The views expressed in this article represent the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce, its staff, or its board of directors.
A few nights ago, while reading a Christmas book to my children, my daughter looked up from the page and asked why getting coal in a stocking was bad.
There was a long pause. I was stumped. Growing up in West Virginia, no one I knew ever looked at a lump of coal and felt disappointed. And here was my own child, raised in a world of smart thermostats and gas fireplaces, genuinely puzzled.
That moment crystallized something bigger: In a single generation or two, one of the purest symbols of winter survival has become the ultimate holiday punchline. And that flip is one of the clearest measurable signs of civilizational triumph we have.
A century ago, finding coal in your stocking would have been cause for genuine celebration. Before oil furnaces, natural-gas lines, and rural electrification reached most of America, winter was an existential threat. A sack of anthracite in December meant babies wouldn’t turn blue in their cradles, that grandparents might see another spring, that a family could cook without burning the furniture. In mining regions like my native West Virginia, children hung their stockings hoping “Santa” might leave a few precious lumps alongside an orange and some candy.
Then came an explosion of prosperity.
Between 1940 and 1970, the share of American homes heated by coal plummeted from over 50 percent to under 5 percent. But these numbers tell only part of the story. What they represent is millions of individual decisions, each one reflecting a simple calculation: cleaner, more convenient energy was now worth its price.
The expansion wasn’t mandated from above. It was the result of entrepreneurs laying pipelines, investors financing power plants, and engineers solving the problem of long-distance electricity transmission. Each innovation made the next one possible. Natural gas, once flared off as waste at oil wells, became economically viable to capture and transport. Electricity generation grew more efficient, bringing kilowatt-hour prices within reach of ordinary families.
Consider what this meant in practice. The average coal-heating household in 1940 spent several hours per week on fuel management, hauling coal, stoking fires, removing ashes, and cleaning soot. A woman heating with coal might start her day at 5 a.m. rekindling the stove so the house would be warm enough for children to dress. By 1970, that same household could adjust a thermostat. Those reclaimed hours went into education, leisure, additional work, or simply rest. Multiply that across millions of homes, and you see how prosperity compounds.
By 1975, the average American household spent less than 3 percent of its budget on home heating, down from over 10 percent in 1940, despite heating more square footage to higher temperatures.
This transformation was no accident of nature. It was the result of economic forces working in concert: capital accumulation, technological innovation, and the price system directing resources to their highest-valued uses. Prices did the crucial work. They signaled which fuels were becoming more abundant, which technologies more efficient, which investments most worthwhile. No central planner decreed that America should switch from coal to oil and gas for home heating. Millions of homeowners simply responded to changing relative prices, and the market delivered.
Fossil fuels, far from being a curse, were the indispensable bridge that lifted hundreds of millions out of energy poverty. The same competitive market processes that made coal obsolete in the home also lengthened life expectancy, reduced infant mortality, and freed countless hours once spent on mere survival.
Wealth did what it always does: It turned yesterday’s necessity into today’s nuisance. This pattern repeats throughout economic history. Ice, once harvested from frozen lakes and packed in sawdust, became something anyone could make by plugging in a machine. Meat preservation moved from smokehouse to refrigerator. Each technological leap left behind artifacts that shifted from practical to primitive to punchline.
As living standards rose, cultural symbols shifted accordingly. By the 1950s, with central heating nearly universal among the middle class, storytellers needed a new way to signal that a child had been naughty. A lump of useless, dirty coal fit the bill perfectly. The joke worked precisely because reliable home heating had become unremarkable for most American families. The cultural demotion of coal tracks the economic data almost perfectly.
This quiet revolution has allowed the modern American Christmas to become an even richer celebration.
Most of us will take paid days off this month. We’ll buy each other gifts we don’t strictly need for people who don’t strictly need them. We’ll eat too much, travel hundreds of miles to see family, and husbands (the chef in my house) will complain that the house is too warm. These are luxuries that kings could not command a few centuries ago.
Louis XIV had mirrors and silk, but he couldn’t regulate the temperature of Versailles. He had musicians but no recorded music. He had physicians but no antibiotics. The poorest American with a smartphone and a heated apartment commands conveniences the Sun King couldn’t imagine, let alone purchase. This isn’t hyperbole—it’s what happens when markets systematically convert innovation into mass affordability.
None of this abundance was foreordained. The miracle of modern Christmas required specific institutional prerequisites. For most people through most of history, December 25 was a cold and hungry workday with shorter daylight. Christmas is the glorious celebration of the Incarnation, but the abundance we now enjoy—the ability to set aside time for worship, rest, and joyful giving—was once the privilege of the few.
What changed? Markets, trade, innovation, and the freedom to use them. Economic freedom and the institutions that protect it—private property, voluntary exchange, and the rule of law—are what made this abundance possible.
Capitalism didn’t invent Christmas, but it transformed a major holy day commemorating the birth of Christ into the greatest annual festival of surplus the world has ever known. The same system that replaced the coal stove with the heat pump also delivered paid vacations, wrapped smartphones, and grocery aisles overflowing with ten kinds of eggnog.
So when we laugh about getting coal in our stocking, we’re really laughing at how extraordinarily rich we’ve become. The punchline only lands because, for the overwhelming majority of Americans, coal is no longer a necessity but a novelty. My kids’ confusion about why coal is “bad” and my stubborn West Virginia instinct that it isn’t reminded me: The lump of coal went from treasured gift to gag because we built an economy so productive that American children largely stopped freezing in December.
Few metrics capture civilizational progress more vividly than the cultural demotion of coal from lifesaving fuel to Christmas joke. What we now dismiss as a gag was, within living memory, a lifeline. That it no longer constitutes one of the great triumphs of the market order—and a reminder that the institutions protecting economic freedom are worth preserving.
Claudia Williamson Kramer is the Scott L. Probasco, Jr., Distinguished Chair of Free Enterprise, Professor of Economics, and Executive Director of the Center for Economic Education at UTC.
To hear more from Dr. Kramer, listen to her latest conversation on WUTC here: https://shorturl.at/CyWM0
