James Lord Pierpont · Key of G · Public domain
Opens in the Chord Sheet Maker: transpose to your key, change chords, add strumming patterns, or print a clean copy. No account needed to start.
Jingle Bells was not written as a Christmas song. James Lord Pierpont published it in Boston in 1857 as "The One Horse Open Sleigh," a song about the winter sleigh races that young men ran down the streets of Medford, Massachusetts, complete with a crash in a snowbank and a girl named Fanny Bright. It was sung around Thanksgiving as much as Christmas for decades before the holiday claimed it for good.
It has since collected some remarkable firsts. It was among the earliest songs ever put on record in the 1890s, and in December 1965 it became the first song performed in space, when the crew of Gemini 6 reported a mysterious object with eight smaller objects in front and then played Jingle Bells on a smuggled harmonica and a handful of sleigh bells. The words and melody have been public domain for well over a century.
Four chords: G, C, and D7 do almost all the work, with one A7 in the chorus giving the "one-horse open sleigh, hey!" line its lift. It moves in a bright 4/4, so a simple down, down-up strum at a trotting pace suits it perfectly. Everyone knows the chorus, so a crowd will join you there; the verses tell the sleigh-race story and are worth learning for the second time through. Transpose it to any key in the Chord Sheet Maker if G does not suit the room.
More Christmas strumming: Silent Night chords and lyrics
Further reading: Jingle Bells Was the First Song Played in Space (Smithsonian Magazine)
