WHO DID WHAT? I have an inkling of where I may have picked up the idea that a man named Clement Moore wrote the words to the fine old Christmas poem and song we used to overdo during the yuletide season each and every year.
It was said to have been written in time enough to be published in a New York town's paper called called "The Troy Sentinel." It is said to have been written exactly one year before that date of December 23, 1823. The writer was a biblical scholar and religious writer and a member of the teaching staff at one of the leading theological seminaries of his time. His name was Dr. C. Clement Moore and it is thought he refrained from publishing the poem which was written for his children. He felt that, in doing so, he might harm his hard-won reputation in his special field. We do not know if he relented a year later and took his poem to the local paper to be published without using his name; if member of his family or a friend passed it along. Or, the paper, looking for a bright, humorous and honest and sincere re-telling some of the old, old Saint Nicholas tales. Or, if might be that the paper, looking for such a fun-filled Christmas poem, just "came upon it." Clement Moore updated stories of St. Nicholas pretty much in the Walt Disney manner of our day.
Following that publication date, Clement Moore denied having written the poem for just about twenty years or more. By that time it had become apparent that there was to be no public uprising objecting to the introduction of such a worldly, non-scriptural poem and into the Christmas time of celebration.
In 1844 a man by the name of Donald W. Foster did a book titled "Author Unknown" in which he proved to his own satisfaction that another New York state resident - a Major Henry Livingston - not Clement Moore - had written the poem "'Twas The Night Before Christmas" a.k.a. "A Visit From Saint Nicholas."
Henry Livingston never commented on the poem being included as one of his in Foster's book. He had been dead for seven years.
A.L.M. April 20, 2005 [c407wds]
