At what age did you stop believing in Santa Claus? Last Christmas, I still had to buy something for my daughter and wrote “From: Santa Claus” on the gift tag because she still believed in him. She was 16. From the introduction of the edition from 1912 we can perceive Moore’s motivation behind writing the poem.

Moore’s template for the Santa that he drew through his poetry soon replaced the centuries old characteristic depictions of St. Nicholas of Europe. The poem also influenced the ideas of Christmas Eve gifting and is believed to have popularized the concept of Santa visiting homes on Christmas Eve bearing gifts in America. I have said it from memory to my kids and maybe one grandkid, though now whole swatches of it have washed down the drain with other hurricane detritus.

Swipe to turn the pages.

Clement Clarke Moore (July 15, 1779 - July 10, 1863) was an American writer and Professor of Oriental and Greek Literature.

As a girl, Moore's mother, Charity Clarke, wrote letters to her English cousins that are preserved at Columbia University and show her disdain for the policies of the English Monarchy and her growing sense of patriotism in pre-revolutionary days. A scan of the poem, which was printed in the December 29, 1877 issue of ‘Home Circle’ newspaper, published from Boston. As the avatar of intrusive magic, Santa is powerful but not entirely welcome, a poorly-dressed, poorly-piped elf. Santa the smoker! Ah, times have changed. Clement C. Moore was more famous in his own day as a professor of Oriental and Greek literature at Columbia College (now Columbia University) and at General Theological Seminary, who compiled a two volume Hebrew dictionary. He was the only son of Benjamin Moore, a president of Columbia College and bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, and his wife Charity Clarke. Clement Clarke Moore was a graduate of Columbia College (1798), where he earned both his B.A. and his M.A.. He was made professor of Biblical learning in the General Theological Seminary in New York (1821), a post that he held until 1850. The ground on which the seminary now stands was his gift. [1] From 1840 to 1850, he was a board member of The New York Institution for the Blind at 34th Street and 9th Avenue (now The New York Institute for Special Education). He compiled a Hebrew and English Lexicon (1809), and published a collection of poems (1844). Upon his death in 1863 at his summer residence in Newport, Rhode Island, his funeral was held in Trinity Church, Newport, where he had owned a pew. Then his body was interred in the cemetery at St. Luke's Episcopal Church on Hudson St., in New York City. On November 29, 1899, his body was reinterred in Trinity Churchyard Cemetery in New York. The Moore house, Chelsea, at the time a country estate, gave its name to the surrounding neighborhood of Chelsea, Manhattan, and Moore's land in the area is noted today by Clement Clark Moore Park, located at 10th Avenue and 22nd Street. The playground there opened November 22, 1968, and it was named in memory of Clement Clarke Moore by local law during the following year. The 1995 renovations to Clement Clarke Moore Park included a new perimeter fence, modular play equipment, safety surfacing, pavements and transplanted trees. This park is a popular playground area for local residents, who gather there the last Sunday of Advent for a reading of Twas the Night Before Christmas. [2]The conclusion of the poem as illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith - from the 1912 edition of ‘Twas the night before Christmas’ Jessie Willcox Smith (right side, facing the camera) with artist Violet Oakley (left side, facing the camera), illustrator Elizabeth Shippen Green and horticulturist Henrietta Preface Cozens, a mutual friend of the three artists. Photograph from the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Every year, in some fashion, I read this aloud to the kids. This is one of the old classic illustrated versions, more for me than the kids, in a way, though we have five versions of it around the house this time. Everyone likes it, though this year the eldest mimics some of the action that I describe, lightly making fun of it. He has this idea Santa no longer exists! Where do these kids nowadays get this fake news!? Do parents need to stop encouraging their young children to believe in Santa Claus? When the child grows up, are parents expected to correct this by saying something like, ”Now that you are a grownup, sorry if we fooled you but there is no Santa.” And that scene too has become thoroughly familiar to us, even if relatively few people, young or old, eat sugarplums nowadays.

Here, we see elements of the modern Santa Claus archetype taking shape. He is jolly, benevolent, slightly mischievous – as suits someone who commits countless acts of breaking-and-entering each year, but breaks into homes to give gifts rather than taking things away. All one needs to do is take away the details about Saint Nicholas smoking a pipe – something that would not pass muster with modern sensibilities.Once the worried homeowner has flown like a flash to his bedroom window, opened the shutters, and raised the sash, he engages in an oft-overlooked bit of elaborate 19th-century description – “The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow/Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below”. And against that brightly lit winter night-time landscape, the reader gets a first sight of “a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer.” A word, first, about an authorship controversy that still swirls, like cold winter winds, around this beloved poem. While Moore, a classics professor and Episcopalian divine at New York’s General Theological Seminary, took credit in 1837 for the anonymously published 1823 poem, a number of critics and historians have joined with the family of Henry Livingston Jr., in claiming that Livingston, a New Yorker who served as a major in the Continental Army during the American Revolution, actually wrote the poem and regularly recited it to his children. The poetry was soon reprinted in many newspapers and magazines and was also adapted for many musical renderings. Please note that the reindeer do indeed fly, but only in response to Saint Nicholas’ command, and only for the purpose of getting the sleigh up and onto the roof; evidently, up until that point, the sleigh and its reindeer simply went dashing through the snow just the way less magically-adept people’s horse-drawn sleighs do. We can all agree that the poet’s depiction of Saint Nicholas is vivid, with immediate sensory appeal and compelling characterization: