Professor: Jingle Bells has racist roots

amsterdam - An American professor has aroused the anger of many Americans as her research on the song 'Jingle Bells' roams the internet. The song would be the first to be sung by white singers who turned their faces dark.

'The racial origin of Jingle Bells has been subtly and systematically removed from history,' says Kyna Hamill, theater professor at Boston University, according to Fox News in her study.

Hamill began to explore the origins of the song because four places claim the very first Jingle Bells ever. Where did it really start? Hamill wanted to know that. During her research she found that the first song, then called 'One Horse Open Sleigh', was performed by white minstrels (a sort of singing troubadours) in Boston that had blackened themselves, with burned cork. In the text and the music there would still be traces of that racist origin.

Many Americans react angry. 'Jingle Bells racist, White Christmas too, Baby it's cold outside is sexist,' someone writes on Twitter. 'What happened to the America where I grew up, where people did not wake up every day to find something they were offended with?'

Professor Hamill has already indicated to be sorry about the noise. 'In 1857 it was staged by 'blackface' and then it was racist,' she says. 'I never said that it is now racist. My point was that the number was never studied properly, because it has become commonplace as a Christmas number. '

The professor also emphasizes that she never said that people would no longer have to sing the song.