SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Holidays might mean a dusting of snow, candy canes, hot cocoa and the sound of...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JINGLE BELLS")
UNIDENTIFIED CHORUS: (Singing) J-I-N-G-L-E bells.
SIMON: Ah, jingle bells. Don't worry. Not going to sing along, but I would like to pose a question. How did those bells become a symbol of this season? WEEKEND EDITION producer Danny Hensel has the story.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JINGLE BELLS")
FRANK SINATRA: (Singing) Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.
DANNY HENSEL, BYLINE: Those jingle bells Sinatra's singing about are much older than the song. In fact, they're older than Christmas itself.
MATTHEW ZELLER: There are Biblical mentions of jingle bells in the Old Testament.
HENSEL: That's Matthew Zeller, the curator for Europe at the Musical Instrument Museum in Arizona.
ZELLER: And there's evidence of Jingle Bells in ancient Sumer and Babylonia and Assyria and Egypt. There's also very ancient evidence of jingle bells in India as well.
HENSEL: People have attached jingle bells to animals, not just reindeer, to scare off predators or to use like an old-timey car horn. Put sleigh bells on horses, you hear them coming. And by the way, sleigh bells and jingle bells - they're the same thing. Zeller says there's no clear moment when jingle bells transformed from a tool to an instrument, but he guesses the back half of the 19th century.
CICI BEVIN: The way that sleigh bells are made today is quite different than the way sleigh bells were made historically.
HENSEL: Cici Bevin is president of Bevin Bells, a bellmaking company going back six generations in East Hampton, Connecticut. Nicknamed Bell Town USA, East Hampton at one point had about 20 different bell companies. Sleigh bells used to be made by melting down steel or brass and pouring it into a mold.
BEVIN: Today, that sleigh bell starts out just as a flat sheet of metal, and then it gets cut into a shape, and then it gets formed into a circle. And then a little ball bearing is dropped inside. We call that a jinglet. And then they close the top of the bell, and that's now the finished product.
HENSEL: The bell business has changed a lot, Bevin says. Their catalogs used to feature 20 pages of jingle bells with different numbers of bells attached to a handle.
BEVIN: Today, we make three sizes of sleigh bells, so it can fit a half a page in a catalog.
HENSEL: And how those bells are being used is different, too.
BEVIN: Our primary sales for sleigh bells - one of our biggest ones is, believe it or not doggy door bells, and then, of course, decorating - hanging them up at Christmas and leather straps with sleigh bells on them.
(SOUNDBITE OF GUSTAV MAHLER'S "SYMPHONY NO. 4")
HENSEL: Around the turn of the last century, Gustav Mahler's 4th Symphony helped establish the jingle bell in classical music, says Matthew Zeller.
ZELLER: And you also find it in Ralph Vaughan Williams' 2nd Symphony, the "London Symphony, " and Prokofiev's "Lieutenant Kije" suite.
(SOUNDBITE OF SERGEI PROKOFIEV'S "LIEUTENANT KIJE")
HENSEL: It was during this time - also the big band era - that Christmas music was starting to go pop, but the jingle bell really began to shine in rock 'n' roll.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JINGLE BELL ROCK")
BOBBY HELMS: (Singing) Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock.
ANNIE ZALESKI: You have this great opening guitar riff, and then it gives way, and jingle bells have center stage.
HENSEL: Annie Zaleski is a music journalist and author of the book "This Is Christmas, Song By Song." She also credits the Phil Spector Christmas album with establishing the modern sound of the holiday.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FROSTY THE SNOWMAN")
THE RONETTES: (Singing) Frosty the Snowman was a happy, jolly soul.
ZALESKI: Phil Spector almost gave jingle bells permission to be in a lot of these songs. And I think just the way he also kind of produced everything, too, his production approach, jingle bells just really fit that because they can be very twinkling. They can be almost icy in a way, but they can also be very comforting.
HENSEL: Zaleski says of all the Christmas classics, there's one song that uses jingle bells especially well.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS YOU")
MARIAH CAREY: (Singing) You, yeah. I don't want a lot for Christmas. There is just one thing I need.
ZALESKI: That song, you know, celebrates love and celebrates Christmas, and jingle bells really kind of represent that exuberance.
HENSEL: There's a reason they're so ubiquitous at this time of year.
ZALESKI: Jingle bells are a really versatile instrument that, you know, for being as simple as they are, can convey so many emotions depending on how you play them, depending on how you put them in the mix, how you produce them. And so I think that's part of our enduring fascination with them as well.
HENSEL: Danny Hensel, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS YOU")
CAREY: (Singing) All I want for Christmas is you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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