Up on the Housetop
Equipment: 
Activity Instructions:
Pass out castanets to students. Explore clicking them together, clicking with one hand, with the other hand. Then click along with the words in the song.
Lyrics:Up on the housetop reindeer pause
Out jumps good old Santa Claus
Down thru the chimney with lots of toys
All for the little ones, Christmas joys
Ho, ho, ho! Who wouldn’t go?
Ho, ho, ho! Who wouldn’t go?
Up on the housetop, click, click, click
Down thru the chimney with good Saint Nick
First comes the stocking of little Nell
Oh, dear Santa fill it well
Give her a dolly that laughs and cries
One that will open and shut her eyes
Ho, ho, ho! Who wouldn’t go?
Ho, ho, ho! Who wouldn’t go?
Upon on the housetop, click, click, click
Down thru the chimney with good Saint Nick
Next comes the stocking of little Will
Oh, just see what a glorious fill
Here is a hammer and lots of tacks
A whistle and a ball and a whip that cracks
Ho, ho, ho! Who wouldn’t go?
Ho, ho, ho! Who wouldn’t go?
Up on the housetop, click, click, click
Down thru the chimney with good Saint Nick
“Up on the House Top” is a Christmas song written by Benjamin Hanby in 1864 .According to William Studwell in The Christmas Carol Reader, “Up on the House Top” was the second-oldest secular Christmas song, outdone only by “Jingle Bells“, which was written in 1857. It is also considered the first Yuletide song to focus primarily on Santa Claus. According to Readers Digest Merry Christmas Song Book, Hanby probably owes the idea that Santa and his sleigh land on the roof of homes to Clement C. Moore’s 1822 poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (also commonly known as “The Night Before Christmas”).[4] Benjamin Russell Hanby was born in 1833 near Rushville, Ohio, the son of a minister involved with the Underground Railroad. During his short life, he wrote some 80 songs before dying of tuberculosis in 1867.