The Birth of a Christmas Classic
S trange and roundabout are the ways of Fame! Betsy Ross, like thousands of other Colonial daughters, could ply a handy needle, but because she worked on a certain square of material she stitched her way into immortality. Newton saw an apple drop from a tree and gave his mind to unraveling the great Law of Gravitation that has made him famous. The political importance of Sir Walter Raleigh is known to historians, but it is the rain puddle, over which he flung his velvet cloak in a gesture of respect to the haughty Elizabeth, that brings him popular fame. So that celebrated poem, "’Twas the Night Before Christmas," the most thumb-marked linen book in the nursery, the "best seller" in juvenile literature at Christmas, was the fruit of an inspired moment, while a man hurried through a swamp of snow on a mission of kindness one Christmas Eve over a hundred years ago.
Dr. Clement Clark Moore, author of the Christmas classic, the one-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of whose birth occurred last July, wrote other poems, notably one called "The Sisters of Charity," a lovely tribute to Sister Mary Frances who died ministering to cholera victims in the epidemic in New York City in 1832. As Professor of Oriental and Greek Literature he published a Hebrew Dictionary. Today his modest volume of poetry and the mighty dictionary stand in dusty jackets with the shadow of oblivion already upon them. "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (Dr. Moore’s original title to the poem) writtcn by him on a scrimp piece of paper, was a little gift of his pen to his own children, to be read by them as they huddled together over their toys on Christmas morning. But the inspiration for the lines came to him the night before.
In 1822 Christmas Eve in New York City was a crystal night of snow and ice, a night of hushed vigil, too, for in those days when only the toe of Manhattan Island was populated, there were cow pastures and wild-flower alleys between the squatty houses, and a snowfall made roads almost impassable. Folks kept close to their own hearths that Christmas Eve; only the distant tinkle of a sleigh-bell broke in upon the evening stillness. If a snowfall quarantined "town" folk, those living within a short radius of Battery Place or the lowest tip of Manhattan, it almost completely isolated those who lived in the "suburbs," above Canal Street.
One of these nineteenth-century New York "suburbanites" was Dr. Clement Clark Moore, a much respected landowner. He lived with his wife and three children in a large frame "mansion" with outspread porches and a hospitable stoop, that stood like a huge chest on a hill on what is now West Twenty-third Street and Chelsea Square. All that could be seen from the attic window of Dr. Moore’s house were his own grounds of considerable acres rolling in smooth white in snowy winter. The only approach to the house was through a crooked path called Love Lane, an elbow running west from the main thoroughfare, Bloomingdale Road, or the Broadway of today.
On this particular Christmas Eve Mrs. Moore stood in the huge kitchen of the mansion packing baskets of holiday turkey to distribute among the poor of the district on Christmas Day. She had bundled the children into their beds an hour earlier that night to give extra time to prepare the baskets. Three candy-stripe stockings hung before the fireplace in the library, three yellow heads, loaded with dreams and "visions of sugar plums," slept under the canopy in the north bedroom. Her nimble fingers were sore at the joints picking feathers from the plump white turkey breasts, packing the cranberry jelly and nuts and home-made plum pudding and celery around the bird, twisting and tying gay red ribbons on the handles of the baskets.
Almost at the end of her task with but four baskets more to fill, she suddenly discovered that she was short one turkey. In the rush of holiday preparation she had miscalculated the number. The little old lady down by the creek who lived with her parrot would have to do without the Moore Christmas basket this year. Mrs. Moore was a kindly soul and the thought of the old woman apparently forgotten hastened her steps to her husband’s study. The Doctor was deep in a volume of Hebrew lexicography, but Mrs. Moore interrupted him with her story of the missing turkey and the old lady. It was late and bitter cold, but Dr. Moore volunteered to go to the market, a stiff distance away, and buy the extra turkey. He wrapt his greatcoat about him and Mrs. Moore tied a worsted muffler at his neck and brought his boots and off he started for the market.
