Seth Kaller, Inc.

Chapter III. The Livingston Claim

The “Recovered” Memory

The Livingston claim is now based on the recollections of a relative, Eliza[beth] Clement Brewer Livingston. In 1848, 1861, or even later (no one in the family knows), Brewer read Moore’s poem and “recalled” that her father-in-law had written it 40 or 60 years earlier. Foster admits that “the external evidence for Harry Livingston’s authorship of the poem depended on the recollections and anecdotes of his children and grandchildren, who seem to have settled on Christmas morning 1808, at breakfast, as the occasion on which Major Henry introduced his family to ‘a right jolly old elf...’” (Foster 237). 

Other evidence suggests that the family might have mistaken A Visit for a Christmas poem Livingston did write. The Livingston memories about that Christmas morning are admittedly vague: previously discredited family claims were equally certain that the poem was written between 1780-1800, or in December of 1805 or 1807. Even Brewer’s epiphany is hard to credit as a historical record: The date of her pronouncement was probably neither 1848 nor 1861; the 1863 Harper’s Weekly printing seems most likely, as the Thomas Nast drawing mentioned in family lore appeared in that issue. The written Livingston family claims begin around 1870, at which point the children and grandchildren started to compile and compare their memories by letter. In contrast to the moving target of Livingston camp claims, historical evidence proves that the poem was written in 1822, not before.

One Witness Dead, One Misplaced

Livingston family legend explaining how Moore “stole” Christmas is also easily proven wrong. The family now believes that after Livingston wrote the poem in December of 1808 (which is impossible, as we show elsewhere), he read it to his family and guests on Christmas day of that year. One guest, the story goes, took a copy and went directly to work for Moore as a governess. (Aha!)  However, the family member credited with this memory, Catherine Livingston Breese, died on August 21, 1808 – four months before the event took place. Other facts get in the way, too: Moore was still a bachelor at that time; he had no need for a governess until 1815. 

Publish or Perish

If Livingston wrote A Visit in 1808, why wasn’t it published earlier? He often submitted his poetry for publication, and wrote a regular New Year’s address that was printed in the Poughkeepsie paper. His descendants have spent more than 40 years trying, and failing, to find printed evidence to back up their claims. And why didn’t Livingston take credit for the poem during his lifetime? Between its first publication in 1823 and Livingston’s death in 1828, the poem was republished many times (see Appendix D). Why not correct the record?  Moore, a serious scholar, had reasons to hesitate to claim authorship of a whimsical children’s poem. Livingston did not.

Chapter IV. Context and Content

Santa Claus Didn’t Come Out of Thin Air

A Visitresponded to cultural trends and concerns specific to 1820s New York City. As shown in Stephen Nissenbaum’s well-researched cultural history, The Battle For Christmas (1988), Moore was influenced by Washington Irving, John Pintard and Gulian Verplanck, and their association with The New-York Historical Society and the Knickerbocker movement.

Washington Irving’s History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty by Dietrich Knickerbocker, originally published in 1809, was reprinted in 1821 with additions to the text. It is this latter edition that is acknowledged by Christmas scholars as an obvious source of the poem’s inspiration.

… the good St. Nicholas came riding over the tops of the trees, in that self same waggon wherein he brings his yearly presents to children. … And when St. Nicholas had smoked his pipe, he twisted it in his hatband, and laying his finger beside his nose, gave the astonished Van Kortlandt a very significant look; then mounting his waggon, he returned over the tree tops and disappeared (cited in Elliott 42).

St. Nicholas’s gesture of “laying his finger beside his nose,” one of the 1821 additions, was taken up by Moore in his Visit. This is an important piece of evidence supporting 1822 as the date that the poem was written, not earlier, as the Livingston claim alleges. 

The Donder Party

Moore’s “Donder” and “Blitzen” are authentic German words for thunder and lightning. When Don Foster argues that Orville Holley, the poem’s original publisher, “got it right” by printing the reindeer names as “Dunder” and “Blixem” (the Old Dutch words for thunder and lightning), he overlooks the Knickerbocker pseudo-Dutch heritage movement, which could easily have induced an editor such as Holley to change German to Dutch or to “correct” a variant spelling.  Moore’s own manuscript versions are consistent and he actually corrected “Blixem” to “Blitzen” in Tuttle’s broadside reprint (Museum of the City of New York, MS Col. Cab 2, Letters – Tuttle, 54.331.17A-B).

