Christmas Time is here, so we’re being treated to the annual loony leftist attempt to take all joy out of the Holiday season.  For many years, we were beset by liberal attempts to remove any semblance of religion from December 25th.

Liberals fought to remove mangers, and even Christmas trees, from public property on First Amendment grounds.  This was nonsense, of course, as the First Amendment prohibits the government from establishing a State religion, but was never intended to remove all religion from public spaces.  They even opposed hybrid holiday displays which featured both a creche and menorahs because they might offend atheists.  There’s really no pleasing these pricks.

One of the items on the long list of things liberals told us we weren’t allowed to say was “Merry Christmas.”  Too Christian, they said.  What if a person so addressed didn’t celebrate Christmas?  Such a person might be made to feel uncomfortable.  “Oh, the humanity!”  Think about it.  Regardless of your religion or lack of religion, Christmas is a holiday.  Even atheists get the day off.  All saying “Merry Christmas” to such people means is, “Enjoy December 25.”  What’s offensive about that?

The Left grudgingly permitted us to utter the words, “Happy Holidays” for a while there, but now they’re determined to ensure that even secular holidays aren’t happy.  In order to make sure that there’s no “Joy to the World,” the inappropriately named Joy Reid has warned would-be Christmas revelers that “Jingle Bells,” one of our most beloved Christmas songs is – wait for it – racist.

That’s right.  Reid has announced that the song was written and performed purely as means to mock black people.  Reid’s rant is based on the research of Kyna Hamill, a Boston University professor.  Hamill traced the origins of the song to its composition in 1857 by one James Lord Pierpont, who did support the Confederacy in the Civil War.  The song, originally entitled “One Horse Open Sleigh” was performed in minstrel shows.

These facts by themselves lend nothing to the Reid claim that Jingle Bells is racist.  Minstrel shows surely were racist by today’s standards, but there’s no bright line test which declares any melody used in such a show 168 years ago to be taboo today.  The context matters.

In preparation for this piece, I consulted a list of minstrel show song titles.  Based on their titles alone, many if not most of them were offensive then, and would be bias crimes now.  Yet many of our popular songs were once featured in minstrel shows.  “Oh, Susannah” and “Camptown Races” to name two.  The theme from the movie The Sting, “The Entertainer,” was a minstrel show tune.  It was written by famous Ragtime  composer, Scott Joplin, who was black.

If a simple melody can be racist, then the Kentucky Derby must be racist, because when the horses step on the track, the band plays, “My Old Kentucky Home,” a minstrel show song.  The point is, it’s not the tune that offends, it’s the context.  Professor Hamill long ago weighed in to clarify her research.  She noted it was first performed in blackface, but did not identify racist intent in its composition, and did not claim its lyrics carried racial meaning.  Hamill told the Boston Herald in 2017, “I never said it was racist now.  Nowhere did I say that.”  But Joy Reid sure did.

And it’s a good thing Professor Hamill took the racist label off of “Jingle Bells” because lots of performers stood to be embarrassed for recording such an offensive song.  Over the years, “Jingle Bells” has been recorded by Andrea Bocelli and Luciano Pavarotti.  But they’re not Americans, so I guess they get a pass.  It was performed by the Sesame Street Cast.  That’s right.  The Corporation for Public Broadcasting subjected “The Children” to a potentially racist song.

The song also has been recorded by scores of AOC’s.  Not the AOC in the news today, but Artists of Color, including Smokey Robinson, The Miracles, Booker T and the MG’s, Count Basie, the Ray Charles Singers, Nat King Cole, Natalie Cole, Sammy Davis, Jr., Fats Domino, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Al Green, Earl Grant, Lena Horne, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Wynton Marsalis, Johnny Mathis, Lou Rawls, Chubby Checker, and Fats Waller.  Good thing they didn’t know they were perpetuating the vile minstrel show legacy.

Although the professor who sparked the controversy  cleared up the record in 2017, eight years later, Joy Reid is still grinding her racist ax.  I guess since being fired by MSNBC she has little else to do.  Although the DEI Woke nonsense has been discredited lately, Old Joy hasn’t gotten the message.  In truth, stirring the racial animus pot is all she knows how to do.

A couple of years ago those of her ilk tried to tell us “Baby It’s Cold Outside” was a song celebrating date rape.  Today it’s “Jingle Bells.”  Any song could be next.  It’s a wonder “White Christmas” is still allowed on the air.  A white Christmas?  “Just like the ones we used to know?”  It’s clearly a longing for the days of Jim Crow.

“God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” should be barred on several counts.  First of all, it mentions God.  We can’t allow that on Christmas.  Then, it’s too gender specific.  And why only gentlemen?  Don’t women get any rest?  And there’s no mention of transgender people at all.  It has to go.

Then there’s “We Three Kings.”  Remember the lyrics?  “We three Kings of Orient are?”  You can’t say “oriental.”  That’s racist.  And “we three kings of Asian descent,” is no better.  Didn’t we just have all the No Kings protests?  It’s got to go.

“Oh Come Oh Ye Faithful?”  Certainly not.  You can’t ask the faithful to come, and then fail to invite the unfaithful as well.  Where’s the equity in that?  And the song encourages people to “come to Bethlehem,” which may not be such a great idea nowadays.  Bethlehem is a hotbed of political strife in Israel.  A tour company says you “should be safe in daylight hours.”  So if you’re planning to see the Christmas “star of wonder” after dark, you could have a problem.

As for Joy Reid, what’s to be said?  Despite her Harvard education, she’s no more than a cheap provocateur.  It’s a shame, because with her platform, she could be trying to better the lives of black Americans by improving education and reducing the violence that takes 10,000 black lives every year.  Instead, she’s preoccupied with the America of 1857, the year the Supreme Court denied Dred Scott and all enslaved black people citizenship.

Much of our history isn’t pretty.  We should never forget it, but neither should we be prisoners to it.  There are plenty of things about our society to be dissatisfied with.  A beloved Christmas song isn’t one of them.

As for me, I still “like those J-I-N-G-L-E bells.”  Merry Christmas.