An Illustration from an early edition of A Visit from St. Nicholas shows that his appearence had not yet found its modern form. |
On December 23,
1823 the Troy, New York Sentinel anonymously published a poem
under the title of A Visit from St. Nicholas.
In fifty six lines the poem essentially created Santa Claus a/k/a St. Nick as we know him today—a magical being who flies on Christmas Eve in
a sleigh pulled by eight reindeer, enters a home via the chimney, delivers toys to children from his bag,
and flies away wishing “Happy Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight!” Details of St. Nicholas’s exact appearance would be worked out by
illustrators including Thomas Nast, Norman Rockwell, and Haddon Sundblom over the next century or so
and much back story and elaborations, such as a North Pole
workshop and elves would be added.
But essentially Santa was born with that poem.
In the custom of the
day, other newspapers picked up and reprinted the poem. Within five years it had become something of
a Yuletide staple in newsprint and other writers began to pick up
on this new version of St. Nicholas. He
first took root as a tradition in many household in New York, the
home of many Dutch descendant who easily embraced the transition
from their traditional Sinterklass.
Clement Clarke Moore |
Twenty-one years later, Clement
Clarke Moore, a very serious and high minded professor of
Oriental and Greek Literature at Columbia College, finally publicly claimed
authorship when, at the insistence of his now grown children,
reluctantly allowed the poem to be included in an published collection
of his more serious poetic efforts.
Born on Manhattan in
1779 to a Patriot family in still British occupied New York,
Moore was raised devout Episcopalian, Federalist, and conservative. Both his wife’s and his own families were slave
holders as long as it was legal in the state and he remained an
outspoken anti-abolitionist his whole life. He also objected to paying taxes for urban
improvements like streets and sanitary drainage. He opposed the extension of the voting
franchise beyond wealthy landowners, abhorred the urban
poor, and the “devil of Democracy.”
Moore’s estate, Chelsea,
lay outside of the developed city. It was that stately house
that Moore envisioned in his poem.
Moore’s wife, Catharine Elizabeth Taylor was a descendent of the Van Cortlandt family, Dutch patroons, once the major landholders in
the lower Hudson Valley. After years
of fighting, often successfully, the encroachment of the city, Moore began to develop the estate himself in the
1850’s. He subdivided part for posh brownstones for the city’s elite and deeded his orchard to the General Theological Seminary where he also was for many years a
professor of Biblical Learning. The Seminary stands today the neighborhood of Chelsea, all on Moore’s
original estate.
Chelsea House, manor home of the Clement Carke Moore's estate and a perfect landing zone for St. Nicholas. |
Whatever Moore’s political and religious beliefs,
he was a doting and devoted father to several
children. He may have been regaling them with stories of St.
Nicholas for sometime. A letter thought
to have been written as early as 1820 mentioned the Christmas visitor. He clearly was familiar with the Dutch traditions
through his wife and through his close friend, Washington Irving, who had included Sinterklaas tales in his A History of New York written in
1809 under the nom de plume of Dietrich
Knickerbocker.
But Moore altered Irving’s version in important
ways. Most obviously, he changed
Irving’s horse drawn flying wagon to
the reindeer propelled sleigh. He also
changed the time of the visit from Christmas Day to Christmas Eve. This was not
accidental. Although the celebration of
Christmas was growing in popularity, many Protestants
still resisted the holiday because
of its identification with the Catholic
mass. By moving St. Nick’s visit to Christmas Eve,
which is not a Catholic Holy Day,
Moore made it acceptable.
By the time Moore died at his summer home in Newport, Rhode Island in 1863, his poem
was published in many editions, some
of which changed the title to The Night Before Christmas after the
poem’s famous first line. Many editions
made other minor changes, most notably the names of one pair of the
reindeer. Moore’s original Dutch Dunder and Blixem (Thunder and Lightning in English) morphed into the German Donder and Blitzen. Still later, others versions dropped the “d”
from Donder. As Merry Christmas became the standard holiday greeting that phrase
was often substituted for Happy Christmas in the poem’s last lines.
Because Moore staked
his claim of authorship years after the first appearance, literary conspiracy theorists have made
a cottage industry of yelling fraud
and proposing other authors. The most frequently cited candidate is Henry Livingston, a twig on the family tree of the wealthy and powerful Livingston family who was a
Dutch Reform minister and minor poet
from Poughkeepsie. His descendants claim to have seen a manuscript of the poem in Henry’s hand
which, conveniently, was destroyed in a
fire. But Livingston has his
proponents and a mock trial on the
claim was held at the Rensselaer County
Courthouse in Troy on December 18, 2013.
High priced legal talent
strutted their stuff and the result was a hung
jury.
Most literary
experts are not as gullible as
at least some members of the moot trial jury.
I’m no expert, but I will stand with Moore as the genuine author.
Hardly a year goes by without at least one new illustrated edition of the classic
poem, which has been called, “…the best-known verses ever written by an
American.” It has also inspired numerous
musical adaptations, stage plays, live action and animated
films, and T.V. shows. And, inevitably, it has been endlessly parodied.
But the poem lives on because many families still
make it an annual tradition to read on every Christmas Eve the poem Clement
Clarke Moore was embarrassed to admit he wrote.
far back as I can remember, Patrick, I've always distrusted the vast majority of the words of literary critics...
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