Jingle Bells

Jingle Bells is one of the most sung American songs in the world. It was written by James Lord Pierpont and published under the title One Horse Open Sleigh in 1857. It was originally written to be sung in canteens. It was later associated with Christmas music when some local choirs adopted it as part of their repertoire in the 1860s and 1870s, and it appeared in a variety of hall songs and college anthologies in the 1880s. It was first recorded in 1889 in an Edison cylinder; this recording, believed to be the first Christmas record, is lost, but an 1898 recording also from Edison Records survives.