A Snug Case of Misinterpreted Evidence

What was the inspiration for the phrasing in A Visit? The following two passages provide a likely source for the memorable use of the word “snug” (“all snug in their beds”) in the Christmas poem. Both Sir Walter Scott and Washington Irving were authors known to Moore, and there is additional contextual evidence indicating that Moore had read Irving’s 1821 edition of Knickerbocker History before writing his poem.

“But you must remain snug at the Point of Warroch till I come to see you.” “The Point of Warroch?” said Hatteraick, his countenance again falling; “What, in the cave, I suppose? – I would rather it were any where else; – es spuckt da! – they say for certain that he walks – But, donner and blitzen! I never shunned him alive, and I won’t shun him dead.” [Sir Walter Scott, Guy Mannering, 1815]

Such at least was the case with the guileless government of the New Netherlands; which, like a worthy unsuspicious old burgher, quietly settled itself down into the city of New Amsterdam, as into a snug elbow chair – and fell into a comfortable nap – while in the mean time its cunning neighbours stepp’d in and picked its pockets. [“Diedrich Knickerbocker” (Washington Irving), A History of New York, from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, 1809 and 1821]

Don Foster ignores those obvious links, instead choosing to interpret the word “snug” as a key Scottish-Irish link to Livingston (Foster 259-60), and offering this as further “proof” against Moore. But to do so, Foster has to overlook a mass of evidence in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and the Literature Online (LION) databases, the very sources which he consulted in performing his linguistic analysis. 

Foster writes that the earliest recorded instance in OED of “snug” meaning “tidy” is Allan Ramsay’s Gentle Shepherd. “Great Scot!,” Foster adds, “Allan Ramsay was one of Henry Livingston’s favorite poets” (Foster 259).  But in OED itself, Sir Richard Steele’s 1714 Lover is actually the earliest instance cited. A dozen other usages closer to that of A Visit are also ignored so Foster can claim that for “the earliest instance of ‘snug’ for cozy the OED cites Christopher Anstey,” a poet he can connect to Livingston. But the OED definition that cites Anstey is not the “snug” usage from the Christmas poem, as in “to lie snug in a Bed” (Miége, 1687), or even “snug” as in “comfortable and warm, cosy” (as in “snug warm bed,” in Beresford, 1806). Instead, Foster’s “earliest instance” cites “snug” as in:

Marked or characterized by ease or comfort; comfortable, cosy. (a) 1766 [ANSTEY] Bath Guide xiii. 16 No Lady in London is half so expert At a snug private Party, her Friends to divert.

On the other hand, Moore’s description of the “plump-visag’d, snug, and tidy wife” in his poem “A Trip to Saratoga” (Poems, 1844) seems not to have merited Foster’s attention.

Foster also claims that in LION the second earliest instance of “all snug” appears in John O’Keeffe’s 1789 comic opera, The Highland Reel. “That’s of interest as well,” he states. “[T]he two latest items in Henry Livingston’s music book (1776-1784) are from John O’Keeffe” (Foster 260). Actually, there are three recorded uses of this phrase pre-dating O’Keeffe. In any case, this is a specious argument. Hundreds of LION entries prove that “snug” was hardly a rare word and “all snug” had become a common-enough phrase for Moore to have written “all snug in their beds” in 1822 without any help from Ramsay, Anstey or O’Keeffe. This belies Foster’s assertion that both Livingston and the author of A Visit were “indebted, directly or indirectly, to the identical poets (including, I think, Allan Ramsay, Michael Drayton, Christopher Anstey, William King, John O’Keeffe, and Matthew Lewis, none of them poets who influenced Clement Moore)” (Foster 260).

That list also conveniently leaves out all of the writers from the first decades of the 1800s who used similar words or phrases, including Jane Austen, John Keats and two authors who undoubtedly did influence Moore: Sir Walter Scott and Washington Irving, as quoted above.

