Sitting in the back of my dad’s Vega with my little brother, we sang these infamous words, “Jingle Bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg…”  and laughed uproariously.  Surely nothing was as funny as our new words to Jingle Bells.  Well imagine my surprise (or not) as 50 years later, my kids in class are still singing “batmobile just lost a wheel and Joker got away – hey!”.

What is it about Jingle Bells?  While giving a couple of my boys “the eye” for not singing the right words, I looked at my Kinders with their little wrist jingle bells, shaking them for all they’re worth, singing at the top of their lungs with the biggest grins on their faces.  It’s pure joy, and incredibly noisy but I never get tired of it.  I don’t get tired of hearing the excited intake of breath when I pull down the box of red, blue, green and yellow wrist bells and that excitement is only matched by the actual handing out of the bells for them to attach with the velcro.

While they struggle with the words to the verses, the minute they get to the chorus, there’s no stopping them and their little bottoms have difficulty staying on their dots.  They have no idea what a one horse open sleigh is or what bells on bob tails ring, but by golly they’re going to sing about them.  All of the excitement of the holiday season is expressed through this one simple little song.

Originally written to be sung at Thanksgiving, it’s not for sure whether it was written in  Massachusetts or Georgia.  However, Medford Massachusetts claims to be the birthplace because sleigh races were popular in the area.  A little over 100 years later, how would author James Pierpont have known that his song would be the first one sung in space when astronauts Schirra and Stafford sang the song on Gemini 6, accompanying themselves with harmonica and – you guessed it – hand held jingle bells.  All of this happening just before my brother and I sat in the back of that Vega singing the same song.

So who am I to fight it?  For whatever reason, everyone loves Jingle Bells, whether you sing the original words or the infamous smelly batman lyrics.  May you find yourselves laughing all the way with your jingle bells this holiday season.