I’m not sure why “Jingle Bells” got the axe. I never much cared for it, but it isn’t religious and as far as I recall it doesn’t embody any ethnic stereotypes. Maybe the problem is that even secular Christmas songs are no longer welcome.
No seatbelts?
The real problems are unaccountable teachers, administrators and school boards, so-called “Progressives” (substitute Leftists, Socialists or Communists) who do as they please.
Jingle Bells is actually a Thanksgiving song.
Hmm...Noah Webster’s dictionary of 1830 defined minstrel as “a singer and musical performer on instruments.” - nothing necessarily racial about it.
The earliest cite in google books I could find was 1876.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Carmina_Collegensia/860QAAAAYAAJ
which put it in a section called “Serenades, Glees, and Minstrel Songs.”
So if this is the same source, how did she know whether it was a serenade, a glee, or a minstrel song, and did minstrel song mean the same in 1857 as it does today?
Van Johnson, not Sammy Davis Jr., played The Minstrel in Batman (1966).