We’ve all sung it. It’s the 25th of December and the refrain “fum, fum, fum” comes out by itself. For decades, the collective mental image has been the same: a smoking chimney(fum, in Catalan) on a cold winter night. However, popular etymology has played a trick on us. There is neither smoke nor fire: what there is is a lot of satire and a bit of pastoral “mala leche”.
As we have learned with a video of the Catalan language influencer @el_catalanet, in reality, that “fum” does not refer to the combustion of firewood. It is a verb form of ‘fúmer’, which is nothing more than a euphemism for the verb ‘fotre’. To be understood, it would be the equivalent of saying “caramba!” or “caray!” to avoid a more offensive expression in a religious environment.
The “song of lies”.
But how did a “taco” camouflaged in a Christmas carol end up? To understand it, you have to travel back 300 years. At that time, Christmas was not the solemn and familiar holiday we know today, but was much more like a Carnival. It was a time of nonsense, excesses and songs that had little to do with ecclesiastical dogma.
The documented origin takes us to Prats de Lluçanès. In 1904 this tradition was recorded for the first time: the shepherds came down from the mountain on Christmas Day and, in church, sang what was known as the “song of lies”.
Between stanzas, the shepherds would take the opportunity to satirically air the foolishness, inventions or pranks of the villagers. Every time they let out a “pullita” or an exaggeration (like that verse that talks about taking 10,000 strides in one jump), they finished off with the refrain: “fot, fot, fot” (or its soft version, “fum, fum, fum”), as if to say “¡vaya tela!” or “¡no fastidies!”.
It was the musician Joaquim Pecanins who, when documenting the piece, decided to keep the sweetened version (fum) so that the song could have a route beyond the Lluçanès mountains. And the move worked out well.
In 1922, the carol was already being published in English by the main international publishers. Today, that song of hooligan shepherds making fun of their neighbors is sung in dozens of languages, translated into English and even adapted to Chinese. So, this year, when you sing the refrain, remember that you are not singing to the chimney, but celebrating the most satirical and rebellious spirit of our popular culture.