An anonymous poem in a newspaper
On December 23, 1823, the Troy Sentinel, a newspaper in upstate New York, printed a poem with no author's name. It began "'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house" and told of a visit from St. Nicholas: a tiny sleigh, eight reindeer, a jolly old elf with a bundle of toys who came down the chimney, filled the stockings and was gone.
It was reprinted in newspapers and almanacs year after year. In 1837 the scholar Clement Clarke Moore was named as its author, and he included it in a book of his poems in 1844.
A dispute that has never quite ended
The family of Henry Livingston Jr., a farmer and poet from the Hudson Valley who died in 1828, long maintained that he had written it years earlier and read it to his children. In 2000 a scholar who specialised in identifying anonymous authors argued, from the style of the verse, that Livingston was the more likely writer. Others have defended Moore with equal conviction. There is no manuscript that settles it, and it will probably stay unresolved.
Eight reindeer
The poem gave the reindeer their names: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid - and Dunder and Blixem, from the Dutch for thunder and lightning, a nod to New York's Dutch heritage. Later printings changed the last two, and by the twentieth century they had settled as Donder and Blitzen.
Rudolph is not in the poem. He was created in 1939 for a booklet given away by an American department store, and joined the team through a song ten years later.
How it shaped Santa
Before the poem, St. Nicholas arrived in different ways in different stories - on foot, on horseback, on different nights. The poem fixed the details: Christmas Eve, a sleigh on the roof, reindeer, the chimney, stockings hung with care, and a small, round, cheerful figure. In the decades that followed, illustrators - most famously the cartoonist Thomas Nast - drew Santa to match it, and the picture has hardly changed since.
Reading it aloud
It is one of the best poems there is for reading to children, because the rhythm does half the work. A few things help:
- Let the beat carry you. The lines have a galloping rhythm - "da-da-DUM, da-da-DUM". Lean into it and it reads itself.
- Speed up for the reindeer. "Now, Dasher! now, Dancer!" is a shout, and children love joining in.
- Slow down for the quiet parts. The house asleep at the start, and the moment St. Nicholas lays a finger aside of his nose.
- Take turns. Older children can read a verse each; younger ones can say the reindeer names.
- End softly. The last line - "Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!" - is a bedtime line. Treat it like one.
"A Visit from St. Nicholas" is one of the stories to read aloud behind the doors of Christmas Advent Calendar, shown page by page on the TV so the whole family can follow along.