Jingle Bells (Batman Smells): An incomplete festive folk-rhyme taxonomy

121 pointsposted 2 months ago
by helsinkiandrew
(loreandordure.com)

67 Comments

caseyross

a month ago

Advanced version from early 2000s (US), incorporating several additional lyrical-flow improvements on phrases seen in the Tom Scott video and TFA:

  "Dashing through the snow - - on a pair of broken skis - - -"
  "Down the hills we go - - - Crashing into trees!"
  "The snow is turning red - - I think I'm almost dead - -"
  "And now I'm in the hospital with stitches in my head! Oh, -"

  "Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg! - - -"
  "Batmobile lost a wheel and the Joker played ballet! HEY!"
  "Jingle bells, Batman smells, Granny got a gun, - - -"
  "? ? ?, and shot a man in 1931! HEY!!!"

raldi

a month ago

I’m guessing the missing part probably ended with an internal rhyme for “man”. Maybe “missed the can” (she was aiming at)?

caseyross

a month ago

Could be, although not that particular completion. The second chorus was rare and I'm kind of unsure about "shot a man". Can't edit previous comment but should have just put it as:

  ? ? ?, ? ? ? ?, in nineteen thirty one. Hey!

user

a month ago

[deleted]

LorenDB

a month ago

The redneck version goes something like "Jingle Bells, shotgun shells, Santa Claus is dead. Grandma got her .44 and shot him in the head."

Don't ask, it's not original with me.

cvwright

a month ago

The redneck version that I heard as a kid was way worse than that. Things I won’t repeat…

culi

a month ago

[flagged]

montag

a month ago

Generalizing a bit, aren’t we? I never heard this version of the rhyme

garbagewoman

a month ago

Your experience isn’t universal either

jdminhbg

a month ago

> My mother grew up in the Soviet Bloc

Ah yes, famous racial utopias, all of them.

gostsamo

a month ago

Surprisingly, communism was antiracist which explains why it was popular outside the US. There is the fact that many communists were racist on a personal level, but the state policies were inclusive due to the very nature of the ideology. As someone who also comes from the former block, I think that communism was a bad idea with terrible implementation but it also had its moments no matter what the US propaganda is trying to present it as.

canjobear

a month ago

Are there particular successes that you have in mind? Because what comes to my mind is stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Crimean_Tat...

gostsamo

a month ago

Yep, worker's rights, universal health care, women's rights (voting, divorce, abortion, generous maternity leave). Compared to Switzerland which allowed women voting rights in the seventies, communism was putting uncomfortable comparisons at some moments. If you wonder why communism was attractive, it wasn't just because of propaganda or because people were stupid, but because communism was addressing actual problems of the time that the christian conservative establishment of the west was preferring not to handle.

The fact that you put the tatars as the only thing to know about communism shows that you've learned one thing and found it sufficient. At the same time, the link you share shows how later communist leaders acknowledged Stalin's actions as a crime... I'm not here to defend communism though (mainly because it is not defendable), just to provide a perspective beyond the standard tropes.

m4rtink

a month ago

Well, voting rights in Soviet Union & the whole eastern block were not really that useful. :P

dijit

a month ago

People can’t think anything good of communism because they’re conditioned to feel that way.

Whats interesting is how equal it was for everyone, one comment I got when asking people who lived through the soviet era was that.

“there’s no advantage given to any religion” (hence, new years being the traditional family get together time). and “we were all comrades, men and women”. A lot of what they hear from the US about gender equality falls on deaf ears because thats what they had and they were told was bad.

A weird perspective, but certainly an interesting one.

It’s always difficult to hear things that doesn’t fit our narrative.

m4rtink

a month ago

Even if you can point to some positive outcomes the is the main issue of the whole system being so easy to corrupt and coopt for personal gain & power trips.

