Joy Reid shared a viral clip claiming “Jingle Bells” has racist roots, but the scholar cited says her work is being misread and the story is more complicated than the social media version suggests.

Joy Reid reposted a viral video that argues the familiar carol “Jingle Bells” grew out of racist minstrel practices and the biography of its author. The clip ties the song to James Lord Pierpont and to a history of blackface performance, then points to his later service with the Confederacy. That version of events grabbed attention fast and landed in the feeds of people who treat outrage as a hobby.

The viral footage shows a man standing by a plaque in Medford, Massachusetts, where Pierpont is said to have worked on what became “Jingle Bells.” In the clip the narrator connects early performances of the tune to minstrel shows and says those shows used white performers in blackface to mock Black people. The online edit stresses Pierpont’s use of racialized dialect in some writings and notes he fought for the Confederate Army.

In the video, a man in festive attire stares at a plaque in Medford, Massachusetts, where James Lord Pierpont is believed to have written what became known as “Jingle Bells.”

The video makes the argument that the song’s early performances were used to “mock” Black people. It goes on to discuss Pierpont’s history using racialized dialect and slurs in other works. The clip also notes that the writer later fought for the Confederate Army in defense of slavery.

“This is where a racist Confederate soldier wrote ‘Jingle Bells’ to make fun of Black people,” the caption of the first viral video reads. That blunt claim is built to provoke, not to settle a nuanced scholarly debate, and it spread quickly because outrage travels faster than context. The clip also leans on a 2017 academic paper that looks at the song’s place in the minstrel repertoire rather than an allegation about Pierpont’s conscious intent.

The viral narration says Pierpont wrote what was then titled “The One Horse Open Sleigh” while short on money, performing in shows where white actors used blackface to imitate Black people trying winter activities. The clip cites the Cambridge University Press paper “The Story I Must Tell: ‘Jingle Bells’ in the Minstrel Repertoire.” That study examines how popular tunes circulated in minstrel shows and how their histories get shaped over time.

Reid reposted the video with the caption, “Lord have mercy.” The repost sent the clip back into the national conversation and pushed a simple headline into a complex area of cultural history. Social media loves a tidy villain, and this clip gives a neat culprit for people who want to blame the past for discomfort today.

“The legacy of ‘Jingle Bells’ is, as we shall see, a prime example of a common misreading of much popular music from the nineteenth century,” the author of the study, Kyna Hamill, wrote.”Its blackface and racist origins have been subtly and systematically removed from its history.” That passage appears in Hamill’s work, but her broader point was about how songs move through performance culture, not a blunt claim about deliberate racist intent behind every line.

Hamill has pushed back against the viral interpretation and says the paper is being misrepresented. She points out she researched the song’s circulation and performance contexts, not the private motives of its composer. Her clarification undercuts the viral ad copy that treats a complex cultural study as a smoking gun.

“I never said it was racist now,” Hamill told the Boston Herald in 2017. That exact line matters because it shows the scholar herself did not endorse the simplified, accusing narrative the viral clip promotes. Critics on the right and left should both be wary when research is stripped of nuance and turned into a social media headline.

This episode is a reminder that history and culture get weaponized fast, and that academics’ careful language can be turned into clickbait. Whether you’re protective of holiday traditions or eager to reexamine them, the right response is to check sources and read studies fully before declaring a classic song a moral indictment.