Major Henry Livingston or Clement Clarke Moore

A Visit From St. Nicholas

So who really wrote the classic poem we all know and love so well?

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro’ 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;

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar plums danc’d in their heads,
And Mama in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap –

[Thanks to ClassBrain.com for clarification on the origin of the classic poem.]

The poem was originally attributed to Clement Clarke Moore, but it is now thought to be the work of Major Henry Livingston Jr. (1748-1828)
First publication date: 23 December 1823
Source: The Toronto Library
Source URL: http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1312.html

The following notes are courtesy of the Toronto Library:

• In the year 2000, Don Foster, an English professor at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, used external and internal evidence to show that Clement Clarke Moore could not have been the author of this poem, but that it was probably the work of Livingston, and that Moore had written another, and almost forgotten, Christmas piece, “Old Santeclaus.” Foster’s analysis of this deception appears in his Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous (New York: Henry Holt, 2000): 221-75.
• [Dunder and Blixem were] Later revised to “Donder and Blitzen” by Clement Clarke Moore when he took credit for the poem in Poems (New York: Bartlett and Welford, 1844).

Notes copyright © 2005, Ian Lancashire for the Department of English, University of Toronto.