School Censors ‘Jingle Bells’ Because It Could Be ‘Offensive’

It is the Rochester Beacon that is explaining at this holiday season how “Jingle Bells” is a very popular Christmas season tune.

“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,” the publication report.

But it’s now censored by Brighton’s Council Rock Primary School, the Beacon said, because it has the potential to be “controversial or offensive.”

That’s according to Principal Matt Tappon, who responded to the publication’s inquiry by email.

“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,” the report said. (Read more from “School Censors ‘Jingle Bells’ Because It Could Be ‘Offensive’” HERE)

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