Music

(You should click the above time line to get a larger, more readable version).

Before we can answer the question of the first or earliest Christmas carol, we need to deal with some preliminary questions.  What is a carol?  What is a Christmas carol? And how does one determine a date for  Christmas carol?  None of these questions are trivial.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “carol” as “a ring-dance with accompaniment of song” or “a song; originally, that to which they danced” or “a song or hymn of religious joy”.  The later definition hits the mark most closely. However, we also have a large number of non-religious seasonal songs of similar joyous character, and I will include them as well.  But even then there are some little controversies to note:

• Is “Jingle Bells” really a Christmas carol?  The best evidence is that the song was composed for Thanksgiving, not Christmas.
• And what about “Do you hear what I hear?”  This was written in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis.   If you read the lyrics with any care it becomes obvious that the imagery is about missiles not Christmas: “A star, a star, dancing in the night \ With a tail as big as a kite.”

However, both songs appear to have become seasonal standards, regardless of their original meaning, so who am I to argue to otherwise?

Dating carols is also tricky, especially since the tune and the lyrics often date from different times.  A great example is “What Child is This?” where the lyrics date to 1865, but the tune (Greensleeves) dates to the 16th Century.  Where such dates differ I take the later date, the date when the text and the tune were wedded.  In some cases the text might have been set to music multiple times, with different tunes in use in different countries.  “While Shepherds Watched their Flocks at Night” is a great example, set to numerous tunes from 1700 to 1903.  In such cases I have taken the date of the version most-familiar in the United States.

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The above time line shows the Christmas carols that I knew in my childhood.  Your core group of carols may differ from this, based on your age, country, language, ethnicity, religion, etc.  Although my horizons would widen as I grew older and went to school, so I can now recognize a broader set of international and ancient carols, from “In Dulci Jubilo” to “Es ist ein Ros entsprungen” to “Riu Riu Chiu,” the above set represents my “native” carols, the ones I knew as a child.  Everything beyond that I consider to be an import.

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The oldest carol on this time line is, not surprisingly, “Adeste Fideles”, published in 1751, with a history that goes back even further.  I remember it being sung in church in my youth, with the words slightly modified, coming out with a loud, clear-throated “Adeste Fideles!” followed by a muted, “mumble, mumble mumble” until a fortissimo “in Bethlehem.”  Maybe it was different when Latin was still taught in schools.

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It is also notable, looking at the time line, that there was a “golden age” of carol writing, say 1840-1860.  We have hardly seen a prominent traditional church carol since then.  However, the 20th century has given us a large number of new secular standards and commercial holiday songs.

I’d be interested in hearing from other traditions and cultures:  What is the earliest holiday song that you commonly hear this time of year?  Something a mother might sing to a child, or a family or church sing together?

Simple question. What tune would you say is the most recognized tune? If we limited ourselves to the United States and the present day, the answer might be “Happy Birthday.”

What if we included all time and all nations? “Happy Birthday” goes back to only 1893. Some tunes are much older, like “Greensleeves,” (16th century) but well-known in only some nations. While others have global reach, but are of more recent vintage, like McCartney’s “Yesterday” (1965).

So what do you get if you account for both factors and try to seek the tune that the most people in history would be able to recognized, something that has great durability over time as well as a global reach?

Any ideas? I’ll hold my guess and post it later.

I’ve been reading Games and Songs of American Children by William Wells Newell, a Dover reprint of the 1903 edition. I find it fascinating how games are transmitted from generation to generation, games like “Tag”, “Button button who has the button?”, “The church and the steeple” or “Odd or even?” These games are not learned from teachers in a school, or read in a book, or typically even taught from parents. For the most part they are transmitted from child to child, from an older sibling, or a peer, through the most casual pathways.  Games like this have spread across the country and beyond without any overt effort. In a way, it is like language.

So, that made me think about the “classic” children’s Christmas parody of “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells”. I assume there is no part of this country where these words are not known to every child. But it exists in no songbook. Who first sang these words, and when and where was it done? How fast did it travel? I think if a sufficient survey was done of adults of various ages, as to when and where they recall first hearing these lyrics, one could reconstruct the migration of this bit of modern folklore. Those who heard it earliest would have heard it closer to its source.

It would help my little research if any old-timers (say over 40 years old) left a comment indicating what version you heard first, where you heard it (town and state) and approximately what year you heard it. I’d like to figure out what the original version truly was, and where it came from and how fast it spread.

There are several variants of this song. The one I grew up with was:

Jingle Bells, Batman smells
Robin laid an egg.
The Batmobile lost a wheel
and the Joker got away (Hey!)

Other commonly reported versions include:

Shotgun shells, Santa smells,
Rudolf ran away,
Oh what fun it is to ride
in a beat-up Chevrolet!

or

Jingle bells, shotgun shells,
Santa Claus is dead,
Rudolf got a .22
and shot him in the head.

or

Jingle Bells, Shotgun Shells,
BB’s in the air.
Oh, what fun it is to ride
in Santa’s underwear!”

or

Jingle Bells, Batman smells
Robin laid an egg,
The Batmobile lost a wheel,
and the Joker joined ballet , Hey!

Check the comments for other variations. Some have alternate lyrics to the verse as well as the chorus.

Also, if you are interesting in crazy Christmas music, then here are two CD’s, filled with zany holiday classics, for your consideration:

12 December 2015 Update

Nine years after I wrote this post I was prompted by Robert Evans over at Cracked to offer updated thoughts on the question of the origins of “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells.”  We both went through the comments on this post, correlated the dates and places, and I then did further research in newspaper archives to try to locate the earliest printed occurrence of these lines.   What we found out might surprise you.  More over at The Secret True History of “Jingle Bells Batman Smells.”