When Kyna Hamill wrote an academic paper on the popular Christmas carol’s roots in minstrelsy she was not prepared for internet trolling and Fox News fame

Kyna Hamill aimed to shed light on a long-hidden history, detailing the racist origins of a popular Christmas carol. Instead the university lecturer ended up the target of rightwing trolling, after her academic research on Jingle Bells was twisted into an example of liberal overreach.

Carol, Bah! Humbug!: How to rewrite A Christmas Carol for the digital age Read more

Hate-filled emails flooded her inbox, Hamill of Boston University told the Guardian. “I was told that I was trying to ruin Christmas for children who weren’t allowed to sing the song any more and that I was ruining the Jingle Bell festival in our town.”

Hamill had probed the origins of the popular carol, hoping to settle a friendly rivalry between Medford, Massachusetts, and Savannah, Georgia, over where Jingle Bells was written.

About two years ago she stumbled across a rather different story. The song, initially known as One Horse Open Sleigh, was first performed in blackface in a minstrel show in Boston in September 1857, she discovered.

Hamill published the findings in a peer-reviewed paper in September, noting that during the past 160 years the song had become an example of music whose “blackface and racist origins have been subtly and systematically removed from its history”.

The song was written by James Pierpont, who badly needed work after failing at several other professional ventures. “Pierpont capitalized on minstrel music and entered upon a ‘safe’ ground for satirizing black participation in northern winter activities,” she wrote.

Last year she detailed her findings to local media, yielding a front page story in the Boston Globe and no backlash.

This year, however, was a different story. “Newest Christmas controversy has social justice warriors claiming this classic holiday carol is racist,” a Fox News host told viewers earlier this month. Breitbart warned that Hamill was urging people to “shun the jaunty tune”.

Hamill said much reporting of her research was incorrect and laden with “all sorts of absolutely absurd” accusations.

“It was obviously an easy way to bait and politicise Christmas,” she said. “Which seems to be what extreme political outlets want to do.” She had never said that Jingle Bells was now racist nor had she sought to discourage people from singing the tune, she pointed out.

Still, the backlash was fierce. Her name soon became a hashtag on Twitter, racking up tweets as users opined on her findings. Hundreds of hate-laced emails filled her inbox. Others tried to reach her by phone or through social media.

She replied to a few of the emails, at times receiving an apology. “Despite the fact that a lot of the hate mail was really horrible, people just want to communicate and they’re stuck in this echo chamber,” she said. “So I think people just want to be heard and nobody seems to be listening any more.”

Ironically the controversy has sent interest in her research on Jingle Bells soaring, placing it currently among the most-read articles on Cambridge University Press.

“If anything, this irresponsible reporting has drawn more attention to an academic article that would usually just sit in a journal that very few would read,” she said.

Days into the backlash, she had no regrets about publishing the work. “I was doing what an academic does,” said Hamill. “I was trying to do the best research that I could and write it up. I did not have an agenda for Christmas, that’s for sure.”