You might get lower infant mortality, better access to healtcare ans aeducation (as long as the party considers you worthy) but you will almost immediately get crooks and incompetents in leadership positions, whose only qualities are the set of morals to get to a position of power no matter the cost.

And those leadership positions are appointed by or even part of The Party - and the party is never wrong. There is no free press to critisize them and if you do speak up, then you are logically an spy from The West, undermining the perfect communist utopia & need to be punished.

Only if someone is really epically incompetent they might get purged by the inner circles, but it is even more likely they will purge someone actually doing things right who still has some morals left.

You could be the most ideological communist trzing to build the bright future & will still end up sidelined or worse by the corrupt pigs holding to all the power in the communist state.

When the Soviets crashed the Prague Spring in the 1968 there were some interbrigadists that went to fight agains Francos fascists in Spain during the interwar period with international communist brigades. Only now they were watching soviet soldiers shoot people in the streets and crush them with their tanks...

gostsamo

a month ago

> You might get lower infant mortality, better access to healtcare ans aeducation

literally, "what has communism done for us?!"

In a thread where everyone agrees that communism was a bad thing, you come up with this one fact that proves ?

user

a month ago

[deleted]

rini17

a month ago

Have you heard about Roma? The communist states tried to help them but in a hamfisted ways like separating kids from parents. They did nothing to actually resolve racism. Many Roma ended up in squalor in segregated settlements. That goes on to this day and improves very slowly. It definitely was not "its moment".

estimator7292

a month ago

Blaming Roma hate on communism is like blaming the Nazis for antisemitism.

If you believe that for even a moment you need to read a book.

rini17

a month ago

Depends. Written by whom?

gostsamo

a month ago

So nice of you to teach me about the roma. I was sure to have never heard about them. /s

The history of gypsies and their segregation is much older though and the regimes inherited much of their attitude based on prior prejudices. The treatment differed in different times and locations. I've heard accounts of casual police brutality and of good integration in the local community and of a "leave everything as it is without engaging with hard problems". None of those was sanctioned on the bases of race theory and in fact the official stance was for equality. Compare it to the US where it was part of local and state legislation. On the other hand, the higher ups in the regimes were often repainted nationalists and common criminals of old so adherence to the ideals was often perfunctory and positive actions and outcomes were falling short of what was possible.

rini17

a month ago

If it's part of legislation, you can fight it. If the official ideology is equality and racial prejudices "don't exist", then any problems are suppressed and you can't do anything.

Soviet union was defacto an apartheid when you consider how non-white ethnics were treated in practice. They just were so good at suppressing everything that it was never "an issue".

cgriswald

a month ago

Must have been other Grandma, since Santa Claus killed Grandma in a hit-and-run. Revenge maybe?

andrepd

a month ago

There's also corrupted versions in other languages than English! I'm from Portugal and there's also semi-bawdy lyrics that somehow spread across the country organically across hundreds of miles.

Sophira

2 months ago

Tom Scott did a video in 2020 on the exact same subject and premise[0], and it's super interesting. I'd recommend it to anybody who enjoyed this article, honestly.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5u9JSnAAU4 - Tom Scott, 'I Asked 64,182 People About “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells”. Here's What I Found Out.'

modeless

a month ago

Yeah the Tom Scott video is based on significantly more data. Seems weird that this person wouldn't have found it when researching this topic.

robrain

a month ago

Thank you for remembering and sharing this - I knew I'd seen it before, I just couldn't recall where. Mr Scott is and was (and maybe will be?) the obligatory xkcd of nerd experiments.

hecanjog

a month ago

"Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg. The Batmobile lost its wheel and the Joker ran away." is the version I heard as a kid in the American midwest. It's fascinating to me that this rhyme was international at a time in my life before I'd ever heard about the internet.

