Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse…
(This image comes from the Project Gutenberg archives. This is an image that has come from a book or document for which the American copyright has expired and this image is in the public domain in the United States and possibly other countries.)
Most of us are very familiar with the poem “Twas the Night Before Christmas,” but you may not know very much about it.
First of all, no one is really sure who wrote it. It is usually attributed to author Clement Clarke Moore and he included it in an 1844 anthology of his work. The backstory is that Moore’s wife Eliza was cooking for the church on Christmas Eve 1822, but realize she needed one more turkey. Moore set out to find a turkey and while riding in his sleigh, he was inspired to write the poem for his children, which he read that night. On December 23, 1823, the poem was published for the first time in the Troy, New York Sentinel. But, it was published anonymously. It is believed this happened when family friend Miss Harriet Butler visited and heard Moore reading the poem to the children. She copied it down and sent it to the paper. Moore’s name was not attached to the poem until 1837.
Some still believe that Moore could not have been the author and that it was actually Major Henry Livingston, Jr. that wrote the now-famous poem. Evidence to support this point to the fact that the original poem contained the reindeer names “Dunder and Blixem,” which are Dutch and Livingston’s mother was Dutch and that the phraseology and anapaestic rhyme scheme and metre are similar to other Livingston poems. It is also believed that Moore originally tried to disavow authorship of the poem.
There are only four remaining hand-written copies of the poem, none the original, but “fair copies” made by Moore. Three are held in museums (The Huntington Library, the New York Historical Society, and the Strong Museum) and only one, signed by Clement Clarke Moore, is in the possession of private collector. This copy was sold in December 2005 for approximately $280,000.