The Pipe is Not a Smoking Gun

The pipe in A Visit was not a pro-tobacco slip, as Don Foster argues, but rather “code” that everyone in 1822 New York would have understood. Moore’s St. Nick may have been a bishop, like the real saint, but the short pipe alone made him a working-class hero.  Such imagery was a clever wink at Knickerbocker efforts to create a Christmas holiday for all classes. 

Antecedent Anapests

Clearly, Moore, a Greek scholar, would have been well-versed in anapests (the rhythm used in A Visit) from his reading of Aristotle, and other classical, as well as contemporary, sources. It was by no means an uncommon form of verse. Moore’s poem “The Pig & The Rooster” (see Appendix B) an amusing anapestic verse about narrow-mindedness and tolerance, is another example of his use of this format.

Yet when Don Foster located two bawdy anapestic texts, he assumed that they must have been required reading for the author of A Visit, and then concluded that Moore would never have read them, or, if he had read them, would never have imitated the verses. Foster’s reasoning is doubly flawed. First, Foster focuses on other anapestic poems that did not served as Moore’s inspiration, while ignoring those that clearly did inspire the author. And second, the assessment of Moore’s taste in poetry, one of the strongest arguments the Livingstonians make to argue that Moore could not have written A Visit, does not hold up.

Tracking down the poet’s opinions on “anapestic satires” turns up John Duer’s A New Translation, With Notes, of The Third Satire of Juvenal, to which are added Miscellaneous Poems, Original and Translated (New York: E. Sargeant, 1806). According to Foster, in Moore’s preface to that book, he “condemned the ‘depraved taste in poetry’ of those who read anapestic satire, together with every ‘bawd of licentiousness” who writes it. Moore at age twenty-five fairly wept over the ‘influence which nonsensical and immodest verses may have upon the community’” (Foster 257).

But Foster’s pastiche of quotations bears no resemblance to its sources. Moore never comes close to mentioning the immorality of reading “anapestic satire” or “nonsensical and immodest verses,” as Foster states. In actuality, Moore’s attack is aimed at bad poetry, a polemic against the then-current fashion for maudlin sentimentality. Poets, he contends, should expend their talent on making some sense, rather than simply using sensational imagery and elaborate meter to disguise underlying vapidity. Moore then poses a rhetorical question: “[W]hy think so seriously of the influence which nonsensical and immodest verses may have upon the community, while there are already subjects of censure so much more important… than… a depraved taste in poetry?” He answers that bad taste leads not so much to moral, “but merely to intellectual depravity.” Shoddy verse is bad for poetry and for culture. As for the “bawd of licentiousness,” that phrase is actually taken from a quotation by Dr. Brown, who Moore cites in his discussion of links between popular culture and public education. 

So did the scholarly Moore simply disapprove of light verse? Not at all. In his preface to the Juvenal translation, he did indeed write that “no production which assumes the guise of poetry ought to be tolerated, if it possess no other recommendation than the glow of its expressions and the tinkling of its syllables, or the wanton allurement of the ideas that it conveys.” But in the next sentence, he explained further.

It should be scrupulously required, that whenever words are put together, they be assembled for some rational purpose; that if the affections be addressed, the feeling intended to be excited be one of which human nature is susceptible; that if an image be presented to the imagination, its form be distinguishable; and that if reason be called upon, something be expressed which the mind can comprehend (xxv-xxvi).

Moore scrupulously followed this poetic program when he later composed The Night Before Christmas. There was a rational purpose to it: telling a story to entertain children, while providing (and inventing) a bit of history. The feelings he addressed were so “susceptible” to human nature, that almost 200 years later the verse is still read and loved. The images he presented were so “distinguishable” that they have inspired countless paintings, drawings and prints, and even other poetry and songs. One final, and I think telling, point on the subject: Foster’s footnote citing the Duer translation of Juvenal conveniently elides the word “Satire” from the book’s title. 

