Tis the season to repost the Jingle Bells story, at the traditonal start of the Christmas music season, the day after Thanksgiving. It turns out that the song "Jingle Bells" was originally written for Thanksgiving. It was first published in autumn 1857.
It is not too surprising that this secular holiday anthem, with no religious content, was composed by a Unitarian church organist, James Lord Pierpont. But it may surprise you to learn that it was composed in a tavern:
The story in the lyrics is really about using a sporty open vehicle to pick up girls. Hence, the line in the last verse about the horse: "240 is his speed" (a fast trotting horse) - making the combination of horse and sleigh the 19th century precursor to a sporty convertible. Appropriately, the song was at one point recorded by the Brian Setzer Orchestra with "one horse open sleigh" changed to "57 Chevrolet." (presumably the 240 morphed to the 283 V8).
The composer apparently claimed success in the pickup process with one "Miss Fanny Bright", but he was married twice (first wife died) and neither wife was Fanny Bright, who was apparently only a casual fling (flung together from the sleigh into the snow). What lessons you may draw from this are unclear, but the composer's view was that with such a sporty and speedy vehicle "Crack, you'll take the lead." It would seem that courting may not have not changed as much as one might guess since the 1850s.
Notice also that the phrase "Jingle Bells!" was intended as an imperative, exhorting the sleigh driver to alert others on the road to his rapid and reckless approach in an otherwise noiseless sleigh - good advice if you are courting in a Prius I suppose, but I don't think they make Prius convertibles. The singing of "sleighing songs" might have been sufficient alternative to the bells, or today's alternative of a loud stereo system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingle_Bells . Also see the article on the composer, James Pierpont.
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