Jason Kelce is good at football. He is a runaway success as a podcaster.

And according to the Philadelphia Eagles director of player development, Connor Barwin, who appeared on a recent episode of The Season With Peter Schrager, Kelce is a surprisingly talented poet.

Barwin, who has been friends with Kelce for 20 years, described a moment this offseason when the Eagles center pulled him aside to show him some of his work.

“It was probably in May,” Barwin recalled to Schrager. “I’m in the locker room in the summer, he’s here working out in the morning. He’s like, ‘Hey Connor, I wrote a poem. Maybe it’s a song. But probably not.’ And I’m like, ‘All right, well, let me hear it.'”

Jason KelceJason Kelce walks off the field after the game against the Buffalo Bills at Lincoln Financial Field on November 26, 2023, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Kelce recently recorded a Christmas album.PHOTO BY MITCHELL LEFF/GETTY IMAGES
The poem, which ended up being the lyrics to Kelce’s song Santa’s Night on the album A Philly Special Christmas Special that Kelce released on Dec. 1, considered how it must feel to be Santa on Christmas night.

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“It’s literally just me and [Kelce] sitting in the locker room, and he’s hitting a box to give it the melody, and he just sort of says it and he sings it, and I was like, ‘Are you kidding me dude?'” Barwin said. “I knew right away. I was like, ‘Dude, you just wrote like a beautiful Christmas song. I don’t know how you did it, but that’s amazing.'”

Santa’s Night begins with a sad guitar riff. After setting the scene of Santa about to take off with his reindeer, with a thermos of coffee in hand and Mrs. Claus waving at the door, Kelce writes about how cold the late December air must be.

“I never get used to flying through the air / The winter wind burns / As it whistles my hair,” Kelce wrote.

Santa then spends the evening “dodging and ducking” to avoid detection as he drops off innumerable presents across the world. He works until his “sack is near empty / And my blisters are torn / All this ’cause some virgin’s son was born.”

But in the end, when all the presents are delivered and the kids are thrilled, the whole enterprise is worth the effort: “I’m often caught thinking / Why’s it gotta be one night? / But as the wrappings rip open / I am healed with delight.”

To Barwin, the poem was a beautiful metaphor for sacrifice.

“[Kelce] writes this song about how s**** it is to be Santa on Christmas Night, but correlates it to being a football player and a parent, and saying it’s all worth it in the end because of the joy,” Barwin said. “It’s like, this is beautiful.”