Edit: Oh, it's simple. This is the version broadcast on The Simpsons TV show in 1989 and I must have heard it second-hand from my fellow students who were allowed to watch the Simpsons.

cgriswald

a month ago

We were singing this before the The Simpsons, so I wonder if it was the show that made it international or it already was that way.

jephson

a month ago

I recall being 6 years old and singing the "Wonder Woman lost her bosoms" variant at primary school in New Zealand. This was 1982 so definitely sung internationally prior to The Simpsons.

paulmooreparks

a month ago

Same. I was singing this in the very early 80's, if not late 70's.

NedF

a month ago

[dead]

shagie

a month ago

Tangent - Monktoberfest 2016: Bryan Cantrill - Oral Tradition in Software Engineering https://youtu.be/4PaWFYm0kEw?si=avSAlBsCVUzjW2xo&t=163 (only 2:43 in ... so after the relevant clip, start over and you'll catch back up quickly)

> so let's just do a little experiment here ... um ... so if I say Jingle Bells Batman Smells you say ...

> okay where did you learn that? If that's not a movie reference; it's not not from a TV show; you learn that the way I learned that you learned that - on the playground. You learned that from another eight-year-old another seven-year-old ...

ItsBob

2 months ago

My wife and I had a good chuckle at these. The one we both remember is the one about Penguin losing his lollipop and buying a Milky Way.

However, we both agreed that when comparing the UK(ish) and US(ish) variants, the UK ones are much more fun and colourful: The US ones seem a little, erm, boring!

jimnotgym

a month ago

I heard it in the UK before the Simpsons.

Robin flew away

Mr silly bit his willy on the M1 motorway.

I seem to remember hearing the standard US one in the bit at the end of The Cosby Show, which was on free to air TV soon after getting home from school.

jimnotgym

a month ago

Edit:

Robin laid an egg. Batmobile lost its wheel and the commissioner broke his leg...I think.

nephihaha

2 months ago

Does "While Shepherds Washed their Socks by Night" count?

jimnotgym

a month ago

While Shepherds watched their kidney beans

All boiling in a pot

A load of soot came tumbling down

and spoiled the blinking lot

Alternative. The Angel of the Lord came down and eat the blinking lot.

Definitely British. Evidenced by the term 'kidney bean'

phantasmish

a month ago

I’m in the US and was able to look straight up from where I’m sitting at a shelf of canned food and spot a store brand can labeled “kidney beans”. We call them that, too.

nephihaha

a month ago

I know this as "when Shepherds washed their socks by night."

randycupertino

a month ago

How about the add-ons/call-backs to Rudolph the Red nosed reindeer:

Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer *(reindeer)*

Had a very shiny nose *(like a light bulb)*

And if you ever saw it *(saw it)*

You would even say it glows *(like a light bulb)*

All of the other reindeer *(reindeer)*

Used to laugh and call him names *(like Pinochio)*

They never let poor Rudolph *(Rudolph)*

Play in any reindeer games *(like Monopoly)*

Then one foggy Christmas Eve Santa came to say *(Ho Ho Ho)*

Rudolph with your nose so bright Won't you guide my sleigh tonight? Then all the reindeer loved him *(loved him)*

And they shouted out with glee *(yippee)*

"Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer *(reindeer)*

You'll go down in history!" *(Like George Washington!")*

kazinator

a month ago

It's interesting how so many of the versions have an end rhyme with "ay", even when it doesn't match anything in the twisted tune itself.

It's obviously rhyming with the original song, which has "all the way" and "sleigh".

I.e. you need at least the final "ay" in order to properly evoke that phonetic aspect of the original.

themaninthedark

a month ago

RING THEIR BELLS

(aka "The Munchkin's Theme" ) (to the tune of "Jingle Bells")

Slashing through the Orcs

With a good two-handed blade

Over corpses we go

And through the gore we wade

Mace on helmet rings

Making bodies fly

What fun to sing our Slaying Song

And watch these suckers DIE!

https://hack.org/~mc/writings/hackerdom/ring-their-bells.tex...

khedoros1

a month ago

I think I found, and memorized, that about 25 years ago. There was a list of other songs in the file too.

themaninthedark

a month ago

Yes, I distinctly remember the lyrics in one with a line "Jack Frost ripping of your nose" but the quick Google just gave me Misheard lyrics....

khedoros1

a month ago

There was one "Walking through the graveyard at midnight" ("stitching up some zombies" ?) or something, with a necromancer collecting zombie parts. To the tune of "walking in a winter wonderland".

