Joy Reid reposts viral video claiming ‘Jingle Bells’ song is racist
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Former MSNBC host Joy Reid criticized a popular Christmas song and reposted a video describing the beloved tune as racist. The now-viral clip has renewed scrutiny into the hymn’s history, as the academic who based his research on the video said that was not his intention.
In the video, a man in festive attire looks at a plaque in Medford, Massachusetts, where James Lord Pierpont is believed to have written what became known as “Jingle Bells.”
The video makes the claim that early performances of the song were used to “mock” Black people. Pierpont’s history continues to be debated, using racist dialect and slurs in other works. The clip also notes that the author later fought on behalf of the Confederate Army to defend slavery.
Joy-Ann Reid speaks on stage at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation annual Legislative Conference National Town Hall held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC on September 25. (Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation)
The first headline on the screen read, “This is where a racist Confederate soldier wrote ‘Jingle Bells’ to make fun of Black people.”
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The video states that Pierpont was strapped for cash and wrote the original version, titled “The One Horse Open Sleigh,” for performances in which white actors in blackface caricature Black people “trying to participate in winter activities.”
Reid, who lost his MSNBC show “The ReidOut” earlier this year. He reposted the clip to his 1.3 million Instagram followers, “Lord have mercy,” it said. The video quotes a 2017 Cambridge University Press article titled “The Story I Have to Tell: ‘Jingle Bells’ in the Minstrel Repertoire.”
“The legacy of ‘Jingle Bells,’ as we will see, is a prime example of the widespread misreading of much popular music from the nineteenth century,” author Kyna Hamill writes in the study.
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“His blackface and racist origins have been subtly and systematically removed from his history,” he added.
Joy Reid speaks on stage at the 2025 ESSENCE Black Women in Hollywood Awards held at Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles, California on February 27. (Leon Bennett/Getty Images for ESSENCE)
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But Hamill has repeatedly said his work has been misrepresented and has never claimed that “Jingle Bells” was written as a racist mockery. He maintains that his research focused not on Pierpont’s intention in composing the song, but rather on the song’s performance history and where it originated.
“I never said this was racist.” Hamill told the Boston Herald in 2017:He added that he doesn’t want to dictate what songs are sung at Christmas.
