The Night Before Christmas

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a b "Clement Clarke Moore and Santa in the City". www.mcny.org. Museum of the City of New York . Retrieved January 18, 2019. When the government of New York City decided on a street grid in Manhattan, based on the Commissioner's Plan of 1811, the new Ninth Avenue was projected to go through the middle of the Chelsea estate. In 1818, Moore wrote and published a pamphlet calling on other "Proprietors of Real Estate" to oppose the manner in which the city was being developed. He thought it was a conspiracy designed to increase political patronage and appease the city's working class, and argued that making landowners bear the costs of the streets laid through their property was "a tyranny no monarch in Europe would dare to exercise." He also criticized the grid plan and the flattening of hills as ill-advised. [31] A Visit from St. Nicholas, more commonly known as The Night Before Christmas and 'Twas the Night Before Christmas from its first line, is a poem first published anonymously under the title Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas in 1823 and later attributed to Clement Clarke Moore, who claimed authorship in 1837. Clement Clarke Moore Park, located at 10th Avenue and 22nd Street in Chelsea, is named after Moore.

The matter can never be settled': The controversy over who wrote The Night Before Christmas". Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. December 24, 2017 . Retrieved December 23, 2019. The poem has been called "arguably the best-known verses ever written by an American" [1] and is largely responsible for some of the conceptions of Santa Claus from the mid-nineteenth century to today. It has had a massive effect on the history of Christmas gift-giving. Before the poem gained wide popularity, American ideas had varied considerably about Saint Nicholas and other Christmastide visitors. A Visit from St. Nicholas eventually was set to music and has been recorded by many artists.Moore’s template for the Santa that he drew through his poetry soon replaced the centuries old characteristic depictions of St. Nicholas of Europe. The poem also influenced the ideas of Christmas Eve gifting and is believed to have popularized the concept of Santa visiting homes on Christmas Eve bearing gifts in America. The Troy sentinel. (Troy, N.Y.) 1823-1832, January 20, 1829, Image 3" (1829/01/20). January 20, 1829: 3. {{ cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= ( help)

Here, we see elements of the modern Santa Claus archetype taking shape. He is jolly, benevolent, slightly mischievous – as suits someone who commits countless acts of breaking-and-entering each year, but breaks into homes to give gifts rather than taking things away. All one needs to do is take away the details about Saint Nicholas smoking a pipe – something that would not pass muster with modern sensibilities. As the story goes, Moore wrote it as a Christmas present for his two daughters. He apparently told the New York Historical Society that a "portly, rubicund Dutchman in the neighborhood" was his model for St. Nicholas. This poem goes on to embrace the adage that “[t]here’s truth in wine” and to praise the capacity of alcohol to “impart / new warmth and feeling to the heart.” It culminates in a hearty invitation to the drink: Lowe, James. "A Christmas to Remember: A Visit from St. Nicholas," Autograph Collector, January 2000, pp. 26–29

'Quite likely that the matter can never be settled'

Clement Clarke Moore, (July 15, 1779 – July 10, 1863), is best known as the credited author of A Visit From St. Nicholas (more commonly known today as Twas the Night Before Christmas). This book cover image released by Grafton and Scratch Publishers shows a newer version of The Night Before Christmas.(Grafton and Scratch Publishers/The Associated Press) Once the worried homeowner has flown like a flash to his bedroom window, opened the shutters, and raised the sash, he engages in an oft-overlooked bit of elaborate 19th-century description – “The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow/Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below”. And against that brightly lit winter night-time landscape, the reader gets a first sight of “a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer.” Twas the Night Before Christmas" and Columbia – News from Columbia's Rare Book & Manuscript Library". blogs.cul.columbia.edu . Retrieved December 8, 2022.

