Up On The Housetop: A Song History

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Benjamin Russell Hanby (1833–1867) was an Ohio minister, teacher, abolitionist and composer who wrote more than eighty songs. The best known of them include this Christmas song, “Darling Nelly Gray” and “Who Is He in Yonder Stall.”[1] An Ohio Historical Society marker in New Paris, Ohio, says he wrote the song there in 1864.[2] A second marker, in Westerville, dates its first public performance to December of that year.[3] According to Hymns and Carols of Christmas, his students sang it at a children’s service at Christmas 1864, and its original title was simply “Santa Claus.”[4]

Thomas Nast drawing of Santa Claus peeking out of a stuffed Christmas stocking hung by the chimney

Thomas Nast, A Stocking Full, published in Harper’s Weekly, January 4, 1879, relief print and electrotype (detail). The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).

The same source says the song was first printed in October 1866 in Our Song Birds, a quarterly that Hanby edited for the Chicago firm Root & Cady. That printing included two extra stanzas by a contributor who signed as “Paulina.”[4] Hanby died of tuberculosis at thirty-three.[1] Hymns and Carols of Christmas suggests that the rooftop landing probably owes a debt to Clement Clarke Moore’s 1822 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” since in its account no earlier writer had set Santa’s sleigh on a roof. It calls Hanby’s piece “one of the first entirely secular Christmas songs” written in the United States.[4] Otterbein University’s library describes it as the first holiday song to make Santa Claus its main subject.[5]

Gene Autry recorded the song in Hollywood on June 26, 1953, as one of the Christmas numbers he cut for Columbia between 1947 and 1956.[6] The Hanby family lived in Westerville from 1853 to 1870, and their home is now the Hanby House museum. It is an Ohio History Connection site run by the Westerville Historical Society, and its collection includes a walnut desk Benjamin made and the original printing plates for “Darling Nelly Gray.”[1]

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Sources

  1. Ohio History Connection: "Hanby House".
  2. Historical Marker Database: "New Paris" (Ohio Historical Society marker).
  3. Historical Marker Database: "In Memory of Benjamin R. Hanby" (Ohio Historical Society marker, Westerville).
  4. Hymns and Carols of Christmas: "Up On The Housetop".
  5. Digital Commons @ Otterbein: "Up on the Housetop" by Benjamin Russell Hanby.
  6. GeneAutry.com: "Gene Autry: The Complete Columbia Christmas Recordings".