Upstate NY (Rochester): Jingle Bells gets canceled

This is so absurd.

History shows white actors in blackface performed "Jingle Bells"; that's not the only reason New York school removed it from the curriculum.

When she discovered "Jingle Bells" was performed publicly for the first time by white actors wearing blackface, Kyna Hamill had no idea her scholarly paper would be used to silence the holiday classic in an elementary school.

But it was.

And Hamill, a professor and director of Boston University's Core Curriculum, can't quite believe the dustup her work caused at Council Rock Primary School in Brighton, New York.

She told The Rochester Beacon in an email that she is "actually quite shocked" that her scholarly deep dive on the origin of "Jingle Bells" caused the school to "remove the song from the repertoire."

"I, in no way, recommended that it stopped being sung by children," she told the news outlet. "My article tried to tell the story of the first performance of the song, I do not connect this to the popular Christmas tradition of singing the song now.

**********************

There was never any discussion in elementary classrooms about whether it was appropriate for children to sing "Jingle Bells." The tune came up for staff review after a member of the community asked if the music curriculum would be changed as part of the district's ongoing work to develop culturally responsive policies, McGowan wrote.

Allison Rioux, the school district's assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, said in an email to The Rochester Beacon that the holiday carol may be more deeply rooted in racism than suggested by its performance by white people wearing blackface.

It's well-documented that slaves wore collars with bells to deter them from running away, and Rioux said "some suggest" the origin of the song may be connected to that practice.

So, so absurd.

Comments

[maria]

This isn't really about cancelling Jingle Bells or racism....it's about the slow removal of Christmas---and anything associated with Christmas. For some, the ultimate goal is its desired destruction.