Near midnight the Doctor’s dark figure could be seen plowing home through the grove of snow that was his apple orchard, the package of turkey gripped under his arm. The wind that had slashed back the brim of his large felt hat earlier in the night had ceased and left the lawn and terraces leading to his house freshly swept and magically clear under a silvery, watery wash of new moonlight. The sky was sharp with December stars. Stimulated by the quiet beauty of the frozen landscape as it lay about his own door, Moore stood still, his boots sunk in a tub of snow. From subsequent history we can infer
his musings as he gazed on the fair scene. In fancy he saw the flannel-coated St. Nicholas riding on his annual pilgrimage to the children of the land, his sleigh tipping over with dolls and drums, his reindeer, with their antlers hung with silver bells, dashing across the frosty lawn. He saw "the moon, on the breast of the new-fallen snow" as reflected light from thousands of happy children’s faces, from the faces of his own children when they emptied their stockings Christmas morning.
The American Fairy Tale of Santa Claus was first written in imagination by Clement Moore on the magic-tapped lawn of his own house that Christmas Eve.
Dr. Moore sat writing in his study far into the awakening hours of Christmas morning; but " A Visit from St. Nicholas" was finished for future generations to look over his shoulder and read,
’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the
house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.
Among Dr. Moore’s guests at Christmas dinner was a Dr. Butler, rector of St. Paul’s Church in Troy, and his family. Dr. Butler’s eldest daughter, knowing that her host was somewhat of a poet, had brought her autograph album, the treasured property of every young girl of the day, and when Mrs. Moore passed the freshly penned poem around the table, the young lady hastily copied it on a pink leaf of her album, intending to recite it for the children at the rectory. They were so delighted with the poem that Miss Butler thought it deserved the dignity of print, so she sent it, anonymously, to the Troy Sentinel. It appeared shortly with the following note from Holley, the editor:
We know not to whom we are indebted for the following description of that unwearied patron of music—that homely and delightful personage of parental kindness, Santa Claus, his costume and his equipage, as he goes about visiting the firesides of this happy land, laden with Christmas bounties; but from whomsoever it may have come, we give thanks for it.
Every year the Troy Sentinel featured "A Visit from St. Nicholas" and gave the staff artist unlimited liberty. The lines were surrounded by elaborate borders of pen flourishes with stockings bulging with bugles and tiny reindeer mounting clouds. Then when school readers opened their pages and showed "’Twas the Night Before Christmas" in large primer type, Moore’s poem made that magic contact which has spread to generations of young and old, not only in America but in foreign lands, where, as a visitor describes a Christmas school play in Germany, the little Fraulein recites the poem in thick, halting German.
St. Nicholas and his Christmas chariot were first permanently quartered in separate book form in 1836. After that came numerous editions, all festively illustrated with holly berries and icicles and Santa buckling his belt about his "little round belly." A glance through the colored picture pages of these early editions is really a peep at an old-fashioned generation of children-sleeping under turkey-red quilts on a bed nearer the ceiling than the floor, beside" mamma in her ’kerchief" and papa in his Punch’s night-cap.
The choicest edition was that issued in 1859 in paper covers, illustrated by the trick-fingered Felix OctaVius Darley. This artist, skilled in giving the significant touch to such abiding characters of American tradition as Irving’s Rip Van Winkle, Diedrich Knickerbocker and the gangling Ichabod Crane, Longfellow’s Miles Standish and Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne, contributed a St. Nicholas that fairly puffed and waddled with jollity and Christmas cheer. Moore once remarked that the Santa Claus of his poem was the pen portrait of a neighbor, a fleshy, ruddy-chinned Dutchman living in the Chelsea district. Darley caught Moore’s original with clever detail.
The Moore mansion, in which "A Visit from St. Nicholas" was written, was destroyed in 1850. The lawn which was the pawing-ground for the visionary reindeer that Moore has immortalized, is now the Close of the General Theological Seminary, part of the property of sixty lots deeded to the institution by Dr. Moore himself, now comprising a square block from Ninth to Tenth Avenues and from Twentieth to Twenty-first Streets, known as Chelsea Square.
Clement Moore’s poems, some thirty-three in number, mostly in iambic meter, are undistinguished. He devoted his spare time to versifying, but was content to see his volume of poetry beloved and respected solely within the bosom of his family.
Moore died July 10, 1863. His body lies in Trinity Cemetery on upper Broadway, in New York, and every year children garland his grave and recite his perennial lines, "’Twas the Night Before Christmas."
