[Lee Stewart]

We owe a debt of gratitude to Washington Irving, the author more widely remembered for giving the world “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” for concocting a better way for Santa to deliver presents than slipping through a window. It was in Irving’s satirical short story from 1812, called “Knickerbocker’s History of New York,” where Saint Nick is first described as “rattl[ing] down the chimney” to “bring his yearly presents to children.”