Clement Clarke Moore - The Story Behind 'Twas The Night Before Christmas' - Christmas Special! - a podcast by Christy and Garry Shriver

Clement Clarke Moore - The Story Behind 'Twas The Night Before Christmas' - Christmas Special!

 

  Hi, I’m Christy Shriver, and we’re here to discuss books that changed the world and changed us.

 

I’m Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast- we hope you enjoyed the intro music by Memphis’ very own local musicians- Holly Shotsberger and David Shotberger. 

Dr. David is a composer here in town and Holly is a professional flutist and singer; they also serve our community by leading music in our church, David teaches at Rhodes College and Holly is a speech pathologist for Shelby County Schools.   

 

In this season of giving we want to give out as many shout-outs as we can to the people who make a difference in our world, so if you have a small business or know someone in your community who does, please email us I’m Christy@howtolovelitpodcast.com  so we can post a picture of your favorite spot or some of your favorite peeps.

 

As we get closer to Christmas and the end of the year, there are so many traditions that mean something special.  Since I was a little kid, this has always been the most traditional time of year for me, as you know, Christy.  I LOVE Christmas and everything about it.  I love decorating the house, making homemade Christmas ornaments, the parties, the rich food, the music, the lights on people’s home.  I even love the cold weather.  Some of my happiest memories as a child and as a parent revolve around Christmas.

 

Well, I  share your sentiment.  I love Christmas, too.  Although, as you know, most of my life, Christmas was NOT about cold weather- au contraire- in Brazil, we also really didn’t go so out of control on the whole holiday decorating thing like we do up here.  Another difference for us was that Christmas was about the end of the school year (our school year ended in December).  And Since summer vacation was in January, we were also looking forward to time at the beach!   One other difference, since we’re talking culture now, is that my Brazilian friends all ate their Christmas dinner at midnight on Christmas Eve, but we had our big dinner at lunch on Christmas day- so we could party at our friends on Christmas Eve, crash out, open presents and then ate again.  All the best traditions wrapped up in 24 hours! 

 

Speaking of Christmas Eve or the night before Christmas-- that takes us to our poem- the title of which is A Visit from St. Nicholas, but everyone refers to it by its first line- Twas the Night before Christmas presumably by Clement Clark Moore.  Christy, before we read the poem, do we know who this guy is?

 

Sort of-  I have to admit- I absolutely had never heard of him before in my life and had to really research him to prepare for today.   He’s kind of an obscure guy- but let me say the story of this poem, even though it evokes childhood memories for a lot of people- is NOT without its own scandal.  Should we share?

 

Well, of course.  Let’s start with the uncontested parts and then we’ll get into the controversy and then after the scandal has been settled, we’ll read and discuss the most quintessential Christmas poem ever written on the American continent.

 

Good plan- how about you do the historical stuff and I’ll do the scandalous…although, I will say, it’s not Emily Bronte level scandalous- more like Christmas Lifetime movie scandalous.

 

Sounds good- Clement Clarke Moore was born in 1779 in New York City, now remember, that’s only three years after the declaration of Independence- not the most settled time in US history.  But Moore’s family seemed to do okay, even if there were some of them that were British sympathizers and others pro-revolutuion.  His father, Benjamin Moore,

(Like the paint brand)

Yes-  was a well-respected Episcopal priest, and rector of the famous Trinity Church.  If you’ve ever visited or seen pictures of lower Manhattan in NYC, this is the church right there on Broadway and Wall Street.  Christy, you’ll like this , one of Benjamin Moore’s more famous accomplishments was ministering the last rites to Alexander Hamilton after his famous duel with Aaron Burr.

 

Did you throw that tidbit in there for all of us Hamilton fans?

 

I did.  Anyway, Clement Moore himself was a very scholarly and religious man and apparently a very serious man very invested in theological education, although not a priest like his father.  He was most well-known at the time for translation work for Bible students; he created a lexicon for Bible students studying to translate things into English from Hebrew.  Another fun-fact about him is that he inherited quite a nice piece of land right there in what is today the heart of New York city.  He subdivided it into lots and sold it to wealthy city residents creating the neighborhood Chelsea (which was the name of his property)- you may recognize that name because today it’s still an upscale neighborhood on the west side of Manhattan- and although it’s likely few Chelsea residents know they are living on the property of the guy who wrote invented our Jolly Ole Santa Claus concept- there is a little park with his name attached to it still in the area. 

 

I do recognize the name Chelsea- very fancy!!!

