Jingle Bells
Primer Level, C
“Jingle Bells” was written in 1857 to celebrate sleigh racing — a popular winter sport in New England at the time — and was originally intended for Thanksgiving, not Christmas. Two cities, one in Massachusetts and one in Georgia, both claim to be its birthplace, a dispute that remains cheerfully unresolved. In 1965 it became the first song ever performed in space, when astronauts on Gemini 6 played it on a smuggled harmonica.
