "race-baiting rhetoric" from a woman who seems constitutionally incapable of spotting a silver lining without first hunting for the tarnish. Her allegiance bias in all her reporting over the years is obvious as she sees racism in every story.

At the end of the day, if we're cherry-picking 1850s sheet music to torch holiday playlists, what's next, banning "Rudolph" for bullying the differently nosed? 

Reid's got her lane, and it's paved with perpetual victimhood, but maybe, just maybe, we can let "Jingle Bells" jingle on without the scarlet letter. After all, the real horror show isn't American history, it's pretending every old lyric is a personal attack on the present. 

Dashing through the snow with a little less sanctimony? Now that would be music to anyone's ears.

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'Jingle Bells' is racist says racism specialist "professor"

A modern day secular leftist professor from Boston University says that "Jingle Bells," one of the most popular Christmas carols in the entire world, is suddenly racist, [and is probably also going to hurt the gay community once GLAAD reads the article].

According to this moron, "Jingle Bells" has a "problematic history" because it was originally performed to make fun of African Americans.

But in truth, any so-called 'professor' who tries to pass this crap off as being racist about African Americans (including those who have never been to Africa and should simply be called 'Americans' because it is not at all racist) is making fun of black people by acting as if they cannot see through this garbage.

Kyna Hamill is a BU theater historian. It appears that she is to theater history as the liberal media is to President Trump--always looking to attack the target for anything they can.

Anyway, Hamill said, "The legacy of 'Jingle Bells' is one where its blackface and racist origins have been subtly and systematically removed from its history."

If that's true, then isn't it a good thing? Doesn't it show that we've come a long way since it was sung they way she claims? 

In other words, if the offensive thing isn't treated the same way as it formerly was, like the Jews who do not treat the Old Testament's Leviticus as prescribed, (whereby a husband may stone his new bride to death at the doorsteps of her father if he discovers she wasn't a virgin) then what's the problem? 

If you want to find something wrong with your clock it's easy to do so. However, the clock is still useful if it's close to the correct time. 

People such as Hamill make their living by being hyper-critical because it makes them appear to be intelligent and "deep," rather than the chronic self-victimizing they do.

The song was written in 1857, pre-Civil War, by a Yankee named James Lord Pierpont. He was the son of a Unitarian minister and I hardly believe James meant the song to be a parody to make fun of black people any more than I believe that those who commit terrorist acts as prescribed in the Quran, are justified to be viewed the same way as Muslims who believe in peaceful coexistence.

It's the spirit of how "Jingle Bells" is sung today that matters, not the obscure alleged history it may or may not have.

Merry Christmas.

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