Moore: The Mean, Rich, Dead, White Male Professor

We’ve already debunked the claim that Moore was constitutionally incapable of writing a light-hearted poem. That charge is, once again, based on flawed evidence. The writing samples that Foster uses to indict Moore and support Livingston are nowhere near comparable: Moore’s academic texts, professional letters and Poems vs. Livingston’s light verse (unpublished) and family letters. After all, Moore was writing as a father – not for publication, but for the entertainment of his children. Foster ignored all of Moore’s uncollected light verse, like the following undated “Saint Nicholas Poem” from the City Museum of New York’s archives:

What! My sweet little Sis, in bed all alone;  
No light in your room!  And your nursy too gone!

To support his claim that Moore was a moralizing old crank, Don Foster turns to the diary of George Templeton Strong. Based on passages from Strong, Foster depicts Moore as the tyrant of Saint Peter’s Church. Though Moore sponsored the organ and played it for services, Foster refuses to credit his generosity.

Some parishioners, though grateful, thought that the honor of playing [Moore’s donated organ] should have gone to Edward Hodges, a professional musician. George Strong remarks in his diary that the music thereafter was poor, for though the organ was ‘a very fine affair,’ arguably the best in the New World, ‘much can’t be expected from it when operated on by Clement C. Moore…a very scientific musician, but he’s sadly lacking in the mechanical department’ (cited in Foster, 244).

In fact, contrary to Foster’s observation, Strong’s entry doesn’t cite any controversy over who should be playing the organ. Strong, one of the most cultured music critics of his day, didn’t approve of Hodges either. When the latter obtained a post at Trinity Church, Strong acidly observed that “the [organ] music was generally ponderous, as under Hodges’s regimen one was prepared to find it” (Strong, Vol. 2, 278). What Foster fails to note is that, in his original remark, Strong referred to the author of A Visit as “my Clement C. Moore,” a phrase indicating a degree of affection, confirmed elsewhere.

In another excerpt from Strong’s diary, Foster simply identifies the wrong man. He writes that “Clement Clarke Moore, in the words of George Strong, was a man of ‘instinct with red, pepper, to a high degree of excitement’” (Foster 247).  In their index, the editors of the Strong diary clearly identify the subject of this quotation as William Moore, not his father, Clement.

Despite his reputation as a sharp observer with a sharper tongue, Strong actually presents Moore in a positive light. Regarding Moore’s observation of his 1836 Columbia College final exams, Strong recalls: “It was horridly somniferous. How the conscientious Mr. Moore endured it I know not; he stuck by for three mortal hours,” while other trustees snored loudly in their seats or quietly snuck away (Strong, Vol. 1, 29). It also appears that Strong relied on Moore’s fair judgments and unbiased, progressive opinions when the two men served on the Columbia College Board of Trustees. (See the Strong Diary, Vol. 2, 143-246, for the Wolcott Gibbs controversy.)

Of course, fairness and conscientiousness do not necessarily go hand-in-hand with a sense of humor, and arguments have been made that Moore was dry and pedantic by nature. His many affectionate letters and verses to family and friends contradict this characterization. So too did his eulogists, who recalled him as a man of “quiet, sparkling humor,” “warm hearted in friendship, genial in society…and of cheerful humor” (Sonne 379).

Chapter V. Summary

Clement Clarke Moore, immortalized for writing The Night Before Christmas, has been unjustly accused of taking false credit for the classic holiday poem. But any unbiased look at the evidence – documentary, historical and linguistic – must lead to the conclusion that Moore was indeed the work’s author. 

In Author Unknown, Don Foster concludes that “The words on the handwritten or printed page are more indelible than fingerprints, and more dependable, if carefully assessed, than eyewitness testimony” (Foster 282). But two years after publishing his indictment of Moore, Foster was forced to retract his own attribution of a funeral elegy to William Shakespeare. (Foster’s linguistic analysis of that elegy was highlighted in Chapter I of Author Unknown.) “[P]eople…often commit acts or write texts that you wouldn’t expect of them,” he acknowledged belatedly. “Personal opinions cannot stand for evidence, nor can personal rhetoric” (12 June 2002 Foster posting to shaksper.net).

