Soot Suit

I love writing poems about the holiday season, so I wanted to start December off with a new funny poem about Santa Claus. To get myself in the right festive mood, I reread Clement Clarke Moore’s classic poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” better known as “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.” As I was reading, a couple of lines jumped out at me:

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;

I couldn’t help noticing something amusing about the word “soot.” It looks like it ought to rhyme with “suit,” but it doesn’t. “Soot” actually rhymes with “put” and “foot,” not with “suit” or “boot.” Still, that contrast made me laugh, and I thought there had to be a poem hiding inside that idea somewhere.

So I first decided to call it “Soot Suit,” and then sat down to see what I could come up with. And this is the result, my newest holiday poem.

Soot Suit

When Santa came to visit us
on Christmas Eve this year,
his eyes were bright and merry
and his face was full of cheer.

He carried toys and presents
in a sack upon his back.
But Santa wasn’t dressed in red.
Instead, his suit was black.

Without his bright red coat and hat
he looked a little weird.
He also had some smudges
on his cheeks and on his beard.

We asked if he was trying out
a new and different style.
He looked down at his blackened suit
then answered with a smile.

He said, “My suit’s not really black,
as maybe you could tell.
It only looks that way because
your chimney soots me well.”

— Kenn Nesbitt