The sound comes from the sleigh bells heard in Jingle Bells, the winter song written by James Lord Pierpont and published in 1857 as The One Horse Open Sleigh. The bells were the practical warning bells on horse drawn sleighs, and their rhythm became part of the song's identity. As the song became a Christmas standard, recordings of shaking sleigh bells were reused in films, adverts, cartoons and online edits as a shorthand for the holidays, long after the original Thanksgiving association faded.