A simple poem with just a few stanzas transformed Christmas completely. It tells the story of a traditional Christmas spent with the family with a focus on children, but its origins are controversial.
It was 1823, and whoever bought the American newspaper Troy Sentinel was entitled to an anonymous copy where the iconic phrase “Twas the night before Christmas” (“It was the night before Christmas”), still popular today in merchandising and a symbol of the Christmas spirit.
It was called “A visit from Saint Nicholas“, and described Christmas in a very unusual way for the time, says , but which now sounds familiar to us.
Before the 1820s, explains Smith, Christmas would have been unrecognizable to modern readers. The holiday, if it was celebrated at all, varied greatly from region to region and usually involved street festivities and lots of drinking.
“When it existed in America, it was a rowdy street celebration based on old world traditions,” he says. Thomas Ruys Smithprofessor of American literature and culture at the University of East Anglia. But this poem changed everything, and “gives readers a perfect model of what a domestic Christmas should be like“.
“It was the night before Christmas, and throughout the house / Not a creature stirred, not even a mouse / The stockings were hung up the chimney with care […] / So, up to the roof of the house, the knights flew / With the sleigh full of toys, and Saint Nicholas too […]”, narrates the poem.
“Saint Nicholas jumped down the chimney. / He was dressed all in fur, from head to toe, / And his clothes were all stained with ash and soot / He carried a bundle of toys on his back. / And he looked like a street vendor opening his backpack.”
The traditions reflected in the poem could not be more different. Instead of adult revelry, the poem’s Christmas involves sleeping children and a sparkling elf who sneaks into their homes at night to deliver gifts.
Both the stockings full of toys and Santa Claus himself are from Dutch originderiving from the annual festival in the Netherlands that celebrates Sinterklaasor Saint Nicholas, on December 5th.
Just 14 years later, when the poem had already become popular around the world and shaped Christmas as we know it todayis that its author “accused” himself: he was the American academic Clement Clarke Moore, who admitted to having written the poem to read to his 9 children.
But, after all, Moore’s poem is not so innocent, it is even, in a certain way, anti-establishment, and came break with some stereotypeswhich made it quite controversial.
The literature teacher explains that This poem avoids religiondepicting a secular holiday that offers a “Merry Christmas to all.” This contrasts with the view of many Calvinists that Christmas should be a solemn holiday, if it should be celebrated at all. Moore too fueled an ongoing dispute over the religiosity of Christmas — a debate that, according to Smith, still continues today.
The poem was later set to music by artists such as Louis Armstrong and Perry Comoand has become an unmistakable symbol of Christmas. In how many films have you heard the saying “Twas the night before Christmas”?
Like it or not, Christmas, since 1823, has never been the same. In the introduction to the poem, in the newspaper, it was written that it represents “that homely yet delightful embodiment of parental kindness“. And, deep down, isn’t this Christmas?
