OPINION:
The age-old Christmastime favorite “Jingle Bells” is now racist, according to a Boston University professor, who claimed in a paper — make that “Paper” — that its first public performance was done with blackface actors.
Poor Massachusetts. First Elizabeth “Pocohontas” Warren; now Kyna Hamill, theater historian.
Honestly, if it weren’t for the last-minute pull-out of the Patriots over the Steelers in Sunday night’s game, there’d be no reason to get out of bed this week.
As it is, Bay Staters have to deal with this: “The legacy of ’Jingle Bells’ is one where its blackface and racist origins have been subtly and systematically removed from its history,” Hamill wrote, in a research paper — oh yeah, “Research Paper” — that’s now being widely reported.
Walk of shame, Massachusetts. Walk. Of. Shame.
Anyhow, Hamill actually spent time digging up the dirt on something the was pretty much under the radar of dirt-diggers — the dark side of the Jingle. It’s like when Luke heard, “I am your father” — only worse.
“In the course of her research,” the Daily Mail reported, “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 on Boston’s Washington Street in 1857.”
Oh the horrors — the horrors.
Next thing they’ll be telling us Rudolph’s a Commie. It’s the red nose, you see.
Anyhow, it’d be hard-pressed to better sum up what should be sent Hamill’s way as response to her findings than what these Twitter writers opined.
“Jingle Bells is racist, White Christmas is racist, Baby it’s Cold Outside is sexist,” a Twitter poster wrote, the Daily Mail found. “What the hell happened to the America I grew up in where people didn’t wake up every day trying to find something to be offended by?”
Good point.
Here’s another: “What the hell is wrong with these liberal professors do they have nothing better to do besides sit around and Pick A Part our history and call everything racist.”
Another good question — and one that Hamill would no doubt love to answer. Just as soon as she’s done typing up her findings of sexism about Frosty.
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