In the UK, it’s more commonly known as the Hokey Cokey, and it did peak in its popularity during the 1940s. In Denmark they do a similar dance, but call it the Boogie Woogie. Other places in the world actually have alternative names for the Hokey Pokey. So while the copyright for the Hokey Pokey dates back to the 1940s, the song itself likely predates our more modern understanding of intellectual property. ![]() Both stories, again, don’t line up with established songs published well before the 1940s. Tabor got into a fight with well-known publisher Jimmy Kennedy over the copyright, but the two settled out of court and Tabor surrendered any ownership. ![]() There’s another story about a British bandleader named Al Tabor being told to write a party song, and the guy was inspired by an ice cream vendor, writing the song in the 1940s. Partly because of the hocus pocus stuff we referenced earlier, and also because Catholics believed the dance itself was a parody of people participating in mass. There’s even a more modern claim that the Hokey Pokey came about as a parody of Catholic Latin Mass, though these claims largely don’t line up with the history of publications related to the Hokey Pokey. An indoor game called “Ugly Mug,” popularized around 1872 also instructs people to put their hands in, out, and shake them about. One was popularized in Scotland around 1842, instructing dance participants to similarly put their hands in and out. Early versions of what could be the Hokey Pokey appear all over the place. The SongĪs far as the song itself goes, its origins are relatively ambiguous. Whether or not “hokey pokey” picked this up too when the term was popularized isn’t too clear though, but the British name for the Hokey Pokey, which is Hokey Cokey, might be a bit of a bridge. Transubstantiation is the belief that the bread and wine consumed during Mass literally turns into the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Thus, the term “hocus pocus” broadly parodied the Catholic idea of transubstantiation. That translates to “this is my body,” and was used as a sacramental blessing in Catholic mass. It was used by jugglers as a kind of sham-Latin, a parody of Hoc est corpus meum. The term “hocus pocus” itself dates back probably to the 1630s. It likely referred to false or otherwise cheap material, popularly applied to cheap ice cream in Philadelphia in 1884. There are two possible origin stories for it, one that it was an evolution of the term “hocus pocus.” Or it was simply just a collection of nonsense syllables popularized from a song from the 1830s. The term “hokey pokey” itself probably came about in the late 1840s. Or was that just us? Moving on, what’s up with the Hokey Pokey? False, Cheap Material An adult who was too blessed to be stressed telling a bunch of kids to do the Hokey Pokey, but now that you’re probably older you realize you likely missed the dead-inside look they carried in their eyes. You do the Hokey Pokey and now we’ve awoken some primal memory that might have you receding into the very depths of your own soul. You put your right foot in, you put your right foot out, you put your right foot in, and you shake it all about. (Last Updated On: April 21, 2022) You know doing the Hokey Pokey over an office table seems like a bad idea.
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