Up On the Housetop

This sto­ry was first pub­lished in December 2022.

Last week, I wrote about my emo­tion­al con­nec­tion to Judy Garland’s ver­sion of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. The lyrics in her ver­sion, writ­ten for the movie Meet Me in St. Louis, read, “Someday soon we all will be togeth­er, if the fates allow. Until then we’ll have to mud­dle through some­how” and always makes me feel nos­tal­gic (Frank Sinatra’s ver­sion went more fes­tive, which is how “Hang a shin­ing star upon the high­est bough” came to replace Garland’s more melan­cholic lyric).

I recent­ly regaled Steve, my gui­tar teacher, with the sto­ry of hear­ing it while liv­ing in England and feel­ing an intense long­ing for home. I planned to learn Judy’s ver­sion for this hol­i­day sea­son. Just imag­ine me telling last week’s sto­ry, but with a lot of hand ges­tures and melodrama. 

“…and there won’t be a dry eye in the house!” I fin­ished, glee­ful at the idea of bring­ing every­one to tears.

“Mmmmm Hmmmmm,” Steve nod­ded. “Ok. But let’s learn Up on the Housetop.”

Izzie chimed in. “Wait, what? No. We’re learn­ing Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas!”

So we did. And it was … awful. Truly ter­ri­ble. The Am7 to B7 chord change on “have to mud­dle through some­how” is so far out of our vocal range it doesn’t share a zip code. Izzie and I can both play our instru­ments, but nei­ther of us has ever had any vocal coach­ing. Every time we attempt­ed “have to mud­dle,” Steve’s jaw would clench slight­ly, though he tried valiant­ly to keep a blank face. Why did we think we could ever do Judy Garland jus­tice? Or Frank Sinatra, for that matter?

After wast­ing about 40 min­utes of les­son time on it, Steve final­ly said, “Up On the Housetop?” and we grudg­ing­ly agreed. The Gene Autry ver­sion is four chords, writ­ten in the key of D, with easy vocals. Dang it if Steve wasn’t right.

Then I googled the his­to­ry of the song and became offi­cial­ly obsessed with it. 

First of all, Up on the Housetop, writ­ten by Benjamin Russell Hanby in 1864, is con­sid­ered the sec­ond old­est Christmas song after 1857’s Jingle Bells. Since Jingle Bells was writ­ten as a drink­ing song and first sung at Thanksgiving instead of Christmas, I would argue that Up on the Housetop is actu­al­ly our first hol­i­day classic.

Here’s why that mat­ters. Hanby was the son of Ohio Bishop William Hanby. Bishop Hanby, a staunch and vocal oppo­nent of slav­ery, helped run Ohio’s sec­tion of the Underground Railroad,  which offered a safe and fast route for run­away slaves. William got his young son involved in abo­li­tion­ist activities. 

Benjamin Hanby grew up to become a pas­tor him­self, risk­ing his life many times hous­ing run­away slaves. One such slave, Joseph Selby, found refuge with Ben, telling how he planned to escape north and make enough mon­ey to buy the free­dom of his true love, Nelly Gray, who had been sold as a slave to a Kentucky plan­ta­tion. Selby died before ful­fill­ing his dream, but Hanby nev­er for­got about him, lat­er writ­ing his most famous song, Darling Nelly Gray, about the inci­dent. This did not sit well with the con­ser­v­a­tive mem­bers of his church, who vocal­ly deemed all musi­cal instru­ments as “Satan’s tools.” 

Hanby respond­ed with even more lib­er­al ser­mons and start­ed includ­ing songs in his min­istry. He was final­ly forced to resign and start­ed a singing school in Ohio for children. 

Inspired by the 1822 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” by Clement C. Moore, Hanby wrote Up on the Housetop. This was scan­dalous at a time when Jesus was seen, by con­ser­v­a­tive Christians, as the rea­son for the sea­son, and a full six years before Ulysses S. Grant made Christmas a Federal hol­i­day in an attempt to unite the north and south dur­ing the Civil War. Santa Claus was a tol­er­at­ed tra­di­tion for chil­dren of European immi­grants, as long as it was a tra­di­tion that stayed in the home. Secular hol­i­day songs would not be sung at hol­i­day gath­er­ings for many years to come.

It was coura­geous for Hanby, a so-called man of God, to sug­gest that the mag­ic of Christmas can exist beside the Bethlehem sto­ry, each exag­ger­at­ed telling sup­port­ing the over­all enchant­ment of the season. 

Ho. Ho. Ho. Who wouldn’t go?

I would. And I did.