Why does Santa come from the chimney? Here is the original story
Here's how history and folklore gave us our climbing chimenneau.
There is some magic that surrounds Santa Claus. He goes up in asled led by the reindeer, it makes toys at its workshop in the North Pole with the help of the elves and it descends the fireplace to deliverGifts to good children. But why does Santa come from the fireplace to let these gifts instead of using simpler ways, like the door? We returned more than 500 hundred years of history to discover.
TheLegend of Santa Claus, which is based on the Christian bishopSaint Nicolas, goes back to centuries, but the modern representation of the Santa-Fireplace and everything started taking shape in the 19th century. More specifically, our current Santa has come to permission of the life ofWashington Irving. In his book of 1809Knickerbockers New York History, the American writer and the historian describe Saint-Nicolas as a man who sees himself "rising beautifully among the trees, or on the roofs of the houses, then relying with magnificent gifts from his pockets of panties and deposits them the chimneys his favorites. "
But Irving did not have the idea of having Santa Claus gifts on thin fire chimneys. The concept that magic creatures enter the fireplaces come from the 1400s, when there was a widespread belief - and the fear - that witches can pass through solid objects to enter a residence, according toJeffrey Burton Russell, author ofSorcery in the Middle Ages.
In 1486,Heinrich Kramer andJacob Sprenger wroteMalleus Sintficarum, which is considered one of the most in-depth books on witchcraft. To help relieve public anxiety, Kramer and Sprenger wrote that the witches got home rather through fireplaces or windows.
Since then, the fireplace has become a common symbol in European folklore, connecting the earthly world with the supernatural. In the Scottish legend, thebrownie is a creature Who enters the fireplace and AIDS in housework while families sleep. In the Irish tradition, there is Bodach, aThe malefic creature that slips Through the fireplace to kidnap the children. And in Italian folklore, there isThe Befana, which goes on a broom to deliver sweets to good children, entering their houses through fireplaces.
As stories have been transmitted over the centuries, it became common that the mythical creatures enter the houses through the decision of the chimney, so that the Irving to include Santa in the long list of Climbing characters from the chimney was not so unusual.
And it did not take long the legend of Irving to stick - especially with the help ofC. Moore's 1822 poem "A visit to Saint-Nicolas" (more commonly called "'Twas at night before Christmas"), what wasInspired by the Irving Book. "The lows have been hooked by the chimney with care / in the hope that Saint-Nicolas would soon be there," Moore of the old happy graph that we know and loves today. And for more than the legend of Santa Claus, checkWhy is Santa Claus Give Naughty Coal Children.
