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The Library
The Night Before Christmas
by Clement C. Moore
Illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith
Introduction
The Night Before Christmas has been an important part of American Christmas celebrations for over a century now. While everyone has heard of the poem and while most know at least its first lines, the origin of the poem is not so well-known, nor is the extent to which it has shaped our popular image of Saint Nicholas, or Santa Claus, often realized. It was The Night Before Christmas that first gave St. Nicholas his reindeer and sleigh in which he journeyed over the housetops, and established an image of him as fat, jovial, and roly-poly. The man responsible for this great contribution to American folklore was a kindly, somewhat retiring scholar by the name of Clement Clarke Moore.
 Clement C. Moore
Engraving 1897
J. W. Evans Clement Clarke Moore was born in 1779, in his family's ancestral home of Chelsea House in the Hudson River Valley outside of old New York City. His father, Benjamin Moore, was a prominent Episcopalian clergyman, rector of Trinity Church and Bishop of New York. His mother was Charity Clarke, whose father Thomas Clarke, a British army officer and French and Indian War veteran, had established Chelsea House back in 1745. Young Clement, a highly gifted student, graduated from Columbia College in New York in 1798 by the age of 19 (in those days before schools were divided into grade and high schools, a promising scholar could enter college much sooner than he could today, as soon as he showed sufficient aptitude). Moore was proficient in languages (principally French, Greek, Italian, Hebrew, and Latin) and an accomplished player on the organ and violin. Following his graduation, he studied for the ministry, but took time out to translate an edition of the Latin poet Juvenal and write some original poetry, as well as compile the first American lexicon of the Hebrew language. This latter accomplishment led to his appointment as professor of Oriental and Greek languages at the Episcopal General Theological Seminary of New York and a career as a teacher rather than a minister. In 1813 he married Catherine Taylor, daughter of a prominent local landholding family; they would go on to have nine children. Moore's other works included translations of French agricultural books, political pamphlets advocating a negotiated end to the War of 1812, a biography of the King of Albania and a collection of his father's sermons. These works, far more "serious" than the short poem Moore wrote one Christmas, are largely forgotten today, while The Night Before Christmas is still read round the world.
 Saint Nicholas
1810
Alexander Anderson The poem seems to have its origins in the Dutch folklore of the area surrounding the Chelsea estate. Saint Nicholas had long been a folk figure in Holland, delivering presents to good children by leaving them on the doorstep or putting them through the window. It seems that Moore, with Saint Nicholas's ("Sinterklaas" in Dutch, from whence comes our "Santa Claus") Dutch origins in mind, drew on the Chelsea House handyman, a fat, jolly old Dutchman, as the model for his version of St. Nick. Thus the image of a portly Santa was forever fixed in people's minds. It was also Moore who gave St. Nicholas a sleigh (in Dutch legend he had traveled in a wagon), grounding his poem in local atmosphere by having the Saint utilize the type of vehicle used to travel during the snowy winters of the Hudson area. And the reindeer? No one knows where they came from, but perhaps Moore felt that a special personage  St. Nick
1848
T. C. Boyd like St. Nicholas deserved transportation more colorful than a mere horse-drawn sleigh. The poem, written solely for the amusement of Moore's children, was read aloud for the first time one snowy Christmas evening in 1822. The Night Before Christmas was not intended for publication, and Moore was quite surprised when it turned up in print. It seems that Harriet Butler, a rector's daughter visited the family during the fall of 1823, read and was enchanted by the poem, and asked for a copy. Eventually, she anonymously forwarded it to a local New York paper, the Troy Sentinel. The Sentinel published the poem, without an author's name listed, on December 23, 1823, and it acquired almost instant popularity, being reprinted annually by the Sentinel and soon by other papers. It also began to appear in book form by the late 1820s, and was first illustrated-with a single frontspiece picture-in 1830.  Santa Claus
Harper's Weekly 1881
Thomas Nast Moore, somewhat irritated by all these unauthorized reproductions of a poem he had never meant to be published, did not publicly acknowledge authorship of until 1838. By then, he was ready to accept his poem's unsought fame with good-humor, though mildly protesting that he had scarcely intended "his faint and timorous voice to raise" before the public. The first fully illustrated edition, with engravings by T. C. Boyd, was published by Henry Onderdonk of New York in 1848.
