Be honest, when you hear the opening to “Jingle Bells” what lyrics spring to mind first? Is it “Jingle Bells, Jingle all the way” or “Jingle Bells, Batman smells?” It’s OK, you’re among friends here.
Yes, the “Batman Smells” song is one of those ancient traditions of childhood that no one’s entirely sure where it started, with each generation certain that they were the ones who invented it. So popular is the irreverent festive rhyme that it’s hard to track down the song’s origins, but let’s do our best impression of Batman himself and investigate where and when the tune truly originated.
Where does “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells” come from?
For ’90s kids, the answer may seem simple: it’s The Simpsons, right? In the very first scene of the very first episode of the immortal animated series, Bart spoils his school’s Christmas pageant by loudly singing “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells”… at least until he’s collared by Principal Skinner.
The Simpsons‘ connection to the song doesn’t stop there either. Bart continued his love affair with the tune in season 5’s “$pringfield,” in which he hires Robert Goulet to sing it for the kids in his treehouse. With Skinner not around, Goulet gets to croon the full chorus.
Just to prove how popular the song was in the early ’90s, it even made its way into an actual Batman adaptation. Batman: The Animated Series wasted no time in having Mark Hamill’s Joker sing it. In fact, just like Bart, the Clown Prince of Crime belted it out in his very first scene while escaping from Arkham Asylum. Some B:TAS mistakenly believe this scene pre-dates the song’s Simpsons appearance as it seems tailor-made for it.
And yet, don’t be fooled, The Simpsons cannot take credit for originating the song. Blogger Rob Wier asked his readers to share their earliest recollections of hearing the rhyme back in 2006. In 2015, Cracked.com crawled through the comments that had amassed over the past decade and the oldest they uncovered was someone who claimed to have sung it with other kids in the playground in San Diego, California… in 1966.
The user, SunnyD, claimed that the chant was inspired by the then-ubiquitous popularity of the Adam West Batman series. There is some hard evidence to back this up, too, as a clipping from a copy of the Independent-Press Telegram from that same year references the “Batman smells” phrase. As for how the rhyme became so widespread, SunnyD offered an intriguing explanation.
“My feeling about how this song spread around the world is the children of U.S. military families. I first heard it in Christmas 1966 when the Batman TV series started in September 1966,” wrote SunnyD. “I lived in San Diego California and our school was half military kids. Our city was a big military hub at the height of the Vietnam War… My assumption was that as military kids were suddenly moved around the country they would arrive in a new school and that silly song was a familiar reminder of their former friends.”
So, there you go. Neither Bart Simpson nor the Joker himself dreamed up the song. It may actually have been a touching after-effect of all the childhoods impacted by the Vietnam War. No, that’s not the answer I was expecting either.
What are the full lyrics to “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells?”
OK, so we know where the song comes from, but what are the full lyrics? Well, as we’ve established that “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells” is a folk song that has spread around the globe, it naturally encompasses various different iterations that vary from location to location. However, over time a perceived “official” version of the lyrics has come to be agreed upon.
In 2020, YouTuber Tom Scott polled 64, 182 people from around the world to share the lyrics they were familiar with, as well as their age and home country. The biggest disagreement seems to regard what exactly Robin does in the song, with some believing he “laid an egg,” and others claiming he “flew away.” Interestingly, the “flew away” rendition mostly originated from outside the U.S., such as in the U.K. However, from ’90s kids onward, this version mostly dies out to be replaced by “laid an egg.”
Bart Simpson might not have started the song, then, but his and Goulet’s version is likely the one that most people are familiar with. This does seem to be the original lyric, too, as our old friend Sunny D wrote on Wier’s blog: “I remember we sang the chorus over and over. Kids tried to add versions but the ending was always ‘The Joker got away — Hey!'”
So, after reviewing the evidence, here’s how the definitive version of the song’s chorus goes:
“Jingle bells, Batman smells
Robin laid an egg
Batmobile lost a wheel
And the Joker got away — Hey!”
But, yes, as Sunny D’s comment alludes to, although the chorus is the most commonly chanted part of the song there is more to it. These additional verses vary so much that it’s hard to say what the true lyrics are for these, but here’s one take on a verse that can be sung before the chorus.
“Dashing through the snow
In a one-horse sloping sleigh
Joker’s on the go,
laughing all the way
The bells on Penguin’s ring
Make Riddler wanna fight
Two-Face wants to flip a coin
And sing this song tonight”
This is the verse most commonly shared around the internet, although it’s unlikely to date back to the 1960s in this specific form as, while he was created in the comics in 1942, Two-Face was never a character in the Adam West Batman show.
There you have it. Next time you hear someone sing this song, tell them the long, branching story of its origins. I guarantee it will kill the mood and the Christmas party will clear out in seconds.