On December 23, 1823, a poem entitled “Account of a Visit From St. Nicholas” was published anonymously in the Troy, New York Sentinel. It began like this:
'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse
Oh, so you’ve heard of it? The poem—which has had an outsize influence on the American iconography and mythology around Christmas and Santa Claus, not least by naming, for the first time, all the reindeer (except Rudolph, who was invented in 1939)—was reprinted many times, in the Sentinel and elsewhere, before anyone claimed authorship. Even years later, in 1829, when a reader wrote into the paper asking who had written the poem, the editors demurred:
[The poem] came to us from a manuscript copy in possession of a lady in this city. We have been given to understand that the author of them belongs, by birth and residence, to the city of New York, and that he is a gentleman of more merit as a scholar and a writer than many of more noisy pretensions.
By 1837, Clement Clarke Moore had been identified as the author in print, and in 1844, he included the poem in his collection, Poems. However, some now believe that it was in fact not written by Moore but by the poet Henry Livingston Jr. (And some, of course, do not.) Either way, the poem, now generally referred to as “Twas the Night Before Christmas,” has reached the pinnacle of cultural saturation, spawning parodies, adaptations, and so, so many low-quality books for toddlers that somehow wind up in the houses of otherwise tasteful people. Tis the season!
