Jingle Bells

About this arrangement

The chorus of Jingle Bells, the part everyone knows, in C major. The right hand stays in one five-finger position the whole way through: thumb on middle C, fingers on C D E F G, and the tune starts on E with the third finger. Most of it is crotchets and minims; the one rhythm to watch is the dotted note on “all” and “fun”, a long note followed by a quick one. The second half is the same as the first until the last two bars, which come down home to C. The left hand plays one chord at the start of each bar and holds it: C (C E G), F (C F A), G (B D G) and G7 (B D F), all in the same place below middle C, so the hand only changes shape.

Practice tip: Clap and say the rhythm of bars 3 and 5 first: “jin-gle all the way”, “oh what fun it is”. The dotted note is long-short, like a skip. Then play the right hand alone, counting four steady beats in every bar, before adding the left-hand chord on each “one”.

The words

Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. Oh what fun it is to ride in a onehorse open sleigh, hey! Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. Oh what fun it is to ride in a onehorse open sleigh.

A short history

James Lord Pierpont (1822–1893), an American songwriter and church organist, published the song in Boston in 1857 under the title “One Horse Open Sleigh”. Two years later it was reissued as “Jingle Bells, or The One Horse Open Sleigh”. The words are about racing sleighs through the snow and say nothing about Christmas: it was written as a winter song, and the story that Pierpont wrote it for a Thanksgiving concert has never been proved. Medford, Massachusetts, and Savannah, Georgia, where Pierpont was living when it was published, both claim it.

Pierpont’s 1857 chorus had a different, fussier melody from the one everybody sings now; the simpler tune arranged here settled in over the following decades as the song was passed around.

Over time it became one of the best-known Christmas songs in the world, sung in Australia in the middle of summer. In December 1965 the Gemini 6 astronauts played it on a harmonica and small bells, and it is often called the first song played in space.

Quick facts

Tune

James Lord Pierpont, 1857 (the chorus as it is sung today)

Words

James Lord Pierpont, 1857 (chorus, as commonly sung)

Level

Beginner (one hand position, simple left hand)

Key

C major

Time signature

4/4

Length

16 bars

Tempo

Brightly, crotchet = 112

Hands

Both hands on the grand staff: right hand on the treble staff, left hand on the bass staff

Copyright

Public domain tune and words; arrangement by Digital Greenhouse, free for personal, church and classroom use

Questions and answers