This Christmas classic was written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans for the 1951 Bob Hope movie The Lemon Drop Kid. Livingston told American Songwriter Magazine July/August 1988 that this originally had a different title. He recalled: "We wrote a song called 'Tinkle Bell,' about the tinkly bells you hear at Christmas from the Santa Clauses and the Salvation Army people. We said 'this is it, this will work for the picture,' so I took it home and played it for my wife. She said 'you wrote a song called 'Tinkle Bell'? Don't you know that word has a bathroom connotation?' So I went back to Ray the next day and told him we had to throw the song out, and we did." However as the duo continued to work on their assignment, they found themselves taking many of the lines and part of the melody from their "Tinkle Bell" song. In the end, they used the original song, except for substituting the word silver for tinkle, and the song became "Silver Bells."