 

Anyway,  Clement Moore because of his real estate ventures was a pretty wealthy man as well as a very respected seminary professor.  He gave 60 lots of land to the General Theological Seminary, as well as to St Paul’s Church.  He lived a fairly prosperous and respectable life and died at the age of 84 in 1863- smack dab in the middle of the Civil War- so you can see his life started and ended in wartime- ironically.  Pretty simple chronology really.  The generally accepted story is that Moore, his wife and his children (of which he had nine before it was all said and done) lived in a wonderful home with great fireplaces.  One year, specifically 1822,  he wrote the poem ‘A Visit from St. Nicholas” for his six children (he only had six at that time)- during a sleigh ride home from Greenwich village after buying a turkey for the family for Christmas (although there is discussion that it might have been a Christmas Goose and not turkey- anyway he composed the poem just as a family fun thing.  That night he read it to the family. However, the story goes that at their house that night there was a woman visiting them, the daughter of a friend named Dr. Butler (I’m not sure what the woman’s name was).  Anyway, she was there at the house and heard the Dr. Moore read the poem. She liked it and copied it into her album.  Later on she shared the poem with editor of the Troy Sentinel who published the poem anonomously without Moore’s permission.   According to the original version of events, this upset Dr. Moore because he was a very serious person with a serious academic reputation and he thought printing the poem would dilute his reputation as a scholar.  But, the poem was well-received and immediately became famous.  No one knew who wrote the poem until 1844 when Moore published an anthology of his most famous works, and included this poem.  This made him famous- but not for any of the theology work he had worked so hard on- such irony.  And to make matters even more Christmas-y, there is a tradition to this day at the Chapel of Intercession  at Broadway and 158th where Moore is buried.   Every year a special guest reads A visit from St Nicholas to the children in the church- after the reading  each child leaves the church with a lantern singing carols led by a choir, from the church they walk over to the cemetery where Moore is buried to lay a Christmas wreath on his grave.

 

A little like the Edgar Allan Poe tradition, but not as creepy- although anytime we incorporate graves, there is a little element of creepiness. 

 

This tradition is 109 years old and is one of New York City’s oldest Christmas traditions- although this year, I checked the church calendar, this might be affected by Covid-19. 

 

Wow- after 109 years…maybe they’ll pull it off.  So….now do you want to know the scandalous part?

 

Well, of course.

 

Okay- there is a school of thought- and this is not a conspiracy theory- but an actual legitimate theory- that suggests that Clement Moore did NOT write the poem.  In fact, he stole it and there is evidence to support it.  Want to hear it?

 

Well, of course. 

 

Okay- well, no one contests that he wrote the poem to his children, the family friend was there and passed it on to the newspaper.  Also, as you have already pointed out, this poem was published anonoymously and was anonymous for almost twenty years.  But what is contested is who originally wrote it.  Did Dr. Moore really compose it coming home in a sleigh after purchasing a turkey or goose respectively?  Or did he steal it from an unsuspecting jolly ole’ poet of another kind?

 

How could anyone go back and question this sort of thing all these years later?

 

Well, there are specialists today that can go back and analyze language, but also there are some suspicious details in the historical account that leave questions.  Twenty years after publication and right before, Moore published the poem in his anthology, he wrote the editor of the Troy Sentinel and asked if anyone had ever claimed authorship of the poem.  The editor told him that anyone who had known about the poem’s origins had already died and he didn’t know one way or the other.  Now, why would an author call his publisher and ask if anyone else had written a poem he supposedly wrote?

 

Hmm…suspicious, but not indicting.  Maybe he just wanted to check for any posers? Or, maybe he wanted to see if the woman had left any information about HIM. 

 

Maybe, but there’s more.  After he took credit for the poem, a family by the name of the Livingstons came forward very outraged.  It turns out they remembered hearing the poem recited many times in their childhood by a deceased relative by the name of Henry Livingston.  Henry Livingston, a revolutionary war veteran, was a chubby Santa-looking man of Dutch and Scottish descent who was known for writing playful verses many for children- in the exact same meter as the poem A Visit from St. Nicholas.  Also, Livingston was Dutch- and two of the original reindeers in the poem are named (Dunder and Blixem)

 

And what is the significance of that?

 

Dunder and Blixem means Thunder and Lightening in Dutch- but mean nothing in English.

 

Thunder and Lightening sound like great reindeer names.

 

And there’s more. It was well known to a lot of people that Dunder and Blitzen was a catch phrase that Henry Livingston used a lot as an exclamation!!

 

 So are you saying that this man, Henry Livingston, went around and when he needed to utter an element of surprise- like Golly Geez or Great Scot- he would say Dunder and Blitzen.

 

I’m saying exactly that- now How would Moore know to name the reindeers that? Although he did alter the names slightly to Donner and Blitzen (more Germanic).  Henry Livingston died at age 80 in 1829 before the anthology came out and probably didn’t know that the poem was even famous.  Also, Livingston has a record for writing children’s poems. There are a lot of them still around.  And this is what I mean by saying there are scholars that analyze language for this type of thing, and many have compared the style of these poems to the style of A Visit from Nick- and made assessments as to the likelihood that Livingston wrote it based on his normal use of language.  As you know, we all get used to using the same words over and over again, and all of us- not just famous people, can be identified by our speaking and/or writing style.  , Most famously in 2000, a Vassar professor  by the name of Don Foster published a paper and definitively asserts in this paper the language and internal evidence of the way Livingston used words compared to how Moore used words and made rhymes left little doubt as to who the real authorship of the poem is.