I started this investigation with a willingness to let the chips fall where they may. In the end, I can conclude that when all the “personal opinions” and “personal rhetoric” are put aside, there is not a shred of real evidence to support the Henry Livingston case. He may have been a great guy, and he may have even written a Christmas poem, long forgotten, but he didn’t write this one. In terms of deconstructing the Livingston arguments put forth by Don Foster, the preceding text is just the tip of the iceberg – it would be too tedious to list here the many additional examples of factual errors and flawed logic. But if you ever find a different argument than the ones that I responded to above, drop me an email. I probably have more information on file.

My quest to find the truth behind the so-called Christmas controversy has given me a deeper look into the life and work of Clement C. Moore. A critical biography of the writer and scholar has not been written in almost fifty years, and many of his wonderful poems have yet to be published. In fact, because of this investigation, Moore’s verse “From Saint Nicholas” (which may very well be the earliest letter written by Santa Claus) appeared in print for the first time, in a New Yorker piece on Dr. Joe Nickell, one of the researchers who took an interest in this case. I am willing to bet that more will now be published about Moore, the indisputable author of America’s most beloved Christmas poem.

– S.K.

Research assistance provided by Cynthia Henthorn, Marilee Scott, Jeffrey Bolas and Ellen Pawelczak.

References

Anon. “Original Documents from the Archives of the Society: The Autograph Copy of the “Visit from St. Nicholas.”

New-York Historical Society Quarterly Bulletin. Vol. 2;4 (January 1919): 111-115.

Bilger, Burkhard. “Waiting for Ghosts. (Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal Investigator

Joe Nickell).”New Yorker, 23 Dec 2002, 78(40):86+. Expanded Academic ASAP. infotrac.galegroup.com.

Benchley, Robert. “Books and Other Things.” New York World. Dec. 11, 1920.

Burrows, E. and Mike Wallace. Gotham: A History of NYC to 1898. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Elliot, Jock. “‘A Ha! Chistmas’: An Exhibition at the Grolier Club of Jock Elliot’s Christmas Books.” 

New York: The Grolier Club, 1999.

Foster, Donald. Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2000. 

Haight, Anne Lyon. Foreword. “The Night Before Christmas”: An Exhibition Catalogue. Ed. George H. M. Lawrence.

Pittsburgh, PA: The Pittsburgh Bibliophiles, 1964.

Hosking, Arthur Nicholas. The Night Before Christmas. The True Story of a Visit from St. Nicholas. With a Life of the Author,

Clement Clarke Moore. New York: n.p., 1934.

Jones, Charles W. “Knickerbocker Santa Claus.” New-York Historical Society Quarterly. Vol. 38 (Oct. 1954): 357-83.

Kirkpatrick, David D. “Whose Jolly Old Elf Is That, Anyway?” New York Times, October 26, 2000, E1.

L. [Clement Clarke Moore]. “A Letter to the Author from a Friend.” A New Translation, with Notes, of the Third Satire of Juvenal,

to which are Added, Miscellaneous Poems, Original and Translated. Trans. Anon. [Duer, John]. New York: E. Sargeant, 1806.

Literature Online (LION).

Lowe, James. “A Christmas to Remember: A Visit from St. Nicholas.” Autograph Collector. January 2000. 26-29.

MacCracken, Henry Noble. Blithe Dutchess: The Flowering of an American County from 1812. NY: Hastings House, 1958.

Marshall, Nancy H. The Night Before Christmas: A Descriptive Bibliography of Clement Clarke Moore’s Immortal Poem.

New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2002.

Moore, Clement Clarke. Papers. Columbia University Library. New York.

Moore, Clement Clarke. Papers. Museum of the City of New York.

Moore, Clement Clarke. Papers. The New-York Historical Society.

Moore, Clement Clarke. Poems. New York: Bartlett & Welford, 1844.

Nickell, Joe. “The Case of the Christmas Poem.” Manuscripts, Fall 2002, 54;4:293-308

Nickell, Joe. “The Case of the Christmas Poem: Part 2.” Manuscripts, Winter 2003, 55;1:5-15.

Nissenbaum, Stephen. The Battle for Christmas: A Cultural History of America’s Most Cherished Holiday. New York: Vintage, 1996.

Oxford English Dictionary.

