Elementary School Bans Jingle Bells As Having “The Potential To Be Controversial Or Offensive”
“I am actually quite shocked the school would remove the song from the repertoire.”
This is just ridiculous. This apparently started years ago. But can we get through Christmas without the left trashing some classic element of it?
The Rochester Beacon reports:
Jingle all the way? Maybe not
“Jingle Bells” is one of the most performed and well-known secular holiday songs ever written, not only in the United States, but around the world. It’s the first song to have been broadcast from space—by Gemini 6 astronauts nine days before Christmas in 1965. It’s regularly been sung at the White House—most recently by President Barack Obama and his family upon lighting the National Christmas Tree in 2016.
But “Jingle Bells” isn’t being sung anymore at Brighton’s Council Rock Primary School.
“Jingle Bells,” explained Council Rock principal Matt Tappon in an email, has been replaced with other songs that don’t have “the potential to be controversial or offensive.”
“Jingle Bells” offensive? How so?
Tappon and other staff confirmed by email that the decision to remove the song was based in part on information in a 2017 article written by professor Kyna Hamill, director of Boston University’s Core Curriculum. Hamill’s article is a deep dive (nearly 12,000 words including appendices and footnotes) into the origin of “Jingle Bells,” the life of its composer, James L. Pierpont, and the popularity of sleigh songs in the mid-1800s. 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.
But when told that Council Rock has removed ‘Jingle Bells” based partly on her research, Hamill responded in an email: “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.”
She continued:
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.
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.
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Comments
What until the yahoos discover that Hitler drank beer.
Not to mention the fact that he liked dogs.
Let’s be fair. The problem is not the song itself, but the jingling of the bells.The tinkling of bells scrambles Brandon’s brain waves – similar to 5G phones interfering with airliner navigation systems.
Brandon is not delusional, senile or suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s. To paraphrase the insightful James Carville, it’s the jingling bells, stupid.
If one must have Christmas music (decision pending as to whether Christmas is even legal – or safe), Jen Psaki suggests ‘Joy to the World’ with the caveat that ‘Joy’ refers to the progressive Lord and Savior, Joy Reid. All honor to Her name.
Merry Christmas and Let’s Go Brandon! And sooner rather than later. More rather than less.
These people are a self parody. It is very brave or total obtuseness that would cause someone to beclown themselves in public like this.
Jingle Bells is not a Christmas song. It is a winter song. Perhaps a Thanksgiving song. But not a Christmas song.
I can’t imagine why someone downvoted you for this truth. A lot of seasonal favorites are actually literally seasonal, not holiday. Along with Jingle Bells, there’s Sleigh Ride, Frosty The Snowman, Winter Wonderland, Baby It’s Cold Outside, and a fair number of others. I’ll leave out the question of how all the secular songs that celebrate Santa Claus, Rudolph, etc. should be categorized.
Anything that was written over ten years ago has “the potential to be controversial or offensive.” Anything, and everything.
Perhaps public schools can contract with Disney Corp. to obtain material that has been so thoroughly scrubbed of anything that might offend anyone for any reason that it is safe/suitable for performance in a public school?
(Of course it would be licensed only for the current academic year, lest this year’s inoffensiveness fail to meet next year’s standards.)
O Brave New World that destroys all existing culture, only to replace it with the most bland, inoffensive lukewarm pabulum that the Culture Industry can deliver.
“Jingle all the way”
What?! “All the way”???!!! OMG, what an offensive and obvious reference to overtly sexual activity. Ban it! Burn it! Burn all who performed it! How has it survived for all these years?!
/Sarc
I can’t think of a single word that can’t be twisted by the Left to mean somehing offensive. Hell, even a President of the United States offered the word “it” as an interpretable term in a sexual context..
“What?! “All the way”???!!! OMG, what an offensive and obvious reference to overtly sexual activity.”
No problem — there will be a rap version. “Jingle, Bells Deep.”
It’s not even a Christmas song. It was written and published as a Thanksgiving song.
In the dictinary under Moron shoud be the sub headers : (Inclusive, Democrat and Liberial)