Dr. Moore continued his quiet, scholarly, and useful life, following this unexpected moment of celebrity, engaging in extensive philanthropic work after the death of his wife, and carving up the huge Chelsea estate into plots for his children and their families. He passed away in July of 1863, at his small summer home in Newport, Rhode Island, revered by family, friends, and colleagues alike. He was remembered, as he well deserved to be, as a good citizen, father, husband, and teacher, but none realized at the time how his fame would go round the world, nor how his little Christmastime gift to his children would shape the Christmas dreams and memories of so many other children in the years to come.
The following edition of The Night Before Christmas was first published in 1912, by the Houghton Mifflin Company, and illustrated by the accomplished artist Jessie Willcox Smith (1863-1935). Smith was well-known in her day for her cover illustrations for Good Housekeeping and for numerous interior illustrations for Collier’s, the Ladies Home Journal, McClure’s, Scribner’s, Charles Kingsley’s children’s book The Water Babies, and many other books and magazines.
The identity of the enigmatic E. McC., author of the original introduction, remains a mystery. He may have been an editor, or even a University professor, but his true name seems to be lost to time.
Dan Neyer
November, 2008
Introduction © 2008 by Dan Neyer
Editor's Note:This edition of The Night Before Christmas is a reconstruction of the text and art supplied by Project Gutenberg and we have used that edition as a guide. Page layout, art re-sizing and any other changes are the product of TNL.
INTRODUCTION
 mid the many celebrations last Christmas Eve, in various places by different persons, there was one, in New York City, not like any other
anywhere. A company of men, women, and children went together just after the evening service in their church, and, standing around the tomb of
the author of "A Visit from St. Nicholas," recited together the words of the poem which we all know so well and love so dearly.
Dr. Clement C. Moore, who wrote the poem, never expected that he would be remembered by it. If he expected to be famous at all as a
writer, he thought it would be because of the Hebrew Dictionary that he wrote.
He was born in a house near Chelsea Square, New York City, in 1781; and he lived there all his life. It was a great big house, with
fireplaces in it;—just the house to be living in on Christmas Eve.
Dr. Moore had children. He liked writing poetry for them even more than he liked writing a Hebrew Dictionary. He wrote a whole book of
poems for them.
One year he wrote this poem, which we usually call "'Twas the Night before Christmas," to give to his children for a Christmas present. They read it just after they had hung up their stockings before one of the big fireplaces in their house. Afterward, they learned it, and
sometimes recited it, just as other children learn it and recite it now.
It was printed in a newspaper. Then a magazine printed it, and after a time it was printed in the school readers. Later it was printed by itself, with pictures. Then it was translated into German, French, and many other languages. It was even made into "Braille"; which is the raised printing that blind children read with their fingers. But never has it been given to us in so attractive a form as in this book. It has happened that almost all the children in the world know this poem. How few of them know any Hebrew!
Every Christmas Eve the young men studying to be ministers at the General Theological Seminary, New York City, put a holly wreath around
Dr. Moore's picture, which is on the wall of their dining-room. Why? Because he gave the ground on which the General Theological Seminary
stands? Because he wrote a Hebrew Dictionary? No. They do it because he was the author of "A Visit from St. Nicholas."
Most of the children probably know the words of the poem. They are old. But the pictures that Miss Jessie Willcox Smith has painted for
this edition of it are new. All the children, probably, have seen other pictures painted by Miss Smith, showing children at other seasons of the
year. How much they will enjoy looking at these pictures, showing children on that night that all children like best,—Christmas
Eve!
E. McC.
 was 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;
 he children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap,
 hen out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
he moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,
ith a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:
 ow, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"
 s dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of Toys, and St. Nicholas too.
 nd then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
 e was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of Toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.
 is eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;
 he stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly.
 e was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;
e spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;
e sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night."
A careful search of
copyright records has shown that this story is in the Public
Domain.
A dramatic reading of this poem by Basil Rathbone can be found over on the KWTNL page.
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