"Jingle Bells" is an American song and one of the most commonly sung Christmas songs in the world. It was written by James Lord Pierpont. It is an unsettled question where and when Pierpont originally composed the song that would become known as "Jingle Bells". It was published under the title "The One Horse Open Sleigh" in September 1857. Although it has no original connection to Christmas, it became associated with winter and Christmas in the 1860s and 1870s, and it was featured in a variety of parlor song and college anthologies in the 1880s. It was first recorded in 1889 on an Edison cylinder; this recording, believed to be the first Christmas record, is lost, but an 1898 recording—also from Edison Records—survives.

It has been claimed that the song was originally written to be sung by a Sunday school choir for Thanksgiving, or as a drinking song. However, these claims are not supported by any primary sources. According to more recent research, the song was originally written as a minstrel song satirizing Black participation in northern winter activities.

James Lord Pierpont originally copyrighted the song with the name "The One Horse Open Sleigh" on September 16, 1857. The songwriting credit given was "Song and Chorus written and composed by J. Pierpont." Possibly intended as a drinking song, it did not become a Christmas song until decades after it was first performed. Pierpont dedicated the song to John P. Ordway, Esq., an organizer of a troupe called "Ordway's Aeolians".

It is an unsettled question where and when Pierpont originally composed the song that would become known as "Jingle Bells". A plaque at 19 High Street in the center of Medford Square in Medford, Massachusetts, commemorates the "birthplace" of "Jingle Bells", and claims that Pierpont wrote the song there in 1850, at what was then the Simpson Tavern. Previous local history narratives claim the song was inspired by the town's popular sleigh races during the 19th century. Researcher Kyna Hamil proposes that the song was composed in Boston, before Pierpont moved to Savannah in the fall of 1857.

The song was republished in 1859 by Oliver Ditson and Company, 277 Washington Street, Boston, with the new title "Jingle Bells; or, The One Horse Open Sleigh". Its sheet music cover featured a drawing of sleigh bells around the title. Sleigh bells were strapped across the horse to make the jingle, jangle sound.^{[citation needed]}

"Jingle Bells" was first performed on September 15, 1857, at Ordway Hall in Boston by blackface minstrel performer Johnny Pell. The song was in the then-popular style or genre of "sleighing songs". Pierpont's lyrics are strikingly similar to lines from many other popular sleigh-riding songs of the time; researcher Kyna Hamill argued that this, along with his constant need for money, led him to compose and release the song solely as a financial enterprise: "Everything about the song is churned out and copied from other people and lines from other songs—there's nothing original about it."

By the time the song was released and copyrighted, Pierpont had relocated to Savannah, Georgia, to serve as organist and music director of that city's Unitarian Church (now Unitarian Universalist), where his brother, Rev. John Pierpont Jr., served as minister. In August 1857, Pierpont married Eliza Jane Purse, daughter of the mayor of Savannah. Pierpont remained in Savannah and never returned north.

James Lord Pierpont's 1857 composition "Jingle Bells" became one of the most performed and most recognizable secular holiday songs ever written, not only in the United States, but around the world. In recognition of this achievement, James Lord Pierpont was voted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.^{[citation needed]}