Every year, I am more and more convinced of the same thing.
I think that during the holidays, you really need to have a fireplace in your house.
We used to live in a house when I was a kid that only had an oil furnace as the heating source. I used to live in constant fear that over the holidays, Santa would not be able to come and bring me a present because we didn’t have a fireplace or a chimney for him to get in the house through! It sounds silly now, but back then, having a fireplace, even if it was a gas fireplace, was a big deal to me. Oh, how I hated hearing the gas heater turn on and feeling the heating come blowing through the heating ducts in the winter before Christmas came around. Every time the heating kicked in, I was simply reminded that we didn’t have a fireplace or a way for the jolly old elf to bring me my toys on Christmas Eve. These days, now that I’m grown up and I have kids of my own, I always make sure that each place we live in has at least two sources of heating. I don’t care if we have an electric furnace, a gas furnace, a heat pump, or radiant heated floors. But I do care if we have a fireplace and a chimney for my kids’ sake. I really think that you have to have a fireplace to feel warm and cozy over the winter season, and for Santa to visit!