Another Anniversary: The Showtime Episode Of The Simpsons Aired 29 Years Agone This Evening

It's non merely Bitcoin's all-time high that Dec. 17 is known for. Far to a greater extent than of import is Season 1, Episode 1 —"Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire"
First posted Sunday, Dec 17, 2017

From NowIKnow:

The Forgotten History of Jingle Bells

The outset episode of the Simpsons — Season 1, Episode 1 — debuted on December 17, 1989. Homer too Marge (with Maggie inwards tow) brand their agency to Springfield Elementary School for Lisa too Bart’s Christmas concert. Bart’s bird is singing a Christmas tune featuring the iconic vocal “Jingle Bells.” But Bart, equally seen inwards this clip goes amongst some option lyrics — “Jingle Bells, Batman smells, Robin position an egg; the Batmobile broke its wheel; the Joker got awa–,” resulting inwards him beingness pulled off-stage.

Jingle Bells, the lesson nosotros should learn, is a wholesome Christmas song, non 1 to hold out manipulated past times a rascally 4th grader. But that lesson is wrong. Jingle Bells is neither a wholesome vocal nor virtually Christmas.

The vocal nosotros sing today was originally written past times a guy named James Lord Pierpont. Pierpoint most probable wrote the lyrics inwards Medford, Massachusetts inwards 1850 although at that spot is some ground some both the when too the where. (He outset published the vocal inwards Savannah, Georgia, vii years later, too Savannah besides lays claim to the song.) Those lyrics, to modern ears, audio rattling Christmasy — “dashing through the snowfall inwards a one-horse opened upwardly sleigh” — but maybe exclusively glancingly so; there’s no elevate of Christmas itself too the “sleigh” isn’t Santa’s. (Santa’s sleigh, recall, is an eight-reindeer one, amongst apologies to Rudolph.) Most likely, Pierpoint’s lyrics were inspired past times Medford’s sleigh races — and, most probable (per Snopes), those lyrics were written for Thanksgiving, non Christmas — too for a Dominicus schoolhouse bird at that.

But there’s a work amongst that theory: the residual of the lyrics don’t actually scream “Sunday school.” The vocal doesn’t terminate after the poetry you lot larn equally a immature child. The subsequent verses convey references to a sleigh crash, a drag race-style rivalry amongst some other sleigh driver, too — most un-Sunday school-ish — a Federal Reserve notation virtually galavanting amongst diverse women:

Now the soil is white
Go it piece you’re young
Take the girls tonight
too sing this sleighing song

As the Atlantic points out, “it’s hard to imagine fresh-faced children singing this for a Unitarian Thanksgiving service inwards the 1850s.” Another theory may hold out to a greater extent than likely: that Jingle Bells was a drinking song....

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