A Famous Christmas Carol: Jingle Bells
Perhaps one of the most famous Christmas songs, Jingle Bells was originally written for the Thanksgiving season by James Lord Pierpont in 1857. It was called One Horse Open Sleigh, but the name was revised when it was published in 1859 as “Jingle Bells, or the One-Horse Open Sleigh”.
Although it has no original connection to Christmas, it became associated with winter and Christmas music in the 1860s and 1870s. The title comes from the common practice of placing bells on a horse’s harness to avoid collisions because a horse drawn sleigh makes little noise. Jingle Bells was the first song transmitted from outer space when two astronauts on Gemini 6 performed the song aboard the spacecraft in 1965 after watching a sleigh like object in the polar orbit.