Patterson, Samuel White. “The Centenary of Clement Clarke Moore: Poet of Christmas Eve.” Historical Magazine of the

Episcopal Church. Vol. 32, no. 3, Sept 1963.

The Global Electronic Shakespeare Conference. www.shaksper.net.

Silver, Joel. Bookman’s Weekly. Dec. 23-30, 1996, 2153-54.

Sonne, Niels H. “The Night Before Christmas: Who Wrote It?” Historical Magazine of the Episcopal Church.

Vol. 41, no. 4, Dec. 1972.

Strong, George Templeton. Diary.

Tessier, [Alexandre Henri]. A Complete Treatise on Merinos and Other Sheep. Trans. New York: Economical School

Office, 1811. (New-York Historical Society copy)

Thomas, William S. Papers. The New-York Historical Society.

Tuttle, Norman. Letters. Museum of the City of New York.

West, Henry Litchfield. “Who Wrote ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas?’” The Bookman. Vol. LII, no. 4, Dec, 1920.

Appendix A: Clement C. Moore Handwriting Samples

Appendix B: “The Pig & The Rooster”

Below find a transcript of another poem by Moore.

The Pig & The Rooster

by Clement C. Moore (Poems, 1844)

(no date for this particular poem indicated)

The following piece of fun was occasioned by a subject for composition given to the boys of a grammar school attended by one of my sons – viz: “Which are to be preferred, the pleasures of a pig or a chicken?

On a warm sunny day, in the midst of July,
A lazy young pig lay stretched out in his sty,
Like some of his betters, most solemnly thinking
That the best things on earth are good eating and drinking.
At length, to get rid of the gnats and the flies,
He resolv’d, from his sweet meditations to rise;
And, to keep his skin pleasant, and pliant, and cool,
He plung’d him, forthwith, in the next muddy pool.
When, at last, he thought fit to arouse from his bath,
A conceited young rooster came just in his path:
A precious smart prig, full of vanity drest,
Who thought, of all creatures, himself far the best.
“Hey day! little grunter, why where in the world
Are you going so perfum’d, pomatum’d and curl’d?
Such delicate odors my senses assail,
And I see such a sly looking twist to your tail,
That you, sure, are intent on some elegant sporting;
Hurra! I believe, on my life, you are courting;
And that figure which moves with such exquisite grace,
Combin’d with the charms of that soft-smiling face,
In one who’s so neat and adorn’d with such art,
Cannot fail to secure the most obdurate heart.
And much joy do I wish you, both you and your wife,
For the prospect you have of a nice pleasant life.”
“Well, said, Master Dunghill,” cried Pig in a rage,
“You’re, doubtless, the prettiest beau of the age,
With those sweet modest eyes staring out of your head,
And those lumps of raw flesh, all so bloody and red.
Mighty graceful you look with those beautiful legs,
Like a squash or a pumpkin on two wooden pegs.
And you’ve special good reason your own life to vaunt,
And the pleasures of others with insult to taunt;
Among cackling fools, always clucking or crowing,
And looking up this way and that way, so knowing,
And strutting and swelling, or stretching a wing,
To make you admired by each silly thing;
And so full of your own precious self, all the time,
That you think common courtesy almost a crime;
As if all the world was on the look out
To see a young rooster go scratching about.”
Hereupon, a debate, like a whirlwind, arose,
Which seem’d fast approaching to bitings and blows;
‘Mid squeaking and grunting, Pig’s arguments flowing;
And Chick venting fury ‘twixt screaming and crowing.
At length to decide the affair, ‘twas agreed
That to counsellor Owl they should straightway proceed;
While each, in his conscience, no motive could show,
But the laudable wish to exult o’er his foe.
Other birds, of all feather, their vigils were keeping,
While Owl, in his nook, was most learnedly sleeping:
For, like a true sage, he preferred the dark night,
When engaged in his work, to the sun’s blessed light.
Each stated his plea, and the owl was required
To say whose condition should most be desired.
It seemed to the judge a strange cause to be put on,
To tell which was better, a fop or a glutton;
Yet, like a good lawyer, he kept a calm face,
And proceeded, by rule, to examine the case;
With both his round eyes gave a deep-meaning wink,
And, extending one talon, he set him to think.
In fine, with a face much inclin’d for a  joke,
And a mock solemn accent, the counsellor spoke –
“’Twixt Rooster and Roaster, this cause to decide,
Would afford me, my friends, much professional pride.
Were each on the table serv’d up, and well dress’d,
I could easily tell which I fancied the best;’
But while both here before me, so lively I see,
This cause is, in truth, too important for me;
Without trouble, however, among human kind,
Many dealers in questions like this you may find,
Yet, one sober truth, ere we part, I would teach –
That the life you each lead is best fitted for each.
‘Tis the joy of a cockerel to strut and look big,
And to wallow in mire, is the bliss of a pig.
But, whose life is more pleasant, when viewed in itself,
Is a question had better be laid on the shelf,
Like many which puzzle deep reasoners’ brains,
And reward them with nothing but words for their pains.
So now, my good clients, I have been long awake,
And I pray you, in peace, your departure to take.
Let each one enjoy, with content, his own pleasure,
Nor attempt, by himself, other people to measure.”   
Thus ended the strife, as does many a fight;
Each thought his foe wrong, and his own notions right.
Pig turn’d, with a grunt, to his mire anew,
And He-biddy, laughing, cried – Cock-a-doodle-doo.

