Why a fire duct? Well, Clement Clarke Moore’s famous 1822 poem ‘An Account of a Visit from Saint Nicholas’ goes into some detail about Santa’s chimney travel and sooty clothes and this has informed our lore for almost 200 Xmases. That first Saint Nicholas from Turkey probably dropped coins down the flue back in the 300s as acts of Xian charity. The Christmas witch from Italy certainly did some smokehole commuting; in fact medieval, mischief-making myth-types came and went that way for some centuries–for good and for ill. All of which inspired Washington Irving, in his A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty by Diedrich Knickerbocker, to describe Santa dropping goodies down the fireplace chute (but making his way through there personally for the particularly good boys’n’girls) a decade or two BEFORE ‘Twas the Night Before.
Anyways–
Encore time! Joel Kopischke’s been gone too long from here so lets him back his his titular entry from his second great Xmas parody album “Ground Control to Santa Claus.” The spooky ending is the chimney part.
Let’s try something new. Nicholas Markos folk rocks “Chimney Sneak” to the tune of outing that jack-in-the-box joker. Catchy stuff.
Matt Farley is most welcome back to the blog as The Very Nice Interesting Singer Man with “The Chimney Song.” He’ll explain what chimneys are for if you’re still not sure. Jazzy with scat.