 

So, do you think it was Livingston or Moore.

 

Well, there’s one more piece of evidence that Livingston is the author that strikes my feminist chord and makes me want to side against Moore and be on team Livingston. 

 

Oh dear, what is it?

 

Well, in the preface of the anthology that Moore published with his poems in it he writes, “I have composed all as carefully and corrextly as I can.”   Which seems a little stilted, but here’s the outrageous part.  HE DIDN’T. and we know that for sure.  He was lying.  Two of the poems in the book were written by his wife!!!!  That stinker took her credit!!!

 

Well, then I can see, there’s no more to discuss here…oh, except maybe the poem.

 

Yes, the poem- I guess it’s time. Let’s get started talking about the poem because no matter who wrote it, we all own it now just the Christmas traditions that have been associated with it.   The poem took on wings of its own…or magical sleighs.  The name “A Visit from ST Nicholas” itself is so interesting.  St. Nicholas is not Dutch or German or English or American.  St Nicholas is Turkish. Tell us about him, the real St Nick.

 

Well, the story goes that he was a bishop in the fourth centry in a town called Myra in Turkey.  He was a wealthy man but had a habit of secretly giving to the poor.  There are actually quite a few legends about this man, but the famous one is the legend about the time he met a poor man with three daughters.  He was so poor that his daughters couldn’t get married because he didn’t have a dowry to give them

 

And no one wants a girl without a dowry.

 

Well, sadly in 4th century Turkey, that is exactly the case, anyway Nicholas secfretly dropped a bag of gold down the chimnety and into the house.  This meant that the oldest daughter would be able to get married.  AND, the gold dropped into a stocking that had been hanging by the fireplace drying out.  Eventually, people figured out who the nice man was who was giving away a lot of money and Nicholas became St. Nick. 

 

So, the poem A Visit from St. Nick is about this man visiting the kids in the home of Livingston or Moore or whoever originally made up the poem.

 

Twas the Night before Christmas and when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring not even a mouse. 

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care

Inhopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.

 

Okay, so let me get a little technical, just because it IS a literature analysis podcast.

 

Notice that house and mouse rhyme.  If you remember from other poetry podcasts, that’s what we call a couplet- two lines that rhyme.  He is going to use that pattern the entire way through the poem.  All the lines rhyme in two’s.

 

Also, listen to the beat dah=dah DAH dah dah DAH dah da DAH dah dah DAH- if you listen you’ll here a little drum beat.  This is different from the iambic pentameter we heard in Romeo and Juliet that imitates the beat of the human heart.  This is called anapestic tetrameter- it’s fast pace, it’s jolly, the beat in the language supports the excitement the narrator feels or really anyone feels the night before Christmas dah dah DAH……..Can you feel it?

 

Yes- I think I can.

 

So, this is a narrative poem because it tells a story, it rhymes, it has a fun meter- it doesn’t have hard words, even if it is over 200 years old. We can follow it. It’s full of imagery.  And imagery, as we know are the mental pictures we can make in our head with the words the writer uses.  And what’s so great about the imagery of this poem, is that it’s the image of St. Nicholas, and t or who we now call Santa Clause and the reindeer that’s the big deal.  Before this poem, pictures of St. Nicholas were so different.  St Nicholas is the patron saint of sailors. In Pictures of him he’s a tall skinny bald guy who is very stern and unsmiling, a traditional looking saint.  In this poem, that’s not who he is at all.  He’s fat- famously he has a belly like a bowl full of jelly, he has merry cheeks, he’s carrying toys, he has a beard, he’s even smoking a pipe (not too modern) but the smoke is magical and. makes a wreath around his head- his eyes are twinkling and makes the narrator laugh.  Also the reindeer- those weren’t a thing before this poem.  That is a total invention by Livingston or Moore.  And he gave them those famous names: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen. 

 

Where’s Rudolph?

 

I know, Rudolph took another couple of hundred of years to show up.  Ironically another New Yorker would make him; a Jewish man by the name of Robert May wrote the story of Rudolph the Red nosed Reindeer as a marketing gimic for the Montgomery Ward department store, but that’s a whole other story.  The point I’m making here is that this poem created the image that has stayed over and has developed into everything we think of about Christmas- we even had until the year when it died this fat jolly man in the form of a blow up in our front yard-  it’s the power of the imagery, supported by the beat and the rhyme that has made some of the first folklore ever created in the United States….so with all that said, Garry, will you start all the way over and give the poem a read?  TWAS the NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

 

When all through the house not a create was strring, not even a mouse…..

 

 

Merry Christmas to all ….whether Christmas is in your cultural tradition or not…enjoy the season….enjoy the culture and enjoy the magic….see you next week….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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