Not what I was looking for, but I found these: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJtJNNXaEYrrZP99qBx-k...

From this guy's page: https://www.paperspencils.com/category/my-projects/dd-christ...

Ah! I think I found the ones that I was thinking of:

https://archive.org/stream/netbookofbardsongs/BardSongsNetBo...

Nothing about Jack Frost or "ripping", unfortunately.

crtified

a month ago

Growing up in northern Queensland (Australia) in the 1980's, our primary school boy's version was :

"Jingle Bells, Batman smells, Robin flew away, Wonder Woman lost her boobs - flying TAA."

Context note : TAA or Trans Australia Airlines was a major Australian domestic airline of the time, later merged into Qantas.

QuadmasterXLII

a month ago

Growing up, the lyrics always included the verse as well as the chorus: “… and the joker got away! // Batman in the kitchen // Robin in the hall // Joker in the bathroom // peeing on the wall. // …” but I can’t remember how it ended. does anyone else remember this?

cgriswald

a month ago

We usually ended it there, but I vaguely recall a version where Batman slips on it (the pee) and breaks his balls; I don't recall the actual verse though.

baobun

2 months ago

Someone should tell the author that Robin laying an egg is the source of Batman's smell.

philiplu

a month ago

Huh, my childhood version was almost the standard US one, but the ending was “and Alfred saved the day”, not shown in the article’s diagram. This would have been learned in the Midwest US (St. Louis vicinity), late 1960s.

gota

a month ago

All I can think of reading this is how many versions - and how enriched with genius local detail - of the Illiad, Gilgamesh, etc there must have been when they were strictly oral traditions

ChrisMarshallNY

a month ago

A classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XU6zrGyUUo

randycupertino

a month ago

Does anyone else remember the 12 pains of Christmas?

RIGGING UP THE LIGHTS!!

Yo-ho, sending Christmas cards.

The damn lightS!!!

Facing my in laws!

One light goes out, they all go out!!!!!!!

FiiiiiIIIIIIiiiive months of bills!!

She's a witch, I hate her.

You're so smart, YOU rig up the lights!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMxgttJpbZE

icehawk

a month ago

It was several years after first time I heard this that, that i realized that #3 was an impression of Archie Bunker with: "Edith, get me a beer, huh.", "oh jeez look at this" and "oh who's got the terlit paper."

ChrisMarshallNY

a month ago

There’s probably not too many folks here, that even remember that show.

R.I.P. Meathead

mxmilkiib

2 months ago

fwiw, from North East Fife (Scotland), it has been ('89/'90) "the Batmobile lost a wheel, and landed in the Tay", the Tay being the big volume river between Fife (the Scottie dog shaped bit on the East) n Dundee/Tayside (with the Tay having come via Perth etc)

nephihaha

a month ago

Never heard that round there. I wouldn't count Dundee as "north east Scotland" either. Angus maybe. That's where they begin to sound like north easterners.

bethekidyouwant

a month ago

It’s almost striking to read something not written by AI

bryanrasmussen

a month ago

from The Carols of Halloween - https://medium.com/luminasticity/the-carols-of-halloween-47c...

Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells why won’t they shut up

Being chased by werewolves, ain’t this just my luck

Dashing through the gloom

In a one-horse open cart

Trying to escape the doom

Where Werewolves eat my heart

You had to read the tome

And utter the mad curse

Now if we get home

I’m sure it’s in a hearse

Ohhhh…

Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells why won’t they shut up

Being chased by werewolves, ain’t this just my luck