I’ve been reading Games and Songs of American Children by William Wells Newell, a Dover reprint of the 1903 edition. I find it fascinating how games are transmitted from generation to generation, games like “Tag”, “Button button who has the button?”, “The church and the steeple” or “Odd or even?” These games are not learned from teachers in a school, or read in a book, or typically even taught from parents. For the most part they are transmitted from child to child, from an older sibling, or a peer, through the most casual pathways. Games like this have spread across the country and beyond without any overt effort. In a way, it is like language.

So, that made me think about the “classic” children’s Christmas parody of “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells”. I assume there is no part of this country where these words are not known to every child. But it exists in no songbook. Who first sang these words, and when and where was it done? How fast did it travel? I think if a sufficient survey was done of adults of various ages, as to when and where they recall first hearing these lyrics, one could reconstruct the migration of this bit of modern folklore. Those who heard it earliest would have heard it closer to its source.

It would help my little research if any old-timers (say over 40 years old) left a comment indicating what version you heard first, where you heard it (town and state) and approximately what year you heard it. I’d like to figure out what the original version truly was, and where it came from and how fast it spread.

There are several variants of this song. The one I grew up with was:

Jingle Bells, Batman smells

Robin laid an egg.

The Batmobile lost a wheel

and the Joker got away (Hey!)

Other commonly reported versions include:

Shotgun shells, Santa smells,

Rudolf ran away,

Oh what fun it is to ride

in a beat-up Chevrolet!

or

Jingle bells, shotgun shells,

Santa Claus is dead,

Rudolf got a .22

and shot him in the head.

or

Jingle Bells, Shotgun Shells,

BB’s in the air.

Oh, what fun it is to ride

in Santa’s underwear!”

or

Jingle Bells, Batman smells

Robin laid an egg,

The Batmobile lost a wheel,

and the Joker joined ballet , Hey!

Check the comments for other variations. Some have alternate lyrics to the verse as well as the chorus.

Also, if you are interesting in crazy Christmas music, then here are two CD’s, filled with zany holiday classics, for your consideration:





12 December 2015 Update

Nine years after I wrote this post I was prompted by Robert Evans over at Cracked to offer updated thoughts on the question of the origins of “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells.” We both went through the comments on this post, correlated the dates and places, and I then did further research in newspaper archives to try to locate the earliest printed occurrence of these lines. What we found out might surprise you. More over at The Secret True History of “Jingle Bells Batman Smells.”