This illustration released by Applesauce Press shows Santa Claus smoking a pipe from a copy of The Night Before Christmas. The book has since been updated to remove smoking references, but the authorship of the poem is still in dispute.(Applesauce Press/The Associated Press) What we know for sureI have read this story every Christmas Eve for as long as I can remember, it's always been part of our Christmas traditions and it will always have a special place in my part because of that. On January 20, 1829, Troy editor Orville L. Holley alluded to the author of the Christmas poem, using terms that accurately described Moore as a native and current resident of New York City, and as "a gentleman of more merit as a scholar and a writer than many of more noisy pretensions". [10] In December 1833, a diary entry by Francis P. Lee, a student at General Theological Seminary when Moore taught there, referred to a holiday figure of St. Nicholas as being "robed in fur, and dressed according to the description of Prof. Moore in his poem". [11] Four poems including A Visit from St. Nicholas appeared under Moore's name in The New-York Book of Poetry, edited by Charles Fenno Hoffman (New York: George Dearborn, 1837). The Christmas poem appears on pp.217–19, credited to "Clement C. Moore". Moore stated in a letter to the editor of the New York American (published on March 1, 1844) that he "gave the publisher" of The New-York Book of Poetry "several pieces, among which was the 'Visit from St. Nicholas.'" Admitting that he wrote it "not for publication, but to amuse my children," Moore claimed the Christmas poem in this 1844 letter as his "literary property, however small the intrinsic value of that property may be". A Visit from St. Nicholas appears on pp.124–27 in Moore's volume of collected Poems (New York: Bartlett and Welford, 1844). Before 1844, the poem was included in two 1840 anthologies: attributed to "Clement C. Moore" in Selections from The American Poets, edited by William Cullen Bryant (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1840), pp.285–86; and to "C. C. Moore" in the first volume of The Poets of America, edited by John Keese (New York: S. Colman, 1840), pp.102–04. The New-York Historical Society has a later manuscript of the poem in Moore's handwriting, forwarded by T. W. C. Moore along with a cover letter dated March 15, 1862 giving circumstances of the poem's original composition and transmission after a personal "interview" with Clement C. Moore. [12] Rosewarne, Lauren (2017). Analyzing Christmas in Film: Santa to the Supernatural. Lexington Books. pp.132–133. ISBN 9781498541824 . Retrieved 15 September 2022. Moore's maternal grandfather was Major Thomas Clarke, an English officer who stayed in the colony after fighting in the French and Indian War. He owned the large Manhattan estate "Chelsea", then in the country north of the developed areas of the city. As a girl, Moore's mother Charity Clarke wrote letters to her English cousins. Preserved at Columbia University, these show her disdain for the policies of the British monarchy and her growing sense of patriotism in pre-Revolutionary days. Moore's grandmother Sarah Fish was a descendant of Elizabeth Fones and Joris Woolsey, one of the earlier settlers of Manhattan. [5] Moore's parents inherited the Chelsea estate, and deeded it to him in 1813. He earned great wealth by subdividing and developing it in the 19th century. [6]

Strong, George Templeton (1952). Diary, Vol 1: Young Man in New York, 1835-1849. Internet Archive. New York: Macmillan. p.326. Nevius, Michelle & Nevius, James (2009), Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City, New York: Free Press, ISBN 141658997X , pp. 51–52 AlmaDeutscher, The Night before Christmas – music by Alma Deutscher, archived from the original on 21 December 2021 , retrieved 13 December 2018 Moore is shown in a replica portrait originally painted by Daniel Huntington.(Bettmann Archive/Getty Images) A Visit from St. Nicholas," which later became widely known by its opening line, "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," was first published anonymously in 1823. Moore publicly claimed authorship in 1837, and this was not disputed during his lifetime, but a rival claimant emerged later and scholars now debate the identity of the author, calling on textual and handwriting analysis as well as other historical sources.

William Taylor Moore (1823-1897), who married Lucretia Post in 1857 and, after her death in 1872, Katherine E. Robinson. He had no children. [39] Burrows, Edwin G.& Mike Wallace (1999). Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-511634-8 Sarah Bryan Miller. "Long saga behind composer's Christmas cantata". St. Louis Post Dispatch. 1 December 2017.