As a kid, my favorite Christmas Song was “Up on the Housetop,” which was likely a foretelling of my later interest in traditional music. I sang it with the popular lyrics of the 1960’s, along with the finger-snapping “click click click” of the reindeer hooves, and the more modern imagery of Santa Claus delivering his bag of goodies to children on Christmas eve.
So you can imagine my delight to learn that this is a great old-timey tune, originally called “Santa Claus” written in 1864, that is considered one of the oldest American secular Christmas songs (only outdone by Jingle Bells, written in 1857). “Up on the Housetop” is based on Clement Moore’s 1822 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” and is one of the first Christmas Songs to mention Santa Claus, or St. Nick.
The author, Benjamin Hanby, also wrote the popular “Darling Nelly Gray” – a song mentioned in Little House on the Prairie, so this is also a tune that was around in Charles “Pa” Ingallses day. I dug up the original text from a great website (www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com) and was quite delighted with the whimsical nature of the lyrics, with gifts of whirligigs and rattles (although “Lazy Jim” seemed not to fair as well, with his stocking full of bran and a new ratan (or switch, likely for punishment). Even Rover gets a bone.
The best part? The “click – click – click,” of course.
Here’s my version written for fiddle, with the original 1864 lyrics.
