Congratulations to all those who sent in ideas about the Christmas mystery. Two of you correctly identified “Fanny Brice” as the girl in the carol, Jingle Bells, who was in the sleigh when it was “up-sot” into a snow bank. Two of you also researched to note that Fanny Brice was a stage personality and signer who died in the early 1950s. So she wasn’t the girl in the sleigh. However, she was the inspiration for the Barbra Streisand movie, “Funny Girl”.
One of you noted that some versions of the carol refer to the girl in the sleigh as “Fanny Bright”. I have two versions of this carol. One version refers to “Fanny Brice” while the other refers to “Fanny Bright”. The writer of “Jingle Bells”, James Pierpont, was a native of Connecticut when he wrote this carol in 1859. There were a number of girls by the name of Fanny Bright in the 1850 Connecticut census. Congratulations to Eric Daughtry of Trinity Packaging for his clever research.
Does the driver of the one-horse open sleigh get the girl in the end? Probably not, that’s why he blames the horse!
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