Term 4 Week 1 - Count down to Christmas

Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells 

Jingle Bells is one of the best-known and most-often sung Christmas songs in the world.  It was written by James Lord Pierpont (1822-1893) and was published in 1857. It was actually written to be sung for American Thanksgiving. There's a bit of confusion over where the song was written.  A plaque in Medford, Massachusetts claims that Pierpont wrote the song there in 1850, inspired by the town's popular sleigh races.   Its original copyright was under the name" One Horse Open Sleigh" in 1957. It is now in the public domain, which means anyone can sing it or use the tune.  In 1857, Pierpont was actually the organist of the Unitarian Church in Savannah, Georgia, and married the daughter of the mayor.

In the days before cars,  it was common to decorate horses' harnesses with bells as a way for drivers of sleighs to hear each other approaching - especially when they couldn't be seen - because the snow muffles any sounds the  sleighs and horses' hooves made. The rhythm of the tune mimics the rhythm of the trotting horse's bells.

Jingle Bells
Dashing through the snow
In a one-horse open sleigh

O'er the fields we go
Laughing all the way

Bells on bobtail ring
Making spirits bright
What fun it is to ride and sing
A sleighing song tonight!

Jingle bells, jingle bells,
Jingle all the way.
Oh! what fun it is to ride
In a one-horse open sleigh.


Here's a Kiwi version of Jingle Bells.  
Here's a Wii Dance to Jingle Bells 
    A heavy metal version of Jingle Bells 

Here's a version with an actual sleigh ride and a few more verses.  

Here's an orchestra play Jingle Bells in many different styles. How many different percussion instruments can you see being played? 

Here's 17 different versions of Jingle Bells - how many styles can you recognise?
Here's a  Jingle Bells mash-up of a lot of Youtube animal videos 
and this one's of cats and dogs. 

Here's a very simple version of Jingle Bells. Can you clap the rhythm?

Did you know? 

"Jingle Bells" was the first song broadcast from space, in a Christmas-themed prank by Gemini 6 astronauts Tom Stafford and Wally Schirra. While in space on December 16, 1965, they sent this report to Mission Control:

Gemini VII, this is Gemini VI. We have an object, looks like a satellite going from north to south, up in a polar orbit. He's in a very low trajectory traveling from north to south and has a very high climbing ratio. It looks like it might even be a ... Very low. Looks like he might be going to reenter soon. Stand by one ... You might just let me try to pick up that thing.

The astronauts then produced a smuggled harmonica and sleigh bells and broadcast a rendition of "Jingle Bells."The harmonica, shown to the press upon their return, was a Hohner "Little Lady", a tiny harmonica approximately one inch long, by 3/8 of an inch wide.