How many more sleeps, daddy?

If your children are anything like mine, this is a question asked at least fifteen times a day from the moment the calendar page is turned to December. And if you’re anything like me, you have Santa on speed dial, the ultimate threat to calm over-excited children.

My daughter has some constant questions about chimney size and whether Father Christmas can set on fire have been met with assurances from my wife and I that for homes without chimneys, and for homes where chimneys are blocked at one end by a wood burning stove, Santa has a fail-safe form of entry – he uses his magic key to come in through the front door, leaves his gifts, has a bite of a mince pie and sets off to the next child’s house.

The annual visit of Father Christmas to our homes is one of our favourite childhood events, of course, and becomes so again when we become parents. But where does our belief in the jolly old chap, his reindeer and his chosen method of entry come from?

In the UK, Father Christmas dates back at least as far as the 17th century, and pictures of him survive from that era; a portly bearded man dressed in a long green fur-lined robe. Urban myth has it that he switched to wearing red due to the advertising genius of Coca-Cola, with its classic red and white branding forevermore linked with the joys of Christmas time. This isn’t entirely correct however. The Coca-Cola campaign featuring a scarlet-clad Santa was first produced in 1930, but the first images of Father Christmas in a white fur-trimmed red suit and a black belt were produced in the 1870s, by American cartoonist Thomas Nast. Nast was the regular cartoonist for Harper’s Weekly magazine for over 20 years and drew the man in red in several colours, including the Stars and Stripes, before finally settling on the jolly, laughing, plump, bearded man we know today. The Coca-Cola campaigns of the 1930s onwards simply cemented this image of Father Christmas forevermore.

So, why do we believe – and tell our children – that Santa comes down the chimney? This is a tradition that dates back to a similar period, though likely has its roots in old European beliefs.

In the early 1800s, a man named Washington Irving (the author of the much more famous The Legend of Sleepy Hollow) wrote a satirical story about the history of New York, and in this he describes St. Nicholas “riding jollily among the treetops or over the roofs,” pulling presents from his pockets and dropping them down chimneys.On occasion he even goes “rattling down the chimneys” to deliver gifts. This fun concept captured the imagination of American readers, and laid the foundation for Santa’s association with chimneys. This idea wasn’t treated as ridiculous, or hard to swallow however because of beliefs that date much further back.

In Viking times, it was believed that Odin would enter the home through the chimney during the winter solstice (yep, midwinter, just when Christmas is, not so coincidentally). By the middle ages, Europeans believed that evil spirits and witches could enter your home by passing through windows and doors in a ghostlike manner. This must have led to some serious levels of insomnia. In 1486 a German Catholic priest published a book still known well today – the Malleus Maleficarum, the Hammer of Witches. In it he says that witches and goblins and other such evil creatures in fact enter the home via the chimney – an entry point much easier to defend, with fire. This book kicked off quite the obsession with witchcraft, which caused many a poor old widow a nasty end, but as the fear of witches eased away, the belief that magical beings could travel down chimneys didn’t – they just became a lot friendlier. Scottish tales spoke of friendly brownies using chimneys to visit, and in Italy we find the legend of Befana, a kind witch who delivers sweets via the chimney.

So, here we have a friendly chap flying over the rooftops set on delivering gifts to small children on Christmas Eve, but what about those reindeer? Well, we need look no further than that classic poem, written in 1822 by Clement Clarke Moore, ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas. The whole poem is a joy, and one of our traditions is to read it aloud on Christmas Eve, before we lay out the mince pie, glass of sherry (or whisky…) and a carrot for Santa’s reindeer. Here are the verses that give us eight of these famous reindeer, the ninth, good old Rudolph, coming along much later, on a foggy night, of course.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow

Gave the lustre of midday to objects below.

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,

But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer.

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,

I knew in a moment it must be St Nick.

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name!

“Now, Dasher! Now, Dancer! Now, Prancer and Vixen!

On, Comet! On, Cupid! On, Donner and Blitzen!

To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!

Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!”