Especially since so many people in D.C. can expect coal this Christmas.
E&E News (12/23/19) reports: "Even as coal fades from the modern world, North Pole demand remains strong. The customary gift for naughty children has taken on new life in the digital age, despite coal being replaced as the nation's dominant fuel — a title it had held since it wove itself into American holiday lore during the Industrial Revolution. Most of the lumps for sale are plastic or novelty items like little red bags of black, pebble-sized bubble gum, but real coal is not hard to find on eBay, Amazon or Etsy. Much of it comes from northeastern Pennsylvania — America's first mining hotbed and home to one of the world's only supplies of the hardest, highest-quality coal variety. 'Anthracite is definitely the coal of choice for Santa,' said Duane Feagle, executive director of the Pennsylvania Anthracite Council, a regional industry advocacy group. The tradition originated roughly around the time St. Nicholas started donning a red-and-white suit, but coal was not the first form of holiday punishment for misbehavior. In The Atlantic, Georgia Tech scholar Kent Linthicum wrote that coal became Christmas castigation only at the turn of the 20th century. St. Nick had a habit of grabbing what was on hand. For centuries, naughty children had earned rocks, ashes and potatoes for their misdeeds. In the poem 'Old Santeclaus With Much Delight,' they received a 'long, black, birchen rod' that threatened future whippings. As coal steadily replaced wood as the primary source of home heating throughout the 1800s, it started popping up in stories of the day. At first, coal was welcomed as a warming gift for parents. The black rock became punitive, Linthicum argued, as more Americans began to rely on their local coal merchant supplied by far-off mines. By the 1920s, coal had cemented itself in Christmas culture."
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