[Note: The Museum of the City of New York holdings include several other examples of Moore’s anapestic poetry, much of it written for, or at the request of, his children. – SK]

Appendix C: Historical Timeline

Appendix D: Early Publication Timeline

“A Visit from St. Nicholas” (“The Night Before Christmas”) was initially published anonymously, on December 23, 1823 in the Troy, N.Y. Sentinel. Over the next six years it ran in at least half a dozen newspapers – still anonymously. When Orville Holley, the Sentinel’s publisher reprinted it in 1829, however, he hinted at the author’s identity. The poet, the Sentinel announced, belonged “by birth and residence to the City of New York…he is a gentleman of more merit as a scholar and a writer than many of more noisy pretensions.” That description was well suited to Clement Clarke Moore, but not to Henry Livingston, Jr.

 “A Visit” was first printed with Moore’s name in 1837 and, in 1844, Moore himself publicly acknowledged authorship when he included the piece in a compilation of his poetry. That same year, he corrected Holley’s reprint of the poem. Over the next two decades, Moore penned four autograph versions of “The Night Before Christmas,” in 1853 (now in the Strong Museum), 1856 (the Huntington Library), 1860 (the Kaller copy) and 1862 (New-York Historical Society). Each manuscript is unquestionably authentic.

Our list concludes with Harper’s 1863 printing of the poem (accompanied by a Thomas Nast illustration), which most likely elicited the first Livingston claim. Unlike the chain of evidence leading to Moore’s acknowledged authorship, there is no record supporting the contention that Henry Livingston, Jr. wrote “The Night Before Christmas.” In fact, there is no proof that Livingston himself ever claimed authorship, nor has any record ever been found – despite over 40 years of searches – of any printing of the poem with Livingston’s name attached to it.  This list was compiled to show the ample opportunities that the Livingston family would have had to recognize the work both during their forebear’s lifetime (Henry Livingston, Jr. died in 1828) and immediately after Moore was credited as its author (beginning in 1837). Too, the roster of reputable editors and publishers (many of whom knew Moore personally) crediting the piece in their books and periodicals gives lie to the allegation that Moore could not plausibly have written the beloved Christmas poem. Not one of the editors who put their names and publications behind Moore’s authorship expressed surprise that a man of his character was the author. 

Additional information on most of the following entries can be found in Nancy H. Marshall’s The Night Before Christmas: A Descriptive Bibliography of Clement Clarke Moore’s Immortal Poem (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2002). (Note: Items marked * are not on Marshall’s list, and several entries on Marshall’s list are not entered here.)

Appendix E: Joe Nickell Comparison of Phraseology

Phraseology and Imagery in “A Visit” Compared with Other Writings of Clement Moore.

By Dr. Joe Nickell, unpublished addendum to Manuscripts article, “The Case of the Christmas Poem.”