Editor’s note: This is part 4 of a Christmas week series from local writer Peggy Keener on Christmas carols with research taken from a presentation by Sweet Reads owner Lisa Deyo.

Read part 1 here: The pilot is wearing a red suit

Read part 2 here: Karloff couldn’t sing like Grinch in classic show

Read part 3 here: Where is Robert Goulet to pray for peace?

Christmas carols were written to honor the birth of Jesus. It wasn’t until many eons later that Santa entered into the equation. (I would hazard a guess that shopping centers had something to do with this!)

Who would believe that “Up On the House Top” was a close second to the first American Christmas song, the wildly popular “Jingle Bells”? The tune was written by Benjamin Hanby in 1864. (Okay, okay so no English hamlet had a shopping center back then, but I’ll bet they were crossing their fingers that construction was just around the corner!)

The song mentions “St. Nick,” the grand old fellow we know as Santa Claus. Thus “Up On the House Top” was the first Christmas song to mention the jolliest grand elf of all times. Hanby drew his inspiration from the Clement Clarke Moore poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” You will recognize this as our dearly loved, “The Night Before Christmas.”

This Yuletide song was written by Benjamin Russell Hanby, born in 1833 near Rushville, Ohio. His father was a minister who was involved with the Underground Railroad. No doubt Hanby was inspired by Clement Moore’s Santa and his sleigh landing on the housetop. It will remain forever unclear as to whether or not the first line should have been spelled “reindeer paws” or “reindeer pause.” You choose.

Still the fact that reindeer do have paws means that they could have pawed with their hooves on those rooves — or is it hoofs on their roofs? The other option is that they could have simply plopped down right up there on somebody’s roof and thought about it.

(On a personal note my daughter used to live next to a family near Lake of the Isles in Minneapolis, whose son bears the astonishing legacy of being named Clement Moore. Yes, his great-grandfather was “the” Clement Moore! Interestingly, the fair minded and generous Santa brought equally as many presents to the Moore home as he did to my daughter’s home. Up with Mr. Claus!)

Did you know that in the Netherlands and Belgium, St. Nicholas’ Eve is celebrated each year on Dec. 5 because it is the night before the roly poly old man’s birthday on Dec. 6? Like Jack Sprat and his plumpy wife, Sinterklaas is but a mere shadow of his portly successor. Indeed “Sint” is a skinny old guy! Americans could not have that so we fleshed him out into the jollier and more huggable rotund proportions we know him as today.

Furthermore, the Dutch Sinterklaas is a wimp. He doesn’t even go down chimneys, although he’d certainly fit better than our corpulent version. No, no, he leaves that gritty task to his assistant, “Black Pete,” no one need guess at why he’s called “black.”

During his short life, Benjamin Hanby wrote over 80 songs. His second best known composition was, “Darling Nelly Gray.” He died of tuberculosis at age 34. One wonders if his illness might have been caused by breathing in the soot from all the fireplaces he felt he had to plunge down, so that he could write his famous song with firsthand experiential knowledge?