Santa why coal

Have you got a Big Question you'd like us to answer? If so, let us know by emailing us at bigquestions mentalfloss. BY Matt Soniak. Good Kids get candy and toys while naughty kids get coal fro La Bafana. The concept of coal as punishment in relation to Santa Clause started appearing more and more with the turn of the 20th century. In 'The Toy-Makers strike, which was written by Ruth Catherine Wood in , she talks about how Santa's elves go on strike and a naughty boy gets a huge doll and a sweet little girl ends up with a lump of coal.

Similarly, in Myron Adams' short story "A Prince of Good Fellows," the fact that a good-hearted boy named Tom receives coal in his stocking leads to confusion. The reason Santa Clause gives coal to naughty kids is that Santa Clause comes down chimneys and while looking around he finds lumps of coal and then sticks it in the naughty kid's stockings, according to Brian Horrigan of the Minnesota History Center.

Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. New methods of mining, shipping, and burning made coal so available, the well off might not have hesitated to give it to their children as a punishment or a joke.

But for the poor, the winters were surely brutally cold, if not fatal. Coal was a fondly remembered Christmas tradition by the end of the decade.

Instead, the lump of coal has become a symbol of its history a century ago. For the truly dedicated, you can purchase a satchel of anthracite from Pennsylvania via the internet. On Etsy, you can purchase artisanal coal straight from West Virginia. Most people have no use for actual coal today, so useful items get marketed as if they were coal. These are all jokes, of course. Coal symbolism also appears in popular media. Books for all ages, from children to adults , retell the moral to encourage good behavior or at least joke about it.

Newspapers continue to hand out lumps either in headlines or cartoons. Coal gifts even come in GIF form. Read: The joy of no-gift Christmas. Social media is no stranger to lumps of coal, either. On Twitter , you can find people suggesting potential lump-of-coal recipients all throughout the year.